The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

LITERARY NOTICES

Poems by James Russell Lowell. In one volume. pp. 279. Cambridge: John Owen. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.

Two years ago Mr. Lowell presented the public with a volume of poems, which after being read and blamed and praised with a most bewildering variety of opinion, lived through it all, and remained as a permanent specimen of unformed but most promising genius. Modest however as the offering was, it was duly valued by discerning judges, not so much for its own ripe excellence, as for its appearing a happy token of something else. In the major part of the annual soarings into Cloud-land which alarm the world, we seem to see the sum total of the aspirant’s power. We feel that he has shown us all, and done his best; that the force of his cleverness could go no farther; and we are willing to give him his penny of praise, and thereby purchase a pleasant oblivion of him and his forevermore. In this attempt of Mr. Lowell’s it was impossible not to see that there lay more beyond. We felt that however boldly he might have dived, he did not yet ‘bring up the bottom,’ as the swimmer’s phrase goes. The faults of his poems were perceptible enough, yet even these were the blemishes of latent strength, and the book was every where welcomed with a hope. We have now to notice the appearance of a second proof of Mr. Lowell’s activity of faculty, in another and larger volume. It confirms the faith of those who read the former one. There is, throughout, the manifestation of growth; of a continuous advance toward a more decided character. Yet it is not without incompleteness of expression; it smacks of immaturity still; but it is the immaturity which presages a man.

The longest, and although not the most pleasing, yet perhaps the best poem in the volume is the ‘Legend of Brittany,’ a romantic story, fringed with rhyme. It contains but one bad line, and that one the first in the book: ‘Fair as a summer dream was Margaret.’ It is not only vague, but common-place: there is no particular reason that we know of why a summer dream should be fairer than a winter dream; and we cannot think that the poet meant to make use of that figure of speech called amphibology, although the line will bear a double interpretation. The legend is of the guilty amour of Mordred, a Knight Templar, with a fair innocent who, upon the point of becoming a mother, is slain by her lover at evening, in the wood. Hereupon– But let the poet speak:

His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did,    (So goes the tale,) beneath the altar thereIn the high church the stiffening corpse he hid,    And then, to ’scape that suffocating air,Like a scared ghoule out of the porch he slid;    But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere,And ghastly faces thrust themselves betweenHis soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien.

It should be observed that Mordred, bound as a Templar by the strictest laws of chastity, is aiming at the ‘high grand-mastership,’ and consequently suffers not only the remorse of the murderer, but the dread of that defeat which his ambition must encounter in the discovery of his deed. His character is ably delineated; perhaps too nicely drawn, for so brief a tale, since the interest momentarily awakened in the ‘dark, proud man,’

——‘whose half-blown youthHad shed its blossoms even in opening,’

is immediately lost in the horror of the catastrophe. But to pursue the outline of the story:

Now, on the second day, there was to be    A festival in church: from far and nearCame flocking in the sun-burnt peasantry,    And knights and dames with stately antique cheer,Blazing with pomp, as if all faërie    Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it were,The illuminated marge of some old book,While we were gazing, life and motion took.·····Then swelled the organ: up through choir and nave    The music trembled with an inward thrillOf bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave    Its flood of mellow thunder rose, untilThe hushed air shivered with the throb it gave,    Then, poising for a moment, it stood still,And sank and rose again, to burst in spray    That wandered into silence far away.

The whole of the description of this choir-service is equally beautiful with these stanzas; yet it may be objected that it in some degree impedes the progress of narration; and the tale is of that sort which will scarce brook any delay in the telling. But to continue. During the chanting, a breathless pause comes over the congregation; the music hushes; all eyes are drawn by some strange impulse toward the altar; and while all is mute and watchful, the voice of Margaret is heard from heaven, imploring a baptism for her unborn babe. The author himself cannot feel more sensibly than ourselves the injustice of thus patching together the beauteous fragments of his sorrowful and melodious history in so hugger-mugger a way; but Maga is peremptory, and hints to us that we cannot command the scope of the ‘Edinburgh Review:’ The voice ceases to thrill the wondering multitude, and the poet thus proceeds:

Then the pale priests, with ceremony due    Baptized the child within its dreadful tomb,Beneath that mother’s heart, whose instinct true    Star-like had battled down the triple gloomOf sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, too,    Strewed the pale corpse with many a milk-white bloom,And parted the bright hair, and on the breastCrossed the unconscious hands in sign of rest.

It is an indication of Mr. Lowell’s capabilities for a more extended theme that the second part of this poem is superior to the first. It is not merely that the interest of the story increases, but the verse is more compressed, the expressions are more graphic, and the flow of the stanza is finer and more natural. The opening lines are as vivid and impressive as a passage from Tasso:

‘As one who, from the sunshine and the green,    Enters the solid darkness of a cave,Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen    May yawn before him with its sudden grave,And, with hushed breath, doth often forward lean,    Deeming he hears the plashing of a waveDimly below, or feels a damper airFrom out some dreary chasm, he knows not where;    So from the sunshine and the green of Love,We enter on our story’s darker part,’ etc.

The faults of the whole production are the necessary ones of all young writers of original power; a too ready faculty of imitation, and a lack of conciseness. The poets whom Mr. Lowell mostly reminds us of, in his faults, are Shelly and Shakspeare; the juvenile Shakspeare, we mean—Shakspeare the sonnetteer. Both in the ‘Revolt of Islam’ and ‘Tarquin and Lucrece,’ blemishes resembling his own constantly occur. It will nevertheless be gratifying to his many ardent admirers to perceive that on the whole he has exhibited a more definite approach to what he is capable of accomplishing, and that in proportion as he has grown less vague and ethereal, less fond of personifying sounds and sentiments, so has he advanced toward a more manly and enduring standard of excellence. ‘Prometheus’ is the next longest poem, and it has afforded us great gratification. It might almost be mistaken for the breath of Æschylus, except that it contains sparkles of freedom that even the warm soul of the Greek could never have felt. The first two lines glitter with light:

‘One after one the stars have risen and set,Sparkling upon the hoar-frost on my chain.’

Although, rhyme is no tyrant to our poet, yet he seems to take a fuller swing when free from its influence; and the verse which he employs for the vehicle of his thoughts in this genuine poem is peculiarly adapted to the grandeur and dignity of his subject. This composition will stand the true test of poetry; a test which many immortal verses cannot abide, for it will bear translation into prose without loss of beauty or power: it contains more thoughts than lines, and although abounding in high poetic imaginings, the spirit of true philosophy which it contains is superior to the poetry.

Of Mr. Lowell’s shorter specimens we may remark, in contradistinction to what has been said of the Legend of Brittany, that so far as they resemble the kind of his former productions, so far in short as they are re-castings of himself, they do him injustice. We now feel that he is capable of stronger and loftier efforts, and are unwilling to overlook in his later compositions the flaws that are wilfully copied from his own volume. The public demand that he should go onward, and not wander back to dally among flowers that have been plucked before, and were then accepted for their freshness. He must devote himself to subjects of wider importance, and give his imaginations a more permanent foothold upon the hearts of men. His love-poems, though many of them would have added grace to his first collection, fail to excite our admiration equally in this. We do not say that he had exhausted panegyric before; far less would we insinuate that passion itself is exhaustible; and yet there is a point where to pause might be more graceful than to go on: ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’ Did any one ever wish that even Petrarch had written more? Mr. Lowell then ought to consider this, and begin to build upon a broader foundation than his own territory, beautiful as it may be, of private and personal fancies and affections. Perhaps there is no exception to the law that love should always be the first impulse that leads an ardent soul to poesy. (By poesy we do not mean school-exercises, and prize heroics approved by a committee of literary gentlemen.) On this account, it may be, that a young poet is always anxious to walk upon the ground where he first felt his strength, considering that a minstrel without love were as powerless, to adopt the Rev. Sidney Smith’s jocose but not altogether clerical illustration, as Sampson in a wig. Mr. Lowell evinces the firmest faith in his passion, which is evidently as sincere as it is well-bestowed. It is from this perhaps that he derives a corresponding faith in his productions, which always seems proportionate to his love of his subject. Let him be assured however that he is not always the strongest when he feels the most so, nor must he mistake the absence of this feeling for a symptom of diminished power. Should he be at any time inclined to such a self-estimate, let him refer his judgment to his ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Rhœcus.’ In his ‘Ode’ also, and his ‘Glance behind the Curtain,’ there is much to embolden him toward the highest endeavors in what he would perhaps disdain to call his Art. Poesy, notwithstanding, is an Art, which even Horace and Dryden did not scorn to consider such; and our poet ought to remember that he is bound not only to utter his own sentiments and fantasies according to his own impulse, but moreover to consult in some degree the ears of the world: the poet’s task is double; to speak FROM himself indeed, but TO the hearing of others. The contempt which a man of genius feels for the mere mechanicism of verse and rhyme may naturally enough lead him to affect an inattention to it; but in this he only benefits the school of smoother artists by allowing them at least one superiority. If he accuses them of being silly, they can retort that he is ugly.

Our author in this second volume has given the small carpers who pick at the ‘eds’ of past participles, and stickle for old-fashioned moon-shine instead of moon-shine, fewer causes of complaint. His diction is well-chosen and befitting his themes; and this is a characteristic which peculiarly marks the true artist, if it does not indicate the true genius. His execution, his ‘style of handling,’ is adapted to his subject; an excellence in which too many artists, whether painters or poets, are sadly deficient. In this respect his performances and those of his friend Page may be hung together. From the stately and dignified lines of ‘Prometheus’ to the jetty, dripping verse of ‘The Fountain,’ the step is very wide. How full of sparkling, brilliant effects are these joyous lines?

Into the sunshine,    Full of the light,Leaping and flashing    From morn till night!Into the moonlight,    Whiter than snow,Waving so flower-like    When the winds blow!

Mr. Lowell occasionally makes use of somewhat quaint, Spenserian expressions, but generally with peculiar effect. His abundant fancy seems to find its natural garb in the short and expressive phraseology of those old English writers of whom he manifests on all occasions so thorough an appreciation. As a sweet specimen, although a careless one, of his power of combining deep feeling with the most picturesque imagery, we select one of his lightest touches—‘Forgetfulness:’

There is a haven of sure rest    From the loud world’s bewildering stress:As a bird dreaming on her nest,As dew hid in a rose’s breast,As Hesper in the glowing West;            So the heart sleeps            In thy calm deeps,        Serene Forgetfulness!No sorrow in that place may be,    The noise of life grows less and less:As moss far down within the sea,As, in white lily caves, a bee,As life in a hazy reverie;            So the heart’s wave            In thy dim cave,        Hushes, Forgetfulness!Duty and care fade far away,What toil may be we cannot guess:As a ship anchored in a bay,As a cloud at summer-noon astray,As water-blooms in a breezeless day;            So, ’neath thine eyes,            The full heart lies,        And dreams, Forgetfulness!

‘The Shepherd of King Admetus’ is exceedingly graceful and delicate, but it is too long to be quoted entire, and too perfect to be disjointed. We must reluctantly skip ‘Fatherland,’ ‘The Inheritance,’ ‘The Moon,’ ‘Rhœcus,’ and other favorites, until we come to ‘L’Envoi,’ where our author once more throws his arms aloft, free from the incumbrance of rhyme. This poem is inscribed to ‘M. W.,’ his heart’s idol. The warm affection which radiates from its lines, it is not to be mistaken, is an out-flowing of pure human love. Among these personal feelings, touching which we have ‘said our say,’ we find the following; which in one respect so forcibly illustrates what we have written within these two weeks to a western correspondent, that we cannot forbear to quote it here:

Thou art not of those niggard souls, who deemThat poesy is but to jingle words,To string sweet sorrows for apologiesTo hide the barrenness of unfurnished hearts,To prate about the surfaces of things,And make more thread-bare what was quite worn out:Our common thoughts are deepest, and to giveSuch beauteous tones to these, as needs must takeMen’s hearts their captives to the end of time,So that who hath not the choice gift of wordsTakes these into his soul, as welcome friends,To make sweet music of his joys and woes,And be all Beauty’s swift interpreter,Links of bright gold ’twixt Nature and his heartThis is the errand high of Poesy.·····They tell us that our land was made for song,With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks,Its sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts,Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct;But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;Her womb and cradle are the human heart,And she can find a nobler theme for songIn the most loathsome man that blasts the sight,Than in the broad expanse of sea and shoreBetween the frozen deserts of the poles.All nations have their message from on high,Each the messiah of some central thought,For the fulfilment and delight of Man:One has to teach that Labor is divine;Another, Freedom; and another, Mind;And all, that God is open-eyed and just,The happy centre and calm heart of all.

It is impossible to read such sentiments as these, without feeling our hearts open to him who gives them utterance. Mr. Lowell is one of those writers who gain admiration for their verses and lovers for themselves. We can pay him no higher compliment.

There is nothing in the title-page or appearance of this elegant volume to indicate that it is not published in Cambridge, England; but unlike the majority of American books of poetry, any page in the work will give out too strong an odor of Bunker-Hill, though we find no allusion to that sacred eminence, to allow the reader to remain long in doubt of its paternity. Although we hold that any writing worthy of being called poetry must be of universal acceptance, and adapted to the longings and necessities of the entire human family, as the same liquid element quenches the thirst of the inhabitants of the tropics and the poles, yet every age and every clime must of necessity tincture its own productions. We do not therefore diminish in the slightest degree the high poetical pretensions of Mr. Lowell’s poems, when we claim for them a national character, silent though they be upon ‘the stars and stripes,’ and a complexion which no other age of the world than our own could have given. They are not only American poems, but they are poems of the nineteenth century. There is a spirit of freedom, of love for God and Man, that broods over them, which our partiality for our own country makes us too ready perhaps to claim as the natural offspring of our land and laws. The volume is dedicated to William Page, the painter, in a bit of as sweet and pure language as can be found in English prose. It might be tacked on to one of Dryden’s dedications without creating an incongruous feeling. The dedication is as honorable to the poet as to the painter. Had all dedications been occasioned by such feelings as gave birth to this, these graceful and fitting tributes of affection and gratitude would never have dwindled away to the cold and scanty lines, like an epitaph on a charity tomb-stone, in which they appear, when they appear at all, in most modern books.

Thirty Years passed among the Players in England and America. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Reminiscences of a Variety of Persons connected with the Drama during the Theatrical Life of Joe Cowell, Comedian. Written by himself. In one volume, pp. 103. New-York: Harper and Brothers.

Of all the pages in English memoirs, none are so rich in humor and various observation as those devoted to the players. Carlyle somewhere says, that the only good biographies are those of actors; and he gives for a reason their want of respectability! Being ‘vagabonds’ by law in England, the truth of their histories he tells us is not varnished over by delicate omissions. The first branch of this assumption is certainly true, whatever cause may be at the bottom of it; and Mr. Cowell, in the very entertaining volume before us, has added another proof of the correctness of Herr Teufelsdröckh’s flattering conclusions. His narrative is rambling, various, instructive, and amusing. He plunges at once in medias res; and being in himself an epitome of his class; of their successes, excitements, reverses and depressions; he paints as he goes along a most graphic picture of the life of an actor. We shall follow his own desultory method; and proceed without farther prelude to select here and there a ‘bit’ from his well-filled ‘budget of fun.’ Let us open it with this common portrait of a vain querulous, complaining Thespian, who is never appreciated, never rewarded:

‘I was seated in the reading-room of the hotel, thinking away the half hour before dinner, when my attention was attracted by a singularly-looking man. He was dressed in a green coat, brass-buttoned close up to the neck, light gray, approaching to blue, elastic pantaloons, white cotton stockings, dress shoes, with more riband employed to fasten them than was either useful or ornamental; a hat, smaller than those usually worn, placed rather on one side of a head of dark curly hair; fine black eyes, and what altogether would have been pronounced a handsome face, but for an overpowering expression of impudence and vulgarity; a sort of footman-out-of-place-looking creature; his hands were thrust into the pockets of his coat behind, and in consequence exposing a portion of his person, as ridiculously, and perhaps as unconsciously, as a turkey-cock does when he intends to make himself very agreeable. He was walking rather fancifully up and down the room, partly singing, partly whistling ‘The Bay of Biscay O,’ and at the long-lived, but most nonsensical chorus, he shook the fag-ends of his divided coat tail, as if in derision of that fatal ‘short sea,’ so well known and despised in that salt-water burial-place. I was pretending to read a paper, when a carrier entered, and placed a play-bill before me on the table. I had taken it up and began perusing it, when he strutted up, and leaning over my shoulder, said:

‘‘I beg pardon, Sir; just a moment.’

‘I put it toward him.

‘‘No matter, Sir, no matter; I’ve seen all I want to see; the same old two-and-sixpence; Hamlet, Mr. Sandford, in large letters; and Laertes, Mr. Vandenhoff! O–!’

‘And with an epithet not in any way alluding to the ‘sweet South,’ he stepped off to the Biscay tune, allegro. I was amused; and perhaps the expression of my face encouraged him to return instantly, and with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, for he said:

‘‘My dear Sir, that’s the way the profession is going to the devil: here, Sir, is the ‘manager’—with a sneer—‘one of the d–dest humbugs that ever trod the stage, must have his name in large letters, of course; and the and Laertes, Mr. Vandenhoff; he’s a favorite of the Grand Mogul, as we call old Sandford, and so he gets all the fat; and d’ye know why he’s shoved down the people’s throats? Because he’s so d–d bad the old man shows to advantage alongside of him. Did you ever see him?’

‘I shook my head.

‘‘Why, Sir, he’s a tall, stooping, lantern-jawed, asthmatic-voiced, spindle-shanked fellow.’ Here he put his foot on the rail of my chair, and slightly scratched the calf of his leg. ‘Hair the color of a cock-canary,’ thrusting his fingers through his own coal-black ringlets; ‘with light blue eyes, Sir, trimmed with pink gymp. He hasn’t been long caught; just from some nunnery in Liverpool, or somewhere, where he was brought up as a Catholic priest; and here he comes, with his Latin and Lancashire dialect, to lick the manager’s great toe, and be hanged to him, and gets all the business; while men of talent, and nerve, and personal appearance,’ shifting his hands from his coat-pockets to those of his tights, ‘who have drudged in the profession for years, are kept in the back-ground; ’tis enough to make a fellow swear!’

‘‘You, then, Sir, are an actor?’ said I, calmly.

‘‘An actor! yes, Sir, I am an actor, and have been ever since I was an infant in arms; played the child that cries in the third act of the comedy of ‘The Chances,’ when it was got up with splendor by Old Gerald, at Sheerness, when I was only nine weeks old; and I recollect, that is, my mother told me, that I cried louder, and more naturally, than any child they’d ever had. That’s me,’ said he, pointing to the play-bill—Horatio, Mr. Howard. ‘I used to make a great part of Horatio once; and I can now send any Hamlet to h-ll in that character, when I give it energy and pathos; but this nine-tailed bashaw of a manager insists upon my keeping my ‘madness in the back-ground,’ as he calls it, and so I just walk through it, speak the words, and make it a poor, spooney, preaching son of a how-came-ye-so, and do no more for it than the author has.’

Mr. Cowell subsequently enlists under the same manager, and is received with great apparent cordiality by the members of his corps dramatique: ‘The loan of ‘properties,’ or any thing I have, is perfectly at your service,’ was iterated by all. Howard said: ‘My boy, by heavens, I’ll lend you my blue tights; oh, you’re perfectly welcome; I don’t wear them till the farce; Banquo’s one of my flesh parts; nothing like the naked truth; I’m h—l for nature. By-the-by, you’ll often have to wear black smalls and stockings; I’ll put you up to something; save your buying silks, darning, stitch-dropping, louse-ladders, and all that; grease your legs and burnt-cork ’em; it looks d–d well ‘from the front.’’ Mr. Cowell, it appears, was an artist of no mean pretensions; and while engaged on one occasion in sketching a picturesque view of Stoke Church, he was interrupted in rather a novel manner by a brother actor named Reymes, somewhat akin, we fancy, to his friend Howard, albeit ‘excellent company:’

‘Several times I was disturbed in my occupation, to look round to inquire the cause of a crash, every now and then, like the breaking of glass; and at length I caught a glimpse of Reymes, slyly jerking a pebble, under his arm, through one of the windows. I recollected twice, in walking home with him, late at night, from the theatre, his quietly taking a brick-bat from out of his coat-pocket and deliberately smashing it through the casement of the Town Hall, and walking on and continuing his conversation as if nothing had happened. Crack! again. I began to suspect an abberration of intellect, and said: