So he might have done, if his ardent, aspiring soul would have permitted him to temporize with his conscience, and to be content with mere popularity and doing good on a small scale. But the thought that was matured within him could no longer be restrained. The dangerous seed sown by reading "Sartor Resartus" had now become a strong young tree and must have air and light or it would perish. In October 1852 he preached a sermon that fairly astounded his amiable parishioners. He argued that regeneration and salvation were not to be obtained by blind faith in Jesus, but by intelligent moral culture and spiritual development. This view was, as far as I know, original with Wa.s.son, and should be distinguished from the anti-miraculous standpoint of Parker and the natural supernaturalism of Emerson. Almost at the same hour an English naturalist was applying the same principle to the origin of species, and the evolution of the human race from the lower animals. The Englishman"s clear, inductive insight was matched by the philosophical penetration of an American. The Darwinian theory now stands uncontested among scientific men, and whether admitted or not there is quite as surely an evolution apparent in the history of religion, not very unlike it. This is the lesson of the nineteenth century.
The following day one of the deacons of the church called upon Wa.s.son to inform him that his sermon had given offence and that he must retract from his position. "But," replied the minister, "I cannot! I am not going to retract it." Thirty years after this Wa.s.son laughed as heartily, as a suffering person very well could, while he recollected the expression of astonishment on the worthy deacon"s face. That a man should do wrong for the sake of money or some material advantage was conceivable to him--he had known instances of that; but that any man should so stand in his own light both for this world and the next, was a moral incongruity which he could not understand. Wa.s.son would not withdraw from his position, but followed it up the next Sunday by a still more energetic statement. There was nothing left now but deposition. A conference was called and Wa.s.son regularly expelled from the Congregational brotherhood. Even some Unitarians also shared in the horror. About a third part of his congregation, however, were converted by him and established an independent church; so that after all he achieved a kind of victory.
Wa.s.son had now escaped in a two-fold sense from the fog-banks and shallow waters of his native coast and henceforward was to sail forth bravely upon the high seas. The conflict he had pa.s.sed through attracted no little attention from thoughtful and cultivated people, and even those who did not wholly agree with him admired the honest manliness with which he defended his views. Polite society opened its doors to him. Wherever he went now he was received as a distinguished guest. He soon made the acquaintance of eminent scholars and men of letters,--of Sumner, Parker and Emerson. He made friends everywhere. He began to publish essays and poems; at first in the "Christian Examiner," and afterwards in the "Atlantic Monthly." In those days of plain living and high thinking it was not customary for magazine writers to sign their names, (so modest were they,) to their contributions; and in this way Wa.s.son just missed the general celebrity which they might have brought him, but their merit was recognized by those of whose good opinion he was chiefly desirous.
The effort, however, had been too much for him. The only chance of recovery from a nervous disorder lies in freedom from mental agitation.
An injured nerve requires a longer time to heal than a broken bone and quite as much care and self-denial. Any serious disturbance to the circulation produces a pressure in the blood vessels of the nervous centres, and tears away the improvement that has commenced there. Then nature has to begin her work over again; and if this happens repeatedly nature becomes tired of working in vain and refuses to give further a.s.sistance. This was Wa.s.son"s misfortune. He was sensitive and excitable by temperament, the injury to his spine had made him still more so, and the mental agitation he experienced during 1852 and 1853 was enough to prevent him from ever being restored to perfect health. During these two years he must have endured nothing less than the tortures of the inquisition; and no doubt some of his Calvinistic neighbors considered it a judgment on him for his heresy. A mutilated life is not so very bad after one is used to it, but the beginning is terrible. It is like being surrounded with invisible barbed fences, which we inevitably run against and lacerate ourselves with, until we learn to bear in mind their exact position. Accidents too happen to nervous invalids which other people seem generally to escape from. Wa.s.son was at one time making fair progress in his condition when suddenly one day, as he was walking through Boston, the door of a house opened and a lady slipping on some ice and tripping over the steps fell right into his arms. This was a highly diverting adventure for a young clergyman, but it cost him weeks of suffering. A somewhat similar strain came upon him when his first child was born. He does not seem to have ever met with a physician who understood his case. One worthy doctor in Worcester invited him to his house and drove with him in his sulky for more than half a year, without accomplishing anything for him. He went on a voyage to London and another to Smyrna, without any better result than suffering from bad food and stormy weather. After the first voyage his condition was so bad that, as he said of it once, he scarcely knew whether it was day or night: but the climate of Asia Minor agreed with him and he returned from Smyrna at least better for so much experience. I think his first real improvement came during his stay at my father"s house. There he had plentiful repose, both of mind and body, and if good medical treatment had been added he might have made a substantial gain.
In the spring of 1864 Bradford, the marine artist, being ambitious to paint icebergs in their native wilds, organized a sailing party for Labrador and invited Wa.s.son to go with them. This was the first enterprise of the kind that gave him permanent benefit. Fortunately they encountered no severe storms. The cool, bracing air of the polar regions was better than galvanism and stimulated his nerves to work in the proper way. Sailing along the coast they were able to anchor almost every night in smooth water. The fish they caught, the strange birds they saw and stranger human creatures, were a cheerful entertainment to him. He became quite a sportsman, and even joined one day in the pursuit of a polar bear. He returned in the autumn practically cured of his trouble, but to regain his strength was out of the question: he suffered besides very badly from dyspepsia. However he was able to preach regularly, to make speeches in public, to work in his garden and write perhaps three hours a day. Such a person is not greatly to be pitied, and if he had fortunately possessed a small competency we might now look upon him as a prosperous man: but his only property consisted of a good working library and five hundred dollars which a friend had given him.
The next eight years were the best and most productive of his life; and he might have continued in the same course but for another most unfortunate accident. The supply of coal in his government office gave out, and the requisition for a fresh quant.i.ty was not promptly filled.
Wa.s.son sat writing in a cold room. There was a sudden change of weather, a severe snow squall, and the result was--pleurisy. This changed to bronchitis which worried and weakened him for the following ten years, and finally carried him off in his sixty-fifth year. That he went through a severe fever at the house of his friend Henry A. Page of Medford is hardly worth considering, for he was so tenderly and beautifully cared for there as almost to make it an enviable experience; but in 1879 cataracts formed on both eyes, one of which had been injured long before, and when they were operated on, two years later, the sight was restored to his injured eye (such as it was previously) but not to the other, so that he was left very nearly blind. He attributed this catastrophe to the quant.i.ty of belladonna which had been prescribed for him.
Such was his pathological history and a truly terrible one it is. Who can remember the like of it? Certainly Job"s trials were not heavier nor were they borne with more fort.i.tude and patience. In the midst of his severest troubles he wrote "All is well:" a n.o.ble religious poem equal to the hymn of Cleanthes or the twelfth ode of Horace; and in one of his earlier essays he speaks of tragedy as possessing such beauty and grandeur that he is almost ready to believe it is the proper goal and destination of earthly life. In "Epic Philosophy" he says: "Strife is around man, and strife is within him; the lightning thrusts its blazing scymitar through his roof, the thief creeps in at his door, and remorse at his heart. Who, looking on these things, does not acknowledge that man is indeed fearfully as well as wonderfully made? Who would not sometimes cry, "O that my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep, not the desolations of Israel alone, but the hate of Israel to Edom and of Edom to Israel, the jar, the horror, the ensanguined pa.s.sion and ferocity of Nature"? But when we would despair, behold we cannot.
Out of the conscious heart of humanity issues forever, more or less clearly, a voice of infinite, pure content. "Through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for THOU art with me." Sometimes, when our trial is sorest, that voice is clearest, singing as from the jaws of death and the gates of h.e.l.l. And now, though the tears fall, they become jewels as they fall; and the sorrow that begot them wears them in the diadem of its more than regal felicity."
This is the echo of his own experience; the spiritual diagnosis of his case. With what fort.i.tude he endured his maladies those who knew him best can bear witness. He was no ideal Stoic nor self-conscious martyr; but more like an Homeric hero fighting his troubles, bearing them bravely, talking of them sensibly, always glad to receive sympathy but never seeking it, and complaining when he could endure no longer. He never tried to comfort himself by sophistical reflections, but elevated thoughts were always his chief consolation. Conversation about great writers and thinkers always seemed to strengthen him.
Mr. Frothingham in his excellent memoir speaks of Wa.s.son as a self-consuming nature. Such a statement may apply to men like Schiller and John Sterling but it can hardly be said of one who lived to be sixty-four years old. If he had not been a remarkably patient, prudent, temperate and altogether practical man his disorder would have consumed him long before that time. It gave him no margin for wilfulness. Except when he spoke in public, his life was regulated with mathematical accuracy. There was something almost death-like in his self-control, and yet at times that also had to give way. If he had lived otherwise his case would have grown continually worse. The only recreation he had was working in his garden, and an occasional game of billiards. Four or five times a year he would go to a symphony concert, to hear Matthew Arnold lecture, or to see a distinguished actor. People who blamed him for not recovering his health knew not what they did. A Philadelphia doctor has made himself quite famous by curing women who have become nervous and debilitated from an unhealthy mode of life and drinking strong tea, but that is a very different thing from curing a true nervous disorder.
Sumner"s case was almost exceptional. He was cured in three years by Dr.
Brown-Sequard and made perfectly well; but he had temperament, climate, and everything that money might give, in his favor. A good many invalids have been helped by Brown-Sequard after other doctors had failed to help them. A st.u.r.dy New Hampshire farmer wounded his foot with an axe and was supposed to have split a nerve in it. The wound healed perfectly but he never was able to do a whole day"s work afterward. An oarsman in the international regatta of 1869 who was a man of enormous physical strength, deranged his nerves in some way and shot himself rather than endure the kind of life that was forced upon him.
The Wa.s.son family was of Ulster-Irish descent, or as it is often improperly called Scotch-Irish. There is little Scotch blood in Ulster however, and the Wa.s.sons claimed to be descended from the Lollard heretics who were driven out of England in Henry the Fifth"s time. John C. Calhoun belonged also to this cla.s.s of men, who are noted for their industry, sobriety, mental vigor and inflexible tenacity. The county of Ulster contains only about one-eighth of the population of Ireland and yet it pays forty-six per cent of the Irish taxes. David Wa.s.son, Senior, was trial justice for Brooksville, and was greatly dreaded by disorderly persons. He presided with dignity, and maintained better order than is often found in a country court-room. Wa.s.son himself was more than Saxon; he was a German in mind, body and character, though he never went to Germany till after he was fifty. He had a German figure, much like his father"s but broader; high square shoulders, a straight forehead and wide mouth. His features were strong and refined without being specially handsome. His brow was very fine and the eyes beneath it of so clear a blue as to be noticeable even at some distance.
There are men whom it is a delight to be with, whose "actions are as pleasant as roses," whose absence we regret as soon as they leave the room; but Wa.s.son was not one of these. He had no personal charm like Longfellow or Wendell Phillips. He was more of a gentleman than many who pride themselves on that distinction, and he had very good manners, but not a very good style. A noted sn.o.b of those days and parasite of distinguished people said that he could have no faith in the genius of a man who dressed like Mr. Wa.s.son. He would probably have dressed much better if he had possessed more abundant means, but I never saw him dressed in a way that anyone could rightfully complain of. His voice was pleasant but there was neither grace nor elegance in his speech. Usually it was direct, forcible, monotonous, with a very distinct enunciation; but sometimes it became drawling and wearisome with a peculiar accent on certain words which struck the ear too pointedly. This however was only among his friends; it did not happen in public. But all thought of human imperfections vanished as soon as he began to talk on one of his favorite topics; and there was a long list of them. You recognized that you were in the presence of a master mind, an a.n.a.lytical genius, who could take the world to pieces and put it together before your very eyes.
His conversation was better than his writing; in form, in freedom, and in warmth of feeling. He must have been the finest talker of his time.
Carlyle could match him perhaps in quite a different manner; but I have never heard of any others. Lowell was what would have been called in Shakespeare"s time a "witty and conceited gentleman" and John Weiss still more so; but neither of them could give the flow of original thought which came from Wa.s.son like a pure mountain stream. Neither were they such complete masters of their subject. Like Carlyle he required suitable auditors to bring him forth at his best: but while Carlyle was mightiest when, his hearers were opposed to him Wa.s.son always needed a somewhat sympathetic audience. If he saw unfriendly faces around him his ideas became congealed and his discourse controversial. At other times it was like following the course of a great unknown river, full of grand views and surprising discoveries. Nothing interests like imagination, or is more wholesome than good criticism. Yet he had no desire to be an autocrat of the drawing-room. He welcomed the opinions of others and encouraged free discussion. No man could be more ready to accept amendments to his propositions. Pride of opinion was nowhere to be found in him: he was only too modest and una.s.suming. If his friends did not agree with him he would reply with a mildly interrogative "Yes?" and then proceed as before. The finest rhetoric and even splendid oratory seemed poor compared with the plain statement of this unswerving seeker of the truth.
His knowledge was prodigious. He was a good linguist, a fine mathematician and versed in all the different schools of philosophy. He knew English literature as well as Macaulay; French and German as well as Carlyle. There seemed to be no period of history with which he was unacquainted. He remembered everything. If he had not read a book he had heard of it and had a pretty clear notion of what it contained. The only picture-gallery he ever visited was the small National Gallery in London, but from the few master-pieces he saw there he formed a quite correct judgment of the art of painting and could talk about any picture in an interesting way. He had also a good ear for music and divided with Lowell the honor among American literati of being able to appreciate music of the best quality. Besides this, his knowledge of practical affairs such as farming, gardening, housebuilding, fishing, sailing and other industrial arts was well-nigh endless also. How his head, which was not one of the largest, could contain it all I do not know. He could not recite the odes of Horace from memory; but he was able to repeat lengthy quotations from both English and foreign authors, and that without ever having committed them. In religious writings and controversies he was as much at home as a good lawyer in the statutes.
In his wanderings he had become acquainted with many curious, strange and original people, and had gained their confidence by his friendly, open-hearted manner. Perhaps he had learned as much from the great book of human nature as from all other books; so that his fund of information was fairly inexhaustible. He may almost be said to have contained the material for another Shakespeare.
In 1877 just after the Turco-Russian war had begun we found him one evening in a smoking-car on the railway, surrounded by a crowd of young men who were listening eagerly to his account of the various wars which had already taken place between Russia and Turkey, and the political significance of the present one. "A man who possesses such a fund within has need of little from without." He cannot be called poor so long as he has a roof to shelter him and a single suit of clothes. Yet the acquisition of knowledge was never with Wa.s.son for its own sake, though a good deal of advent.i.tious knowledge came to him incidentally, but always for the attainment of wisdom. He did not believe in the Emersonian doctrine of obtaining inspiration through nature. "That was not the way," he would say, "in which the great minds of history became what they were. If we are to do lasting work we must know what the world is made of. Emerson himself does not work in that way." He quoted Schiller as saying, "He who would do benefit to the age in which he lives must bathe deep in the spirit of cla.s.sical antiquity and then return to his own time to be in it, but not of it." That is, if we are to move the world with Archimedes" lever, we must have an historical basis to rest on. If a man ever had this it was Wa.s.son. He went back to the Vedas in his study of religion; to the German forests and the pyramids in his investigation of politics and history. It was this which gave his arguments such cogency and made his discourse so fresh, vigorous and original. Arguments, however, will only serve for reasonable people. The ram that b.u.t.ted the locomotive had to learn from experience.
His sincerity was absolute. A devoted friend says of him: "During twelve years of familiar intercourse and eight more of less frequent communication, I never knew him once to take on the slightest color of insincerity. For it is not only in the use of words but in the tone of voice, the expression of the face and the movement of the body that duplicity can be detected." Like Sumner, he would rather lose a case than make use of an unfair argument. This may seem to many a super-sensitive morality, but it was not so for the work which these men had to do. Wa.s.son believed in telling lies; to save life, to protect innocence, or even to prevent people from obtaining information which they had no right to. He considered it justifiable not only to deceive insane people, but also those demented creatures who do more mischief than lunatics because they cannot be shut up.
The more honor to him therefore for his truthfulness. In the case of a strong temperance woman who refused to allow a gentleman to marry her daughter unless he took the pledge, which he did with the deliberate intention of breaking it afterwards, he said, "I do not like to approve of his action, but she might just as well have held a pistol to his head." Neither did his own virtue make him uncharitable towards others.
He recognized how impossible it is for servants and many other people to be always veracious, and claimed that the impostures practised by Frederick in the Seven Years" War might be justified by the strait he was in and the importance of the matter in hand. The main thing was to do honest work. For careless, sleazy, or fraudulent work he had no patience. He was greatly amused at the story of Dr. Francia ordering an army contractor who had cheated the government of Paraguay to be promenaded for an hour under the gallows, and he wished that more of them might be treated in that manner. He thought the torrent of mendacity which accompanies our presidential elections must have a bad influence on the morals of the American people.
The question of veracity was once discussed at the Chestnut Street Club, and Emerson said that Desdemona"s lie seemed to him the best thing in the play of Oth.e.l.lo. But there is, as Plato remarks, a more insidious evil than the deception of others and that is deceiving oneself. To detect an intentional falsehood is not very difficult, but when people tell lies with perfect a.s.surance of their own sincerity the confusion that results is endless. The wisest of men are some times misled in this way. When we try to deceive others we have before us the danger of public exposure, while in self-deception we have only our own consciences to deal with. Neither do the two always go hand in hand.
There are persons who are formally careful in regard to the truth, and yet live in perpetual delusion. Wa.s.son recognized this danger and protected himself against it by a constant and severe self-examination.
He knew himself at least better than most, and if he erred anywhere it was in too moderate an opinion of his own value. He had visually a clear consciousness of what he was about, in spite of his lively imagination.
He was in fact an American Doctor Johnson: a large hearted, high minded, sympathetic and logical _man_; and it is only a pity that he had not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to converse on. As soon as he obtained a little money he wanted to help those who were in lack of it. His sister"s husband being out of work, he designed the model for a small yacht and gave him an order for it. He had known the depths of human misery, and could make his experience of benefit to his friends. Poignant grief for the loss of a relative I think he never knew, and yet he did not neglect his duty to those in affliction, little as such duty might be expected of him. He was not a humorist or wit, and his conversation was only saved from dryness by its elevated tone; but he had a quick appreciation of the wit of others, and would sometimes laugh as heartily as Carlyle"s professor in "Sartor Resartus." Ridicule and those books which are written to make people laugh were intolerable to him. He had a large stock of anecdotes at command, but he used them wisely and sparingly. He was refined as only a poet can be.
The general public, as Balzac says, judges only by results; and those who were themselves only practical in some specialty, or had made fortunes for themselves out of the gratuity of nature, were wont to look upon Wa.s.son as a visionary and unpractical person. To those who acted only from motives of self-interest he was a perpetual puzzle. Neither was he ignorant of this unfavorable opinion, for he could see through people almost as if they were gla.s.s, and he endured it with true Emersonian serenity. If they had known what he thought of them they would not have felt so very comfortable. He was sufficiently practical for the profession to which he belonged, though not so diplomatic as some of them are. He could be diplomatic enough on occasion, and knew how to preserve an impenetrable secrecy when necessity required. He was too sensitive, and too dead-in-earnest to make much of an orator, but he was an effective speaker, and if he had remained in the law he would no doubt have made a success of it, and very likely would have become a member of Congress.
His adventure with a drunken sea-captain, while crossing from England in a sailing vessel has become proverbial. He probably saved the ship, and the lives of all on board, for a terrific storm arose immediately afterwards, the worst he had ever known, such as only a sober captain could possibly have weathered. There never was a better seaman when he was himself, so Wa.s.son said. His judgment in regard to the investment of money, buying or selling a house, or in most of the small affairs of life, was excellent, and his advice in more serious matters so good that wise men might well have gone far to obtain it. Wherever he lived his house soon became conspicuous among all others for its refined air and tasteful appearance. In his half acre of a garden, he raised as fine fruit and vegetables as the most accomplished horticulturist, and even made wine from his own grapes equal to the best Californian. No man ever accomplished more with inadequate means. The interior of his house at West Medford had a pleasant style peculiarly its own. It reminded one of an old Dutch painting. In one of the last summers of his life he hybridized a seedling grape of large size and excellent flavor. He hoped to make a valuable property of this but his strength failed him too rapidly.
The house in West Medford was the only one he ever owned, and he gave a number of good reasons for purchasing it. It was cheap, and large enough for three people; there was a small garden with two fine apple-trees attached to it, and the salt water came almost to the foot of the garden. He had noticed also that the streets became dry after a rain more quickly in that portion of the town than elsewhere and judged from that it must be a healthy locality. He very quickly remodelled the place giving it the stamp of his own style and character.
He showed good judgment also in the education of his son George, now a marine-painter of well recognized merit. The boy inherited his father"s sincerity and artistic feeling but not his intellectual tastes. In many respects he was more like his mother. He did not take to his studies nor was he fond of games, but liked bathing and sailing. When he was thirteen his father remarked that he did not know what he should be able to do with him. Well-intending friends said, you should get him a place in a store so that he may be earning something to help his parents, but Wa.s.son replied: "No! I care too much for my boy to make a drudge of him for life, if it is possible for him to do better."
Soon after this George began to draw ships and naval engagements on the black-boards at school, and one of these was so good that the teacher gave an order to have it remain until his father could be called in to look at it. Wa.s.son took notice of this talent in the boy and encouraged it, watching its development as time went on. There were no schools of art in Boston then, and one reason for his going to Germany in 1872 was to obtain systematic instruction for him in drawing and painting.
Wa.s.son"s friends were now greatly discouraged. "What hope is there for him," they said, "in such a profession? It is not likely the boy is a genius, and who is going to purchase his pictures?" Yet his father persevered bravely in spite of many "outs" and temporary failures and finally lived to see the merit of his son admitted by those who were at first most sceptical of it. The son is now a fairly successful artist; especially noted for his skill in representing the motion of water and the att.i.tude of floating vessels.
He was never p.r.o.ne to think evil, but he considered it a mischievous habit to try to think better of people than they were--an injustice to character and virtue. "Treat people better than they deserve," he would say, "but see them as they are." His kindness of heart now and then led him into difficulties which those who care more for their reputation than anything else, would have avoided. During his Arctic expedition Bradford took a number of stereopticon-views from icebergs and other indigenous scenery with the intention of exhibiting them in public on his return. This he finally did, more as a private celebration than with a hope of making money from it, and requested Wa.s.son to a.s.sist him by giving an oral explanation of the pictures. Wa.s.son wanted to say, "That is not my business," but he felt under great obligation to Mr. Bradford for the partial recovery of his strength, and did not like to refuse. He had no conception however of what was in store for him. He sent to Bradford for a list of the different views and prepared an address suitable for the occasion; but when the performance took place Bradford either forgot this or lost his presence of mind, for he exhibited the pictures without order or regularity, so that Wa.s.son soon became confused and was able to give but a very poor account of them. This affair was the more vexatious because it was quite impossible to give any explanation of it.
Matthew Arnold distinguishes between Plato as a great writer and thinker and Aristotle, who is only a great thinker. In this respect Wa.s.son was more like Aristotle, though he resembled Plato again in being always an idealist. His writing shows the influence of his early studies in the law, and derives much of its virtue as well as some peculiarities from that source. It usually takes the form of an argument and is clear, logical and accurate, but also in style rather hard and dry. What it lacks is the pictorial element--what Carlyle possessed in such luxuriance. No law book ever was or could be written for entertainment, and those who expect to be amused by reading Wa.s.son or Aristotle had better look elsewhere. His essays are like hard wood. He worked hard in writing them and we must work also when we read them. Sometimes we meet with pa.s.sages in them of the purest, most limpid English, though these are more common in his later than his earlier writings. He said once, "I make no effort to please my readers, or even to obtain a graceful diction, I only try to say what I have to in the plainest manner." There is a decided charm in this perfect plainness, this absence of all decoration. One likes to think how old Vanderbilt had the bra.s.s and ornaments taken off the locomotives on the New York Central road.
Telling the truth was Wa.s.son"s business in life, and he turned neither to the right nor the left in doing it.
However, he did not reach this philosophy at once. His earlier work is marred slightly by a love of the grotesque, a sort of plough-boy rhetoric, which is ill-a.s.sorted with the elevated character of his ideas. He suffers also occasionally by an hair-splitting attempt to prove his point beyond the possibility of contradiction. In two or three of his essays there is an unsuccessful effort for liveliness, the result of complaints from his magazine editors, and now and then will appear an unconscious imitation of Carlyle; but what does it all amount to? We are inundated now-a-days with writing that is perfect, or nearly so, in form and yet brings no message to mankind. It pleases the understanding, but it does not satisfy the soul. It gives us no new ideas: in fact ideas are hateful to it.
"Time and s.p.a.ce conquering steam, And the light-out-speeding telegraph Bears nothing on its beam."
Wa.s.son"s writing compared with this is as an old-time stage-coach journey in which an interesting conversation, moral or political, is carried on by men like Fisher Ames and Rev. David Osgood, compared with the empty elegance and despatch of a modern railway-train. It is fresh because it is genuine; vigorous because it is manly; and original because it is true. He is more original than Carlyle, and so profound that it seems as if only a pearl-diver could follow him to such a depth.
Yet his natural element is so pure, calm and tranquil, that we easily accomplish what seems at first an impossible descent. In "Epic Philosophy" he has dealt with the problem of good and evil in a manner more n.o.ble and penetrating than was ever before attempted. In his essay on the "Genius of Woman" he enters on a new and important field of investigation, a virgin soil as yet untried. In "Unity," the greatest of his essays, he boldly climbs the Jacob"s ladder of philosophy and walks serene among the stars, grappling even with Infinity. He had achieved unity for himself; the one complete cosmopolitan mind of his time. In his highest flights he is never cold or inexorable, but always human, tender, and sympathetic. He loved the unkind, heedless world; life was wonderful to him. "What do I think of Wa.s.son?" said Professor James of Harvard, a few days after his death, "I look upon him as one of the great instructors of mankind."
It was complained by a critic of Emerson"s "Parna.s.sus" that only two of Wa.s.son"s poems were to be found in that collection; and Alcott, who had a keen scent for superior literature, once turned a visitor out of his study for denying the superiority of Wa.s.son"s poetry. Many of his sonnets are gems, unsurpa.s.sed in any language, and the one called "Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If there is any American poem which sings itself like "All"s well," it is Longfellow"s ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish in a volume. They were finally published _post mortem_ in what was, if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest sonnets, on "Silence" and "Wendell Phillips," were by mischance omitted, and a good many included that were either failures or written for some trifling occasion, and never intended for publication. As if to prevent all chance of popularity, the best pieces were placed at the close of the book and a long unfinished Hegelian poem at the beginning. Even the paper they were printed on was such as Wa.s.son especially disliked. It seems a pity that he should have been denied this little celebrity.
He received better justice from Mr. Frothingham, who has published an excellent memoir of his life and work together with a number of his essays,--a handsome volume well bound and printed. Yet one cannot help thinking that here also the author"s fame, as well as the interest of the general public, might have been better consuited by a more careful selection and a wider range of subjects. "Epic Philosophy" at least ought by no means to have been omitted, nor is there any example given of Wa.s.son"s fine literary criticism, in itself enough to have made a writer celebrated. His essay on Whittier is not only a just estimate, but seems also in its wise and tender application to include Whittier poetically, as the sea encircles an island. In this department of writing he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe; but with characteristic modesty he celebrated Lowell as the first of American critics. Wa.s.son"s book notices in the "Boston Commonwealth" were most interesting reading and contained much of his finest thought.
His famous Groveland address was not directed against a faith in the divinity of Christ, for he held that belief in profound respect, as signifying the divine origin and mission of mankind. He considered every spiritually gifted person to be the result of an immaculate conception.
At the close of the essay on "Unity" he says:
"Verily, I believe that he who was born at Bethlehem, that majestic witness for the soul, was Messias, Christ, one sent from the Father; that the eternal G.o.dhood concurred in the production of his being; that the consciousness of a divine inhabitation lived in his heart."
It was no new evil he complained of, but one older than the brazen serpent in the wilderness. It might be called the fossilization of religious ideas. He called to his support the testimony of a witness whose orthodoxy has never been questioned. This was the poet Milton, who says:
"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the a.s.sembly so determine, without other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."
Then Wa.s.son adds: "And it is no more than a different application of this aphorism to say that one may be an idolater in the reverence of that which is truly venerable; for if he render it homage only in blind conformity to custom, and in implicit submission to the discipline of ancient use and wont, though the object be worthy, yet his worship is an idolatry." It is indeed a type of idolatry which becomes continually more subtle and dangerous with the progress of civilization.
In politics Wa.s.son was a republican without being a democrat. He hailed the advent of the republican party in 1856 as indicating an improvement in our political consciousness. Democracy, he said, led to political selfishness and disintegration. He pointed out many years before Von Holst that the secession of the southern states was the legitimate fruit of democratic principles. He thought that suffrage ought not to be a right, but a privilege, the privilege of good citizenship. He was also the first to argue in favor of civil-service reform, and a selection of officials by compet.i.tive examination. He might have found sufficient arguments from experience, but he was not content with that. He went back to the first principles of political science as indicated in the social organization of mankind. He laid down the rule that society is not more for the benefit of the individual than the individual for the benefit of society; and our last war sufficiently proved the truth of this. When he first brought forward these arguments at the Boston Radical Club in 1879 he was met by a storm of opposition and almost personal invective. One reason for this was that a large portion of his audience was composed of what is sometimes called strong-minded women, who fully expected to acquire the right of suffrage on democratic principles. His hearers had been accustomed to think of a republic and a democracy as one and the same thing, and they could not understand Wa.s.son at all. They concluded that he must be a monarchist, an emissary of Bismarck. They had no arguments to oppose him with, for it was a subject they had never reflected upon; so they complained that he was illiberal, re-actionary, and lacked faith in human nature. Since they were in a numerical majority they thought they had the best of the discussion, but the most impartial of his listeners did not find it so.
Louisa Alcott said once after a lively discussion, in her decisive manner, "I like Mr. Wa.s.son, and I admire the way in which he fights against odds." His views on politics were similar to those held by Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and most of the founders of the Const.i.tution, as also by all the great minds of history, by Aristotle, Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Leibnitz. Wa.s.son however did not look to the past, but wished to improve in a rational manner on what we already have. He considered woman suffrage as a political monstrosity, and considered it even more dangerous in its tendencies than socialism.
The true reward of a man of genius lies not in his fame but in his influence. His celebrity is of more value to those who receive the rich gifts of his intellect than to himself. Wa.s.son"s direct influence during his life was limited to a very small circle; but who can tell how far it extended indirectly beyond this? To those who knew him the thought of this patient, indomitable truth-seeking hero was like an elixir of moral and spiritual vitality. So the orders of a field-marshal are carried to the generals of division, and from these pa.s.s onward till every private-soldier feels the impulse of a single will. Perhaps the time will come when he will be better appreciated. The future historian of our literature cannot well neglect so independent and original a thinker, and perhaps Americans of the next century may find him more congenial to their modes of thought than do those of the present era. If he lives at all, it is likely he will outlive every other writer of his time. One may read Plato or Bacon or Goethe, and then return to Wa.s.son and still find something new and instructive in his essays--something we did not know before.
WENDELL PHILLIPS
If Hawthorne was the antipodes of Emerson, Wendell Phillips was of Wa.s.son. One might form a proportion out of these four, in which Phillips and Hawthorne would be the extremes, and Emerson and Wa.s.son the mean terms. He was, in his way, as perfect an artist as Hawthorne, while he differed from him as the sea does from the land. He was more like Emerson in his mental methods, and was a man of action. While he took the same interest in public affairs as Wa.s.son, the slavery question was the only point on which the two could ever agree. One was an ardent and unreflecting revolutionist; the other a systematic thinker and conservative supporter of the general order of affairs.
When in 1870 he was candidate for governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, on a hopeless ticket, and was taunted with being ambitious, he proudly replied, "Born of six generations of Yankees, I knew the way to office and turned my back on it thirty years ago." His family was one of the earliest and most generally respected in New England; and at one time was influential and flourishing, but now nearly extinct. Rev. George Phillips of Rainham in Norfolk, England, was a graduate of Cambridge University, and entered the Church of England, but soon became a dissenter, and embarked with Governor Winthrop on the ship Arabella, in 1630, for the western world. He was the first minister at Watertown; a position in those days as important as the presidency of a trunk line is in our own. Cotton Mather and the early writers speak of him almost as the founder of the Congregational Church in New England; and he and his descendants were all cultivated gentlemen. Two of his great-grandsons founded the preparatory academies at Andover and Exeter, called by that name. John Phillips, the father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard in 1788. He was the president of the Ma.s.sachusetts senate for one term, and the first mayor of Boston, distinctly so called. His wife was a Miss Sarah Walley of Brookline, and Wendell himself was their eighth child, born November 29th, 1811--a year memorable for the appearance of a comet with six tails.
During his boyhood, the family lived in a large mansion house in Old Cambridge, which has since been occupied by Professor Andrews Norton and his son. In a large and amiable household, with a mother for whom he always showed the deepest respect, his earlier years must have been happy much beyond the lot of ordinary mortals. He was fitted for college at the Boston Latin School, where he was distinguished both for scholarship, faultless behavior, and fine declamations. Charles Sumner was his companion there, as well as in college and at the law-school.