The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 46

[I subjoin here another pa.s.sage from my before-mentioned discourse.

'Wonderful, to him that has eyes to see it rightly, is the newspaper. To me, for example, sitting on the critical front bench of the pit, in my study here in Jaalam, the advent of my weekly journal is as that of a strolling theatre, or rather of a puppet-show, on whose stage, narrow as it is, the tragedy, comedy, and farce of life are played in little.

Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown-paper wrapper!

'Hither, to my obscure corner, by wind or steam, on horseback or dromedary-back, in the pouch of the Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out anything distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on the coast of England. That other, in the gray surtout and c.o.c.ked hat, is Napoleon Bonaparte Smith, a.s.suring France that she need apprehend no interference from him in the present alarming juncture. At that spot, where you seem to see a speck of something in motion, is an immense ma.s.s-meeting. Look sharper, and you will see a mite brandis.h.i.+ng his mandibles in an excited manner. That is the great Mr. Soandso, defining his position amid tumultuous and irrepressible cheers. That infinitesimal creature, upon whom some score of others, as minute as he, are gazing in open-mouthed admiration, is a famous philosopher, expounding to a select audience their capacity for the Infinite. That scarce discernible pufflet of smoke and dust is a revolution. That speck there is a reformer, just arranging the lever with which he is to move the world. And lo, there creeps forward the shadow of a skeleton that blows one breath between its grinning teeth, and all our distinguished actors are whisked off the slippery stage into the dark Beyond.

'Yes, the little show-box has its solemner suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-gla.s.s in the corner while he s.h.i.+fts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand s.n.a.t.c.hes back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for spectator also.

'Think of it: for three dollars a year I buy a season-ticket to this great Globe Theatre, for which G.o.d would write the dramas (only that we like farces, spectacles, and the tragedies of Apollyon better), whose scene-s.h.i.+fter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.

'Such thoughts will occur to me sometimes as I am tearing off the wrapper of my newspaper. Then suddenly that otherwise too often vacant sheet becomes invested for me with a strange kind of awe. Look! deaths and marriages, notices of inventions, discoveries, and books, lists of promotions, of killed, wounded, and missing, news of fires, accidents, of sudden wealth and as sudden poverty;--I hold in my hand the ends of myriad invisible electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes, and despairs of as many men and women everywhere. So that upon that mood of mind which seems to isolate me from mankind as a spectator of their puppet-pranks, another supervenes, in which I feel that I, too, unknown and unheard of, am yet of some import to my fellows. For, through my newspaper here, do not families take pains to send me, an entire stranger, news of a death among them?

Are not here two who would have me know of their marriage? And, strangest of all, is not this singular person anxious to have me informed that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present continue miraculous (even if for a moment discerned as such). We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, (Acts x. 11, 12) in which a vision was let down to me from Heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter for a beggar's broken victuals.'--H.W.]

No. VII

A LETTER

FROM A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN ANSWER TO SUTTIN QUESTIONS PROPOSED BY MR. HOSEA BIGLOW, INCLOSED IN A NOTE FROM MR. BIGLOW TO S.H.

GAY, ESQ., EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-SLAVERY STANDARD

[Curiosity may be said to be the quality which preeminently distinguishes and segregates man from the lower animals. As we trace the scale of animated nature downward, we find this faculty (as it may truly he called) of the mind diminished in the savage, and wellnigh extinct in the brute. The first object which civilized man proposes to himself I take to be the finding out whatsoever he can concerning his neighbors.

_Nihil humanum a me alienum puto;_ I am curious about even John Smith.

The desire next in strength to this (an opposite pole, indeed, of the same magnet) is that of communicating the unintelligence we have carefully picked up.

Men in general may be divided into the inquisitive and the communicative. To the first cla.s.s belong Peeping Toms, eaves-droppers, navel-contemplating Brahmins, metaphysicians, travellers, Empedocleses, spies, the various societies for promoting Rhinothism, Columbuses, Yankees, discoverers, and men of science, who present themselves to the mind as so many marks of interrogation wandering up and down the world, or sitting in studies and laboratories. The second cla.s.s I should again subdivide into four. In the first subdivision I would rank those who have an itch to tell us about themselves,--as keepers of diaries, insignificant persons generally, Montaignes, Horace Walpoles, autobiographers, poets. The second includes those who are anxious to impart information concerning other people,--as historians, barbers, and such. To the third belong those who labor to give us intelligence about nothing at all,--as novelists, political orators, the large majority of authors, preachers, lecturers, and the like. In the fourth come those who are communicative from motives of public benevolence,--as finders of mares'-nests and bringers of ill news. Each of us two-legged fowls without feathers embraces all these subdivisions in himself to a greater or less degree, for none of us so much as lays an egg, or incubates a chalk one, but straightway the whole barnyard shall know it by our cackle or our cluck. _Omnibus hoc vitium est_. There are different grades in all these cla.s.ses. One will turn his telescope toward a back-yard, another toward Ura.n.u.s; one will tell you that he dined with Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may be considered as belonging to the first grand division, inasmuch as they all seem equally desirous of discovering the mote in their neighbor's eye.

To one or another of these species every human being may safely be referred. I think it beyond a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human.

I conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which, sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no means of conveying back to this world the sc.r.a.ps of news they have picked up in that. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every question, the great law of _give and take_ runs through all nature, and if we see a hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read in every face I meet a standing advertis.e.m.e.nt of information wanted in regard to A.B., or that the friends of C.D. can hear something to his disadvantage by application to such a one.

It was to gratify the two great pa.s.sions of asking and answering that epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this usurped t.i.tle epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds.

First, there are those which are not letters at all--as letters-patent, letters dismissory, letters enclosing bills, letters of administration, Pliny's letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St.

Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), letters from abroad, from sons in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and letters generally, which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are real letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howell, Lamb, D.Y., the first letters from children (printed in staggering capitals), Letters from New York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for the sake of the writer or the thing written. I have read also letters from Europe by a gentleman named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which I hope to see collected for the benefit of the curious. There are, besides, letters addressed to posterity,--as epitaphs, for example, written for their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately become possessed of the names of several great conquerors and kings of kings, hitherto unheard of and still unp.r.o.nounceable, but valuable to the student of the entirely dark ages. The letter of our Saviour to King Abgarus, that which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the year of grace 755, that of the Virgin to the magistrates of Messina, that of the Sanhedrim of Toledo to Annas and Caiaphas, A.D. 35, that of Galeazzo Sforza's spirit to his brother Lodovico, that of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus to the D----l, and that of this last-mentioned active police-magistrate to a nun of Girgenti, I would place in a cla.s.s by themselves, as also the letters of candidates, concerning which I shall dilate more fully in a note at the end of the following poem. At present _sat prata biberunt_. Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are all either square or oblong, to which general figures circular letters and round-robins also conform themselves.--H.W.]

Deer Sir its gut to be the fashun now to rite letters to the candid 8s and i wus chose at a publick Meetin in Jaalam to du wut wus nessary fur that town. i writ to 271 ginerals and gut ansers to 209. tha air called candid 8s but I don't see nothin candid about 'em. this here 1 wich I send wus thought satty's factory. I dunno as it's ushle to print Poscrips, but as all the ansers I got hed the saim, I sposed it wus best. times has gretly changed. Formaly to knock a man into a c.o.c.ked hat wus to use him up, but now it ony gives him a chance fur the cheef madgustracy.--H.B.

Dear Sir,--You wish to know my notions On sartin pints thet rile the land; There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns Ez bein' mum or underhand; I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur Thet blurts right out wut's in his head.

An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, It is a nose thet wunt be led.

So, to begin at the beginnin'

An' come direcly to the pint, 10 I think the country's underpinnin'

Is some consid'ble out o' jint; I aint agoin' to try your patience By tellin' who done this or thet, I don't make no insinooations, I jest let on I smell a rat.

Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, But, ef the public think I'm wrong, I wunt deny but wut I be so,-- An' fact, it don't smell very strong; 20 My mind's tu fair to lose its balance An' say wich party hez most sense; There may be folks o' greater talence Thet can't set stiddier on the fence.

I'm an eclectic; ez to choosin'

'Twixt this an' thet, I'm plaguy lawth; I leave a side thet looks like losin', But (wile there's doubt) I stick to both; I stan' upon the Const.i.tution, Ez preudunt statesman say, who've planned 30 A way to git the most profusion O' chances ez to _ware_ they'll stand.

Ez fer the war, I go agin it,-- I mean to say I kind o' du,-- Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it, The best way wuz to fight it thru'; Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart,-- But civlyzation _doos_ git forrid 39 Sometimes upon a powder-cart.

About thet darned Proviso matter I never hed a grain o' doubt.

Nor I aint one my sense to scatter So 'st no one couldn't pick it out; My love fer North an' South is equil, So I'll jest answer plump an' frank, No matter wut may be the sequil,-- Yes, Sir, I _am_ agin a Bank.

Ez to the answerin' o' questions, I'm an off ox at bein' druv, 50 Though I ain't one thet ary test shuns 'll give our folks a helpin' shove; Kind o' permiscoous I go it Fer the holl country, an' the ground I take, ez nigh ez I can show it, Is pooty gen'ally all round.

I don't appruve o' givin' pledges; You'd ough' to leave a feller free, An' not go knockin' out the wedges To ketch his fingers in the tree; Pledges air awfle breachy cattle 61 Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out,-- Ez long 'z the people git their rattle, Wut is there fer 'em to grout about?

Ez to the slaves, there's no confusion In _my_ idees consarnin' them,-- _I_ think they air an Inst.i.tution, A sort of--yes, jest so,--ahem: Do _I_ own any? Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; 70 All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.

Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, I'm jest a canderdate, in short; Thet's fair an' square an' parpendicler But, ef the Public cares a fig To hev me an'thin' in particler, Wy, I'm a kind o' peri-Wig. 80

P.S.

Ez we're a sort o' privateerin', O' course, you know, it's sheer an' sheer, An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin'

I'll mention in _your_ privit ear; Ef you git _me_ inside the White House, Your head with ile I'll kin' o' 'nint By gittin' _you_ inside the Lighthouse Down to the eend o' Jaalam Pint.

An' ez the North hez took to brustlin'

At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, 90 I'll tell ye wut'll save all tusslin'

An' give our side a harnsome boost,-- Tell 'em thet on the Slavery question I'm RIGHT, although to speak I'm lawth; This gives you a safe pint to rest on, An' leaves me frontin' South by North.

[And now of epistles candidatial, which are of two kinds,--namely, letters of acceptance, and letters definitive of position. Our republic, on the eve of an election, may safely enough be called a republic of letters. Epistolary composition becomes then an epidemic, which seizes one candidate after another, not seldom cutting short the thread of political life. It has come to such a pa.s.s, that a party dreads less the attacks of its opponents than a letter from its candidate. _Litera scripta manet_, and it will go hard if something bad cannot be made of it. General Harrison, it is well understood, was surrounded, during his candidacy, with the _cordon sanitaire_ of a vigilance committee. No prisoner in Spielberg was ever more cautiously deprived of writing materials. The soot was sc.r.a.ped carefully from the chimney-places; outposts of expert rifle-shooters rendered it sure death for any goose (who came clad in feathers) to approach within a certain limited distance of North Bend; and all domestic fowls about the premises were reduced to the condition of Plato's original man. By these precautions the General was saved. _Parva componere magnis_, I remember, that, when party-spirit once ran high among my people, upon occasion of the choice of a new deacon, I, having my preferences, yet not caring too openly to express them, made use of an innocent fraud to bring about that result which I deemed most desirable. My stratagem was no other than the throwing a copy of the Complete Letter-Writer in the way of the candidate whom I wished to defeat. He caught the infection, and addressed a short note to his const.i.tuents, in which the opposite party detected so many and so grave improprieties (he had modelled it upon the letter of a young lady accepting a proposal of marriage), that he not only lost his election, but, falling under a suspicion of Sabellianism and I know not what (the widow Endive a.s.sured me that he was a Paralipomenon, to her certain knowledge), was forced to leave the town.

Thus it is that the letter killeth.

The object which candidates propose to themselves in writing is to convey no meaning at all. And here is a quite unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are p.r.o.ne to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. _Omne ignotum pro mirifico_. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Hammon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I so much as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, related to have written six thousand books on the single subject of grammar, a topic rendered only more tenebrific by the labors of his successors, and which seems still to possess an attraction for authors in proportion as they can make nothing of it. A singular loadstone for theologians, also, is the Beast in the Apocalypse, whereof, in the course of my studies, I have noted two hundred and three several interpretations, each lethiferal to all the rest. _Non nostrum est tantas componere lites_, yet I have myself ventured upon a two hundred and fourth, which I embodied in a discourse preached on occasion of the demise of the late usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, and which quieted, in a large measure, the minds of my people. It is true that my views on this important point were ardently controverted by Mr. Shearjashub Holden, the then preceptor of our academy, and in other particulars a very deserving and sensible young man, though possessing a somewhat limited knowledge of the Greek tongue. But his heresy struck down no deep root, and, he having been lately removed by the hand of Providence, I had the satisfaction of reaffirming my cherished sentiments in a sermon preached upon the Lord's day immediately succeeding his funeral. This might seem like taking an unfair advantage, did I not add that he had made provision in his last will (being celibate) for the publication of a posthumous tractate in support of his own dangerous opinions.

I know of nothing in our modern times which approaches so nearly to the ancient oracle as the letter of a Presidential candidate. Now, among the Greeks, the eating of beans was strictly forbidden to all such as had it in mind to consult those expert amphibologists, and this same prohibition on the part of Pythagoras to his disciples is understood to imply an abstinence from politics, beans having been used as ballots.

That other explication, _quod videlicet sensus eo cibo obtundi existimaret_, though supported _pugnis et calcibus_ by many of the learned, and not wanting the countenance of Cicero, is confuted by the larger experience of New England. On the whole, I think it safer to apply here the rule of interpretation which now generally obtains in regard to antique cosmogonies, myths, fables, proverbial expressions, and knotty points generally, which is, to find a common-sense meaning, and then select whatever can be imagined the most opposite thereto. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, that the Greeks objected to the questioning of candidates. And very properly, if, as I conceive, the chief point be not to discover what a person in that position is, or what he will do, but whether he can be elected. _Vos exemplaria Graeca nocturna versate manu, versate diurna_.

But, since an imitation of the Greeks in this particular (the asking of questions being one chief privilege of freemen) is hardly to be hoped for, and our candidates will answer, whether they are questioned or not, I would recommend that these ante-electionary dialogues should be carried on by symbols, as were the diplomatic correspondences of the Scythians an Macrobii, or confined to the language of signs, like the famous interview of Panurge and Goatsnose. A candidate might then convey a suitable reply to all committees of inquiry by closing one eye, or by presenting them with a phial of Egyptian darkness to be speculated upon by their respective const.i.tuencies. These answers would be susceptible of whatever retrospective construction the exigencies of the political campaign might seem to demand, and the candidate could take his position on either side of the fence with entire consistency. Or, if letters must be written, profitable use might be made of the Dighton rock hieroglyphic or the cuneiform script, every fresh decipherer of which is enabled to educe a different meaning, whereby a sculptured stone or two supplies us, and will probably continue to supply posterity, with a very vast and various body of authentic history. For even the briefest epistle in the ordinary chirography is dangerous.

There is scarce any style so compressed that superfluous words may not be detected in it. A severe critic might curtail that famous brevity of Caesar's by two thirds, drawing his pen through the supererogatory _veni_ and _vidi_. Perhaps, after all, the surest footing of hope is to be found in the rapidly increasing tendency to demand less and less of qualification in candidates. Already have statesmans.h.i.+p, experience, and the possession (nay, the profession, even) of principles been rejected as superfluous, and may not the patriot reasonably hope that the ability to write will follow? At present, there may be death in pothooks as well as pots, the loop of a letter may suffice for a bowstring, and all the dreadful heresies of Antislavery may lurk in a flourish.--H.W.]

No. VIII

A SECOND LETTER FROM B. SAWIN, ESQ.

[In the following epistle, we behold Mr. Sawin returning, a _miles emeritus_, to the bosom of his family. _Quantum mutatus!_ The good Father of us all had doubtless intrusted to the keeping of this child of his certain faculties of a constructive kind. He had put in him a share of that vital force, the nicest economy of every minute atom of which is necessary to the perfect development of Humanity. He had given him a brain and heart, and so had equipped his soul with the two strong wings of knowledge and love, whereby it can mount to hang its nest under the eaves of heaven. And this child, so dowered, he had intrusted to the keeping of his vicar, the State. How stands the account of that stewards.h.i.+p? The State, or Society (call her by what name you will), had taken no manner of thought of him till she saw him swept out into the street, the pitiful leavings of last night's debauch, with cigar-ends, lemon-parings, tobacco-quids, slops, vile stenches, and the whole loathsome next-morning of the bar-room,--an own child of the Almighty G.o.d! I remember him as he was brought to be christened, a ruddy, rugged babe; and now there he wallows, reeking, seething,--the dead corpse, not of a man, but of a soul,--a putrefying lump, horrible for the life that is in it. Comes the wind of heaven, that good Samaritan, and parts the hair upon his forehead, nor is too nice to kiss those parched, cracked lips; the morning opens upon him her eyes full of pitying suns.h.i.+ne, the sky yearns down to him,--and there he lies fermenting. O sleep! let me not profane thy holy name by calling that stertorous unconsciousness a slumber! By and by comes along the State, G.o.d's vicar. Does she say, 'My poor, forlorn foster-child! Behold here a force which I will make dig and plant and build for me'? Not so, but, 'Here is a recruit ready-made to my hand, a piece of destroying energy lying unprofitably idle.' So she claps an ugly gray suit on him, puts a musket in his grasp, and sends him off, with Gubernatorial and other G.o.dspeeds, to do duty as a destroyer.

I made one of the crowd at the last Mechanics' Fair, and, with the rest, stood gazing in wonder at a perfect machine, with its soul of fire, its boiler-heart that sent the hot blood pulsing along the iron arteries, and its thews of steel. And while I was admiring the adaptation of means to end, the harmonious involutions of contrivance, and the never-bewildered complexity, I saw a grimed and greasy fellow, the imperious engine's lackey and drudge, whose sole office was to let fall, at intervals, a drop or two of oil upon a certain joint. Then my soul said within me, See there a piece of mechanism to which that other you marvel at is but as the rude first effort of a child,--a force which not merely suffices to set a few wheels in motion, but which can send an impulse all through the infinite future,--a contrivance, not for turning out pins, or st.i.tching b.u.t.ton-holes, but for making Hamlets and Lears.

And yet this thing of iron shall be housed, waited on, guarded from rust and dust, and it shall be a crime but so much as to scratch it with a pin; while the other, with its fire of G.o.d in it, shall be buffeted hither and thither, and finally sent carefully a thousand miles to be the target for a Mexican cannon-ball. Unthrifty Mother State! My heart burned within me for pity and indignation, and I renewed this covenant with my own soul,--_In aliis mansuetus ero, at, in blasphemiis contra Christum, non ita._.--H.W.]