Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 by Various

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Now I tell you a poem must be kept _and used_, like a meerschaum, or a
violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;--the more porous
it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of
absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,--its
tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be
gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from
ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a
poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every
thought and image our being can penetrate.

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect
anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from
the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than
fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers
to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them
thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the
instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule
that had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the
wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of
fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each
word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than
in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened
them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the poem be repeated
aloud and murmured over in the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and
at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity
that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying
out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too,
how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in
that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its
hundredth birthday,--(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)--the sap is
pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera
cheated:--

"Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno
Inter minora sidera,
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum
In verba jurubas mea."

Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now
I tell you that every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it
a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the
"Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses,
to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius
Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while
the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my performances, and
that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while.

[There was silence for a brief space, after my somewhat elaborate
exposition of these self-evident analogies. Presently _a person_ turned
towards me--I do not choose to designate the individual--and said that
he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good "sahtisfahction."--I
had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred
to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually
accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain
relish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of
enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought
it a little below that blood-heat standard which a man's breath ought to
have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable
opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.]

----There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix
a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him.
Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in
themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your
French servant has _devalise_ your premises and got caught. _Excusez_,
says the _sergent-de-ville_, as he politely relieves him of his upper
garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders
enough,--a little marked,--traces of smallpox, perhaps,--but
white....._Crac!_ from the _sergent-de-ville's_ broad palm on the white
shoulder! Now look! _Vogue la galere!_ Out comes the big red V--mark of
the hot iron;--he had blistered it out pretty nearly,--hadn't he?--the
old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don't! What
if he has got something like this? nobody supposes I _invented_ such a
story.]

My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I
told you I had owned,--for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand
here, I am one that has been driven in his "kerridge,"--not using that
term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel
go-cart that has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled
vehicle _with a pole_,--my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He
retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have
done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he
recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really
been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful
country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!" If he
has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its
ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and
his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be.

[I was all the time preparing for my grand _coup_, you understand; but
I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,--always in
illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was a
legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English
coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons,
that would not let them go,--on the contrary, insisted on their staying,
and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or as
Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-page, and, having
divested them of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment,
indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the same on the
church-door as we do the banns of marriage, _in terrorem_.

[There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I
looked at our landlady, I saw that "the water stood in her eyes," as it
did in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spider, and
that the school-mistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation,
as you remember.]

That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story,--said the young fellow whom
they call John. I abstained from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and
continued.

Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing and beautifying an
old Saxon church in a certain English village, and among other things
thought the doors should be attended to. One of them particularly, the
front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it would
be all the better for scraping. There happened to be a microscopist in
the village who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into his
head to examine the crust on this door. There was no mistake about it;
it was a genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head
pattern,--a real _cutis humarca_, stripped from some old Scandinavian
filibuster,--and the legend was true.

My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and financial
question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar
document. Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name and title
burned a modest lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all hours of
the night the slightest favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who
had freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates,
following a moth-like impulse very natural under the circumstances,
dashed his fist at the light and quenched the meek luminary,--breaking
through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to
go into _minutiae_ at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go
through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle,
to say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a
sausage-machine without looking the worse for it. The Professor gathered
up the fragments of glass, and with them certain very minute but
entirely satisfactory documents which would have identified and hanged
any rogue in Christendom who had parted with them.--The historical
question, _Who did it_? and the financial question, _Who paid for it_?
were both settled before the new lamp was lighted the next evening.

You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, touching our lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred honor, may be reached by means of very
insignificant premises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of
speech; a movement or a phrase often tells you all you want to know
about a person. Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly pronounced
haaelth)--instead of, How do you do? or, How are you? Or calling your
little dark entry a "hall," and your old rickety one-horse wagon a
"kerridge." Or telling a person who has been trying to please you that
he has given you pretty good "sahtisfahction." Or saying that you
"remember of" such a thing, or that you have been "stoppin'" at Deacon
Somebody's,--and other such expressions. One of my friends had a little
marble statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house,--bow,
arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region,
looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that
was a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat
voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief
question!

[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in
the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my
fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual at
whose door it lay.]

That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, _Ex pede
Herculem_. He might as well have said, "From a peck of apples you may
judge of the barrel." _Ex_ PEDE, to be sure! Read, instead, _Ex ungue
minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem, matrem, avos et proavos,
filios, nepotes et pronepotes!_ Talk to me about your [Greek: dos pou
sto]! Tell me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a tooth,
or Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single
scale! As the "O" revealed Giotto,--as the one word "moi" betrayed the
Stratford-atte-Bowe-taught Anglais,--so all a man's antecedents and
possibilities are summed up in a single utterance which gives at once
the gauge of his education and his mental organization.

Possibilities, Sir?--said the divinity-student; can't a man who says
_Haoew?_ arrive at distinction?

Sir,--I replied,--in a republic all things are possible. But the man
_with a future_ has almost of necessity sense enough to see that any
odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't Sidney
Smith say that a public man in England never gets over a false quantity
uttered in early life? _Our_ public men are in little danger of this
fatal misstep, as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin into
their speeches,--for good and sufficient reasons. But they are bound to
speak decent English,--unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners,
like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on
Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows that have quite as many
on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all
particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made mistakes enough in
conversation and print. "Don't" for doesn't,--base misspelling of Clos
Vougeot, (I wish I saw the label on the bottle a little oftener,)--and
I don't know how many more. I never find them out until they are
stereotyped, and then I think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt
I shall make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, and
remember them all before another. How one does tremble with rage at his
own intense momentary stupidity about things he knows perfectly well,
and to think how he lays himself open to the impertinences of the
_captatores verborum_, those useful but humble scavengers of the
language, whose business it is to pick up what might offend or injure,
and remove it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I don't want to
speak too slightingly of these verbal critics;--how can I, who am so
fond of talking about errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is
a difference between those clerical blunders which almost every man
commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness or meanness of
speech which is unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that wears
silk or broadcloth.

[I write down the above remarks this morning, January 26th, making this
record of the date that nobody may think it was written in wrath, on
account of any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of any
individual _scarabaeus grammaticus_.]

----I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with anything I say at this
table when it is repeated? I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very
certain that I had said nothing of much significance, if they did not.

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone,
which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the
grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its
edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told
you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your
foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife
turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this
time"? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant
surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not
suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members
produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened
down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and
ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer,
but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature
never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern
bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern live timekeepers
to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments
sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless,
slug-like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in their pulpy
stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner
is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this
compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them
that enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush
round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in
a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by
sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green
where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle
had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the
broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as
the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their
glorified being.

----The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very
familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I
sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather
strong on the butterflies.

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images,--the butterfly
as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human
nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes that
are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the
weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is
whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter
whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year
stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain
blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the
sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of
a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and
color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the
beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a
poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been
lifted.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a
terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that
dwells under it.

----Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of
somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably
begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man
can have that he has said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was
disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. "I think I have not
been attacked enough for it," he said;--"attack is the reaction; I never
think I have hit hard unless it rebounds."

----If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, would I reply? Not I. Do
you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago
called _the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?_

Don't know what that means?--Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if
you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem,
and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the
same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise
men in the same way,--_and the fools know it._

----No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are
about a dozen phrases that all come tumbling along together, like the
tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in
one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one,
you get the whole lot.

What are they?--Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and longitude.
Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them
in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise,
brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious
scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a
dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous,
black-hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.

What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?--Well,
I should say a set of influences something like these:--1st.
Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters;
in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criticism. I
believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign
logic for regulating public opinion--which means commonly the opinion
of half a dozen of the critical gentry--is the following: _Major
proposition._ Oysters _au naturel. Minor proposition._ The same
"scalloped." _Conclusion._ That ---- (here insert entertainer's name) is
clever, witty, wise, brilliant,--and the rest.

----No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has oysters, and another
epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread" on
linen, and the other on paper,--that is all. Don't you think you and I
should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line? I am sure
I couldn't resist the softening influences of hospitality. I don't like
to dine out, you know,--I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady
looked radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rustling movement of
satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's
salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it
palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I
suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a
string of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most
of us,--not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its
sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the
virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic,
because I know I could not always tell it. I might write a criticism of
a book that happened to please me; that is another matter.

----Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of
tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two
grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a
youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his
left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on
each is written in letters of gold--TRUTH. The spheres are veined and
streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the
light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon
every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they
are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most
convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible
impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at
all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right
side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things which
roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get
out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to
find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns--thus we
learn--to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold
fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then comes Timidity, and
after her Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting
that truth must _roll_ or nobody can do anything with it; and so the
first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the
third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and smooth and polish the
snow-white cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by
use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that she was pleased with
this, and that she would read it to her little flock the next day. But
she should tell the children, she said, that there were better reasons
for truth than could be found in mere experience of its convenience and
the inconvenience of lying.

Yes,--I said,--but education always begins through the senses, and works
up to the idea of absolute right and wrong. The first thing
the child has to learn about this matter is, that lying is
unprofitable,--afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity of
the universe.

----Do I think that the particular form of lying often seen in
newspapers, under the title, "From our Foreign Correspondent," does any
harm?--Why, no,--I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't really
deceive people any more than the "Arabian Nights" or "Gulliver's
Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and
mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so
as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece
out of one of the papers, the other day, that contains a number of
improbabilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get
it for you, if you would like to hear it.--Ah, this is it; it is headed

"OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE.

"This island is now the property of the Stamford family,--having
been won, it is said, in a raffle, by Sir ---- Stamford, during the
stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this
gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions
(unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and Queries.'
This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a
large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for
their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm
weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The
summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably cold; but
this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason,
the mercury in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern
regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter.

"The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper tree
and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, a
benevolent society was organized in London during the last century for
supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an addition to that
delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr. D.P.] It is said, however
that, as the oysters were of the kind called _natives_ in England, the
natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct refused to touch
them, and confined themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in
which they were brought over. This information was received from one
of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceedingly fond of
missionaries. He is said also to be very skilful in the _cuisine_
peculiar to the island.

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