Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/777

Rh AMERICAN LITERATURE 733 find that tlie solitude they desired charms only by its contrast with the civilisation they have left; as the beauty of the sea is its contrast with the shore. But this wander ing impulse, strong in the ancient Greek and the modern English race, has colonised and civilised the world : it is especially strong in the Anglo-American. The very restless ness which makes his cities so noisy bid him long for a remoter rest, and this longing acts in conjunction with more material demands to drive him across the Mississippi, and pioneer the way to the Pacific. erson. 3. TRANSCENDENTAL AND ECCENTRIC SCHOOL. The freshness which breathes through Mr Emerson s essays reappears in his poems : but they are seldom so successful as his prose. Apart from the obscurity of their matter, which is great for he has chosen verse as the vehicle of his remoter mysticism they are defaced by frequent mannerisms and incongruities : most of them are wanting in melody, many in syntax. The writer seems to trust to providence for his rhymes, and changes his metres at will. Nevertheless, his genius has a lyric side, and the imagina tive sympathy with nature which makes his prose poetical, prevents his verse, even when awkward, from becoming prosaic. The rippling of rivers, the sough of the pine, the murmur of the harvest, and the whirr of insects per vade and give life to his descriptions. A morning light is thrown over his happiest pages, and some of his quieter reflective pictures are not unworthy of the author of the &quot; Excursion.&quot; Interleaved between the gold-dust of Alex andrian rhapsody there are pieces that speak of a love that is neither &quot;initial,&quot; daemonic,&quot; nor &quot;celestial,&quot; but human. Of these, &quot; The Dirge,&quot; &quot; In Memoriam,&quot; &quot; The Farewell,&quot; the lines &quot; To J. W,&quot; &quot; To Ellen,&quot; and the &quot;Threnody,&quot; are the most conspicuous. The prevailing tone of the greater part of Emerson s poetry is cheerful. Unlike those of Bryant, his &quot;woodnotes&quot; are those of the spring. Thousand minstrels wake within me, Our music s on the hills,&quot; is the perpetual refrain of the exulting worshipper of nature. His Hues entitled &quot; Good-bye, proud World,&quot; breathe the hermit-like spirit of Quarles or Andrew Mar- veil; but the Puritanism of older days has here assumed another shape. There are other pieces relating to the intercourse of men with each other showing a keen obser vation of common life and sound worldly wisdom, in neat quatrains and a few vigorous political songs. The &quot;Hymn on Concord Monument&quot; is strong and dignified, while the verses relating to the civil war address the nation in forcible terms both of warning and encouragement. Those prac tical manifestoes are the more striking from the fact that they are printed by the side of others proclaiming in tran scendental enigmas the emptiness of transitory things, the fixity of fate, and the doctrine of the absorption of the individual in the infinite.
 * ritman. Mr Emerson was one of the first to praise the extra

ordinary rhapsodies of Mr Walt Whitman, which have since attracted too much attention to be passed without notice. But although this author on varioas occasions displays an uncouth power, his success is in the main owing to the love of novelty, wildness, and even of ab surdity, which has infected a considerable class of critics and readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Whitman does not write in verse ; he discards not only rhyme, but all ordinaiy rhythm. What there is of the latter seems to come by accident in lines of various length, and arranged either on no principle or on one which we have failed to discover. &quot; The Leaves of Grass&quot; is redeemed by a few grand descriptive passages from absolute barbarism both of manner and matter. It is a glorification of nature in her most unabashed forms, an audacious protest against all that civilisation has done to raise men above the savage state. The &quot; Dram Taps,&quot; a set of generally vigorous pictures of the war, are less objectionable; the dirge on Lincoln in particular has many qualities of a noble elegy, the imagery is rich though sometimes fantastic, and there is here and there a wild music in the composition, but it is still defaced by pedantic words and unjustifiable, because unnecessary, novelties of phrase. 4. PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POETRY. The assertion of Henri Beyle, that politics are like a stone tied round the neck of literature, must be accepted with a reservation; for if the songs make the la-ws, the battles often make the songs of a nation. The growth of a history on their own soil is, in the minds of most Americans, a requisite to the full development of national art. English history inade quately supplies the desired background, for they cannot associate it with what they see around them. Memories of the Eevolution war have, during this century, been recalled in some stirring verses, as &quot; Paul Kevere s Hide,&quot; in Mr Longfellow s &quot; Wayside Inn;&quot; but the most effective national poetry has been suggested by more recent events. &amp;gt; The &quot; Biglow Papers,&quot; a series of metrical pamphlets, born Lowell. of the last great social and political struggle of the New World, are among the most original contributions to its literature. Mr James Russell Lowell is the author of several volumes of miscellaneous verse. His earlier efforts, buoyant and vigorous, but bearing the marks of haste, display more impetuosity than power. His genius every where appears in contrast to Bryant s. Far from shrinking into solitary places, he loves great cities and their cries, and sets them to rhyme with hearty good-will. When he goes into the country, it is on a &quot; day in June,&quot; to have his blood sent faster through his veins by the spring morning, and not to dream among the autumn woods of &quot; Thanatopsis.&quot; His &quot; Allegra,&quot; &quot; Fountain,&quot; and &quot; Indian Summer Reverie,&quot; are marked by the same jubilant energy and the same apparent carelessness. Mr Lowell s diffuse- ness is only half redeemed by his fluency. He writes currente calamo; and, unchecked by any spirit of reverence, contemns what he is pleased to call &quot; the blaspheming past&quot; and the &quot;dotard Orient.&quot; In dealing with the forms of nature around him, he shows a keen eye and a fine sense of analogies : his images drawn from history are less successful. Few Americans know how to use the classics with reticence, and Mr Lowell s pages are infected with schoolboy commonplaces. His &quot; Ode to Freedom,&quot; &quot; The Present Crisis,&quot; with other semi-political and social pieces, are noble and stirring platform verse, but they will not bear analysis. His &quot; Irene,&quot; &quot; Requiem,&quot; and &quot; Beg gar Bard&quot; are marked by genuine sentiment and true pathos. But the prevailing flaw of his earlier and later serious poems as &quot; The Cathedral,&quot; and &quot; Under the Willows,&quot; is the confusion of inspiration with aspiration. In the &quot; Fable for Critics,&quot; which may be compared with Leigh Hunt s &quot; Feast of the Poets,&quot; he breaks ground on the field in which he has found his harvest. The merit of this piece lies in its candour and the general fairness of its criticisms, in the course of which &quot; the whole tuneful herd&quot; of American authors are reviewed with good-humoured banter. In several instances, as in the following, he shows himself alive to the defects which he shares with the majority of his countrymen &quot;Neal wants balance ; he throws his mind always too far, And whisks out flocks of comets and never a star ; He has so much muscle, and longs so to show it, That he strips himself naked to prove he s a poet. &quot; The author s style is rapid and sparkling; his points fol low one another like the sparks from a Leyden jar; his love of freedom and truth and detestation of pretence are always admirable; but his earlier poems are constantly defaced by violences.