For my other _anonymi_, you may be sure that I know what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. There are those who think it is capital fun to be spattering their ink on quiet unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the game changes sides and the others begin it, they see something savage and horrible in it. As for me I respect neither women nor men for their gender, nor own any s.e.x in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two parties also to every good laugh.
A FABLE FOR CRITICS.
Phbus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree"s shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the G.o.d being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though "twas a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he"d play the Byronic, And I can"t count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over, By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her.
"My case is like Dido"s," he sometimes remark"d, "When I last saw my love, she was fairly embark"d, In a laurel, as _she_ thought--but (ah how Fate mocks!) She has found it by this time a very bad box; Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it, --You"re not always sure of your game when you"ve treed it.
Just conceive such a change taking place in one"s mistress!
What romance would be left?--who can flatter or kiss trees?
And for mercy"s sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,-- Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you"ve less chance to win her the more she is wood?
Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough!
If her tongue _had_ a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite."
Now, Daphne,--before she was happily treeified,-- Over all other blossoms the lily had deified, And when she expected the G.o.d on a visit, ("Twas before he had made his intentions explicit,) Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, Like the day breaking through the long night of her tresses; So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table, (I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable, Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel,)-- He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, As I shall at the ----, when they cut up my book in it.
Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I"ve been spinning, I"ve got back at last to my story"s beginning: Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens, which, in old histories, We read of his verses--the Oracles, namely,-- (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,)-- First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a moustache, for you know he"s _imberbis_; Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was a.s.sailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly.
"Mehercle! I"d make such proceedings felonious,-- Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius?
Look well to your seat, "tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, "tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features--but, then, one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,-- Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?"
--Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne.
"O, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, "for you know it"s A terrible thing to be pestered with poets!
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she"s out of the wood!
What wouldn"t I give if I never had known of her?
"Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over; If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her.
One needs something tangible, though to begin on-- A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round, (Or, if "tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won"t stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"-- It is not a metaphor, though, "tis a simile;) A lily, perhaps, would set _my_ mill agoing, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing, Here, somebody, fetch one, not very far hence They"re in bloom by the score, "tis but climbing a fence; There"s a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t"other, with lilies; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes."
Now there happened to be among Phbus"s followers, A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers, Who bolt every book that comes out of the press, Without the least question of larger or less, Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,-- For reading new books is like eating new bread, One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he Is brought to death"s door of a mental dyspepsy.
On a previous stage of existence, our Hero Had ridden outside, with the gla.s.s below zero; He had been, "tis a fact you may safely rely on, Of a very old stock a most eminent scion,-- A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on, Who stretch the new boots Earth"s unwilling to try on, Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, Whose hair"s in the mortar of every new Zion, Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e"er hunt at all, with the lion, (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one,) Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, Whose pedigree traced to earth"s earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears;-- In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey.
Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters, Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back; (For it makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill;) So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced "twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he"d had some connection with authors, And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,-- She set him on two, and he came forth a critic.
Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took In any amus.e.m.e.nt but tearing a book; For him there was no intermediate stage, From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age; There were years when he didn"t wear coat-tails behind, But a boy he could never be rightly defined; Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, From the womb he came gravely, a little old man; While other boys" trousers demanded the toil Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, He sat in the corner and read Viri Romae.
He never was known to unbend or to revel once In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once; He was just one of those who excite the benevolence Of your old prigs who sound the soul"s depths with a ledger, And are on the lookout for some young men to "edger cate," as they call it, who won"t be too costly, And who"ll afterward take to the ministry mostly; Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, Always keep on good terms with each _mater-familias_ Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year; Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions.
In this way our hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, and a vest of black satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin, That Tully could never have made out a word in it, (Though himself was the model the author preferred in it,) And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee, All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A. B., He was launched (life is always compared to a sea,) With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, To prove he"d a brain, by forever confusing it.
So worthy Saint Benedict, piously burning With the holiest zeal against secular learning, _Nesciensque scienter_, as writers express it, _Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit._
"Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, All separate facts, undeniably true, But with him or each other they"d nothing to do; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the ma.s.ses he learned into learning; There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for, (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for,) Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he"d weighed its relations to plain bread and b.u.t.ter.
When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals" historical bits,-- Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,-- Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbia.s.sed press, With a mind so wellpoised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for; From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.
And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles, They filled up the s.p.a.ce nothing else was prepared for; And n.o.body read that which n.o.body cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition, He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compa.s.s or chart,-- His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature"s old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier"s planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and a.s.sign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circ.u.mstance just as he found it, Without the least malice,--his record would be Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, borne by an Arab guide, ventured to render a General view of the ruins of Denderah.
As I said, he was never precisely unkind, The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, "twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In his works which our hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, And set up a kind of a man-manufactory, An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being.
He meant well enough, but was still in the way As a dunce always is, let him be where he may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence To impede other folks with their awkward a.s.sistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North pole, All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He"d manage to get betwixt somebody"s shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found n.o.body else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there"s nothing we read of in torture"s inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.
A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he b.u.t.tered was ever so dry at tea; There he"d sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time--he"s as fond as an Arab of dates;-- You"ll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you"ve seen in the course of the day; And, just as you"re tapering out the conclusion, You venture an ill-fated cla.s.sic allusion,-- The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack!
The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back!
You had left out a comma,--your Greek"s put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story"s whole point.
In the course of the evening, you venture on certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain; You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, "And that, oh most charming of women, "s the sunflower, Which turns"--here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, From outside the curtain, says "that"s all an error."
As for him, he"s--no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody"s sweet features out of cigar smoke, (Though he"d willingly grant you that such doings are smoke;) All women he d.a.m.ns with _mutabile semper_, And if ever he felt something like love"s distemper, "Twas towards a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And a.s.sisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,--but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I"ll turn to my story.
Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The _genus_, I think it is called, _irritabile_, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a--what is it?--_immedicabile_, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, If any poor devil but look at a laurel;-- Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting, (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta,) Kept our hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn"t do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that authorship wasn"t a rich craft, To print the "American drama of Witchcraft."
"Stay, I"ll read you a scene,"--but he hardly began, Ere Apollo shrieked "Help!" and the authors all ran: And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle, As calmly as if "twere a nine-barrelled pistol, And threatened them all with the judgment to come, Of "A wandering Star"s first impressions of Rome."
"Stop! stop!" with their hands o"er their ears screamed the Muses, "He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, "Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, "Tis mere ma.s.sacre now that the enemy"s flying; If he"s forced to "t again, and we happen to be there, Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether."
I call this a "Fable for Critics"; you think it"s More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle, "s slender and slippery, Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_, Is free to jump over as much of my frippery As he fancies, and, if he"s a provident skipper, he May have an Odyssean sway of the gales, And get safe into port, ere his patience all fails; Moreover, although "tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e"en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau"s, whom one of those bores, Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, Describes, (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_,) As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire_; Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for cla.s.sical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, I wis; As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis_; Better still, I could make out a good solid list From recondite authors who do not exist,-- But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton"s prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris;-- But, as Cicero says he won"t say this or that, (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat,) After saying whate"er he could possibly think of,-- I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, Made up of old jumbles of cla.s.sic allusion, So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you"d have gritted, An "t were not for the dulness I"ve kindly omitted.
I"d apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I"m certain to trip into fresh ones, ("Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once;) Just reflect, if you please, how "tis said by Horatius, That Maeonides nods now and then, and, my gracious!
It certainly does look a little bit ominous When he gets under way with _ton d"apameibomenos_.
(Here a something occurs which I"ll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-- Any author a nap like Van Winkle"s may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he"ll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If _they_ fall a nodding when he nods himself.)
Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I-- When Phbus expressed his desire for a lily, Our hero, whose h.o.m.opathic sagacity With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind, (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,) And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O"er his principles, when something else turns up trumps.
He was gone a long time, and Apollo meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end;-- So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. ----; At a few steps behind him, a small man in gla.s.ses, Went dodging about, muttering "murderers! a.s.ses!"
From out of his pocket a paper he"d take, With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, And, reading a squib at himself, he"d say, "Here I see "Gainst American letters a b.l.o.o.d.y conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, "tis prudent to pull O"er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull, All American authors who have more or less Of that anti-American humbug--success, While in private we"re always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know "tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all, (They"re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!"
So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pa.s.s in, Expecting the knife of some critic a.s.sa.s.sin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o"-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one"s good, and condense all one"s poor traits.
Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,-- "Good day, Mr. ----, I"m happy to meet With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman carries,-- What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World"s metropolis?"
"Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one, That isn"t a copy of something that"s foreign, And a.s.saults the American d.i.c.k--"
"Nay, "tis clear That your Damon there"s fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in j.a.pan Should turn up his nose at the "Poems on Man,"
Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (and this there"s no doubt of,) In successively sinking the craft they"re fired out of.
Now n.o.body knows when an author is. .h.i.t, If he don"t have a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret"s dim ether, And n.o.body "d think of his critics--or him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him, All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban, One word that"s in tune with the nature of man."
"Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you"ll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted, (when you have got through it,) As to think it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, A place in the next Democratic Review."
"The most thankless of G.o.ds you must surely have thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you"ve brought me, I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I"ve forty-two left, standing all side by side, (The man who accepted that one copy, died,)-- From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, "With the author"s respects" neatly written in each.
The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big,--for "tis hinted That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy.
I"ve thought very often "t would be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_, And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,-- Such books as one"s wrecked on in small country-taverns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented, Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging And gibbeting all who"re in favor of hanging,-- (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows,)-- And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, To choke a poor scamp for the glory of G.o.d; And that He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery,-- Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillion Are mounted for h.e.l.l on the Devil"s own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,-- That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of his word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter About offering to G.o.d on his favorite halter, And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;--
"Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all To a criminal code both humane and effectual;-- I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, As by statute in such cases made and provided, Shall be by your wise legislators decided; Thus:--Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,-- That American Punch, like the English, no doubt-- Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out.
"But stay, here comes t.i.tyrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,-- A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm-drest, He goes for as perfect a--swan, as the rest.
"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr---- No, "tis not even prose; I"m speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne"er been excelled; They "re not epics, but that doesn"t matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing "s to begin; A gra.s.s-blade"s no easier to make than an oak, If you"ve once found the way, you"ve achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be, But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don"t make a tree.
"But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way, I believe we left waiting,)--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t"other the Exchange; He seems, to my thinking, (although I"m afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made,) A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian"s gold mist And the Gascon"s shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he"s got To I don"t (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, "tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a G.o.d.
"Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me, To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself--just a little projected; And who"s willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to--nothing but Emerson.
So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, G.o.d, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth"s a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he"ll sort "em, But you can"t help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_.
"There are persons, mole-blind to the soul"s make and style, Who insist on a likeness "twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle"s the more burly, but E. is the rarer; He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C."s as original, E."s more peculiar; That he"s more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other he"s more of an Emerson; C."s the t.i.tan, as s.h.a.ggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one"s two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one"s most abounding, the other"s to seek; C."s generals require to be seen in the ma.s.s,-- E."s specialties gain if enlarged by the gla.s.s; C. gives nature and G.o.d his own fits of the blues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-- While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite _a la_ Fuseli,-- He don"t sketch their bundles of muscles and thews illy, But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-- To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words.
C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly a.s.sumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted.
"He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-- Who go carefully o"er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o"er is reflected within it.
"There comes ----, for instance; to see him "s rare sport, Tread in Emerson"s tracks with legs painfully short; How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, To keep step with the mystagogue"s natural pace He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet"s each pocket.