Cambridge Sketches Part 18

I noticed on closer examination that the features resembled those of Miss Stebbins herself. Mr. Longfellow looked at it closely, and said, "So it does,--somewhat." Then I told him that I asked Warrington Wood how he obtained the expression for his head of Satan, and that he said he did it by looking in the gla.s.s and making up faces. Mr. Longfellow laughed heartily at this, saying, "I suppose Miss Stebbins did the same, and that is how it came about. Our sculptors should be careful how they put themselves in the devil's place. Wood has modelled a fine angel, and his group (Michael and Satan) is altogether an effective one."

Rev. Mr. Longfellow and the ladies now came in, and as it was late I shook hands with them all.

It is reported that when Mr. Longfellow met Cardinal Antonelli he remarked that Rome had changed less in the last fifteen years than other large cities, and that Antonelli replied, "Yes; G.o.d be praised for it!"

_Feb._ 25.--The elder Herbert [Footnote: The elder of two brothers, sons of an English artist.] has painted a fine picture, and we all went to look at it this afternoon, as it will be packed up to-morrow for the Royal Exhibition at London. He has chosen for his subject the verse of a Greek poet, otherwise unknown:

"Unyoke your oxen, you fellow, And take the coulter out of your plough; For you are ploughing amid the graves of men, And the dust you turn up is the dust of your ancestors."

Herbert has subst.i.tuted buffalos for oxen as being more picturesque, though they were not imported into Italy until some time in the Middle Ages. It is generally predicted that Herbert will become an R. A. like his father; but the subject is even more to his credit than his treatment of it. It is discussed at the _Lapre_ whether this verse has been equalled by Tennyson or Longfellow, and the conclusion was: "Not proven."

_March_ 1.--The Longfellows are gone, and Rome is filling up with a different cla.s.s of people who have come here to witness the fatiguing spectacles of Easter. One look at Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" would be worth the whole of it to me.

P---- is said to have captured his young lady, and it seems probable, for I see very little of him now. He disappears after breakfast, rushes through his dinner, and returns late in the evenings. So all the world changes.

CENTENNIAL CONTRIBUTIONS

THE ALCOTT CENTENNIAL

_Read at the Second Church, Copley Square, Boston, Wednesday, November 29, 1899_

A hundred years ago A. Bronson Alcott was born, and thirty-three years later his daughter Louisa was born, happily on the same day of the year, as if for this very purpose,--that you might testify your appreciation of the good work they did in this world, at one and the same moment. It was a fortunate coincidence, which we like to think of to-day, as it undoubtedly gave pleasure to Bronson Alcott and his wife sixty-seven years ago.

How genuine were Mr. Alcott and his daughter, Louisa! "All else," says the sage, "is superficial and perishable, save love and truth only." It is through the love and truth that was in these two that we still feel their influence as if they were living to-day. How well I recollect Mr.

Alcott's first visit to my father's house at Medford, when I was a boy! I had the same impression of him then that the consideration of his life makes on me now,--as an exceptional person, but one greatly to be trusted. I could see that he was a man who wished well to me, and to all mankind; who had no intention of encroaching on my rights as an individual in any way whatever; and who, furthermore, had no suspicion of me as a person alien to himself. The criticism made of him by my young brother held good of him then and always,--that "he looked like one of Christ's disciples." His aspect was intelligently mild and gentle, unmixed with the slightest taint of worldly self-interest.

He heard that Goethe had said, "We begin to sin as soon as we act;" but he did not agree to this, and was determined that one man at least should live in this world without sinning. He carried this plan out so consistently that, as he once confessed to me, it brought him to the verge of starvation. Then he realized that in order to play our part in the general order of things,--in order to obviate the perpetual tendency in human affairs to chaos,--we are continually obliged to compromise.

However, to the last he would never touch animal food. Others might murder sheep and oxen, but he, Bronson Alcott, would not be a partaker in what he considered a serious transgression of moral law. This brought him into antagonism with the current of modern opinion, which considers man the natural ruler of this earth, and that it is both his right and his duty to remodel it according to his ideas of usefulness and beauty.

It brought him into a life-long conflict with society, but how gallantly, how amiably he carried this on you all know. It cannot be said that he was defeated, for his spirit was unconquerable. His purity of intention always received its true recognition; and wherever Bronson Alcott went he collected the most earnest, high-minded people about him, and made them more earnest, more high-minded by his conversation.

How different was his daughter, Louisa,--the keen observer of life and manners; the witty story-teller with the pictorial mind; always sympathetic, practical, helpful--the mainstay of her family, a pillar of support to her friends; forgetting the care of her own soul in her interest for the general welfare; heedless of her own advantage, and thereby obtaining for herself as a gift from heaven, the highest of all advantages, and the greatest of all rewards!

And yet, with so wide a difference in the practical application of their lives, the well-spring of Louisa's thought and the main-spring of her action were identical with those of her father, and may be considered an inheritance from him. For the well-spring of her thought was _truth_, and the main-spring of her action was _love_. There can be no fine art, no great art, no art which is of service to mankind, which does not originate on this twofold basis. We are told that when she was a young girl, on a voyage from Philadelphia to Boston, her face suddenly lighted up with the true brightness of genius, as she said, "I love everybody in this whole world!" If, afterwards, a vein of satire came to be mingled with this genial flow of human kindness, it was not Louisa's fault.

In like manner, Bronson Alcott rested his argument for immortality on the ground of the family affections. "Such strong ties," he reasoned, "could not have been made merely to be broken." Let us share his faith, and believe that they have not been broken.

THE EMERSON CENTENNIAL

EMERSON AND THE GREAT POETS

_Read in the Town Hall, Concord, Ma.s.s., July_ 23, 1903

On his first visit to England, Emerson was so continually besieged with invitations that, as he wrote to Carlyle, answering the notes he received "ate up his day like a cherry;" and yet I have never met but one Englishman, Dr. John Tyndall, the chemist, who seemed to appreciate Emerson's poetry, and few others who might be said to appreciate the man himself. Tyndall may have recognized Emerson's keen insight for the poetry of science in such verses as:

"What time the G.o.ds kept carnival; Tricked out in gem and flower; And in cramp elf and saurian form They swathed their too much power."

A person who lacks some knowledge of geology would not be likely to understand this. Matthew Arnold and Edwin Arnold had no very high opinion of Emerson's poetry; and even Carlyle, who was Emerson's best friend in Europe, spoke of it in rather a disparaging manner. The "Mountain and the Squirrel" and several others have been translated into German, but not those which we here consider the best of them.

On the other hand, Dr. William H. Furness considered Emerson "heaven-high above our other poets;" C. P. Cranch preferred him to Longfellow; Dr. F.

H. Hedge looked upon him as the first poet of his time; Rev. Samuel Longfellow and Rev. Samuel Johnson held a very similar opinion, and David A. Wa.s.son considered Emerson's "Problem" one of the great poems of the century.

These men were all poets themselves, though they did not make a profession of it, and in that character were quite equal to Matthew Arnold, whose lecture on Emerson was evidently written under unfavorable influences. They were men who had pa.s.sed through similar experiences to those which developed Emerson's mind and character, and could therefore comprehend him better than others. We all feel that Emerson's poetry is sometimes too abstruse, especially in his earlier verses, and that its meaning is often too recondite for ready apprehension; but there are pa.s.sages in it so luminous and so far-reaching in their application that only the supreme poets of all time have equalled them.

Homer's strength consists in his pictorial descriptions, but also sometimes in pithy reflections on life and human nature; and it is in these latter that Emerson often comes close to him. Most widely known of Homer's epigrams is that reply of Telemachus to Antiochus in the Odyssey, which Pope has rendered:

"True hospitality is in these terms expressed, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest."

To which the following couplet from "Woodnotes" seems almost like a continuation:

"Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth,--his hall the azure dome;"

The wise man carries rest and contentment in his own mental life, and is equally himself at the Corona d'Italia and on a western ranch; while the weakling runs back to earlier a.s.sociations like a colt to its stable. But Homer is also Emersonian at times. What could be more so than Achilles's memorable saying, which is repeated by Ulysses in the Odyssey: "More hateful to me than the gates of death is he who thinks one thing and speaks another;" or this exclamation of old Laertes in the last book of the Odyssey: "What a day is this when I see my son and grandson contending in excellence!"

It seems a long way from Dante to Emerson, and yet there are Dantean pa.s.sages in "Woodnotes" and "Voluntaries." They are not in Dante's matchless measure, but they have much of his grace, and more of his inflexible will. This warning against mercenary marriages might be compared to Dante's answer to the embezzling Pope Nicholas III. in Canto XIX. of the Inferno:

"He shall be happy in his love, Like to like shall joyful prove; He shall be happy whilst he woos, Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse.

But if with gold she bind her hair, And deck her breast with diamond, Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, Though thou lie alone on the ground.

The robe of silk in which she s.h.i.+nes, It was woven of many sins; And the shreds Which she sheds In the wearing of the same, Shall be grief on grief, And shame on shame."

There is a Spartan-like severity in this, but so was Dante very severe.

It was his mission to purify the moral sense of his countrymen in an age when the Church no longer encouraged virtue; and Emerson no less vigorously opposed the rank materialism of America in a period of exceptional prosperity.

The next succeeding lines are not exactly Dantean, but they are among Emerson's finest, and worthy of any great poet. The "Pine Tree" says:

"Heed the old oracles, Ponder my spells; Song wakes in my pinnacles When the wind swells.

Soundeth the prophetic wind, The shadows shake on the rock behind, And the countless leaves of the pine are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-G.o.d sings."

Again we are reminded of Dante in the opening pa.s.sages of "Voluntaries":

"Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Where a captive lies in pain Moaning by the tropic sea.

Sole estate his sire bequeathed-- Hapless sire to hapless son-- Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when life was done."

It is still more difficult to compare Emerson with Shakespeare, for the one was Puritan with a strong cla.s.sic tendency, and the other anti- Puritan with a strong romantic tendency; but allowing for this and for Shakespeare's universality, it may be affirmed that there are few pa.s.sages in King Henry IV. and Henry V. which take a higher rank than Emerson's description of Cromwell:

"He works, plots, fights 'mid rude affairs, With squires, knights, kings his strength compares; Till late he learned through doubt and fear, Broad England harbored not his peer: Unwilling still the last to own, The genius on his cloudy throne."

Emerson learned a large proportion of his wisdom from Goethe, as he frequently confessed, but where in Goethe's poetry will you find a quatrain of more penetrating beauty or wider significance than this from "Woodnotes":

"Thou canst not wave thy staff in air Nor dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."

Or this one from the "Building of the House"--considered metaphorically as the life structure of man: