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

THE EASIEST WAY OF DISCHARGING A SONNET

A Sonnet (as before stated) consists of fourteen and no more spasms. They are calm, deliberate twinges, however, and upon a homœopathical principle, the great object should be to get over each one in the calmest possible manner; idem cum eodem. The thing cannot be treated too coolly, for its very essence is dull deliberation. The name sonnet is probably derived, through the Italian sonno, from the Latin word for sleep, in allusion to its lethargic quality. The best mode of encouraging the efflux of the peccant humor is for the patient to have a cigar in his mouth. The narcotic fumes of tobacco are highly favorable to its ejection. The first step then is the selection of rhymes. Fourteen of these in their proper order should be written perpendicularly on the right hand of a smooth sheet of white paper. When this is done, it is necessary to read them over, up and down, several times, until some general idea of a subject or a title suggests itself. Great care must be taken, in the selection of rhymes, to get as original ones as possible, and such as shall strike the eye. Still greater should be the precaution not to choose such incongruous rhymes as may not easily be welded together or amalgamated into one whole by the mercury of fancy. For instance, it would be well to avoid coupling such words as moon and spoon, breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and stove; hope and soap; all which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover himself. Shelley affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a spavin, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical. Benissimo! then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to do is to fill up the lines to match the ends, and this, in one evening’s practice, will become as easy, the same thing in fact, as the filling up of the blank form of an ordinary receipt.

But the most expeditious and surest way of procuring a good Sonnet is the Division of Labor System. This has often been unconsciously practised by modern poets, but it has never been explicitly set forth till now. Every body knows that even in the fabrication of so small a thing as a needle, the process is facilitated by dividing it among a number of hands; as to one the eye, to another the point, to one the grinding, to another the polishing. In the same way, to render a sonnet pointed and sharp, to polish it and insure it against cutting the thread of its argument, the work should be performed by two or more. Every sonnet, in short, ought to be a translation. I do not say a translation from the German or any other jargon, but a translation from English—from one man’s into another man’s English. It is absurd for one workman to do both rhyming and thinking. In this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take any ‘matter-ful’ author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, and make that your material. Trim it, compress it, turn it and twist it upside down and inside out, vary it any way but the author’s own, and you will be likely to effect a speedy and wholesome operation. What a saving of time is here! Who will be silly enough to manufacture his own thinkings into verse when the world is so full of excellent stuff as yet unwrought in the great mine of letters? Let us not burn up our own native forests while we can fetch coals from Newcastle. What a pleasant prospect for readers too! A man may be sure then, that a sonnet shall contain a thought. He will not be gulled into experiments upon decent-looking, respectable dross and plausible inanity. He shall not dig hungrily for an idea, and be filled with volumes of wind. With the fourteenth pang his anxiety shall be over, and he shall drop asleep satisfied; tandem dormitum dimittitur.

Not to anticipate farther our forthcoming book, nor to forestall the critics in any more extracts, we shall lay before the reader two or three samples of work done according to this system. Carlyle has furnished our raw material. His pages are so full of poetry that little time need be expended in selecting a fit piece for working up. See now if these be not sonnets which Bowles might have been proud to claim. Each one is warranted to contain a thought; an hour or so would suffice for the completion of half a dozen such. Observe too, that little deviation is necessary from the original, the words falling naturally into both rhythm and rhyme. We commence with a few translations from Carlyle. The initial specimen is taken from Herr Teufelsdröckh’s remarks on Bonaparte. This is the passage:

‘The man (Napoleon) was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it, and preached through the cannon’s throat this great doctrine: La carrière ouverte aux talens; ‘The Tools to him that can handle them.’ ••• Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom notwithstanding the peaceful Sower will follow, and as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.’

Sartor Resartus: Book ii., Chap. viii.

SONNET I.—NAPOLEON

Napoleon was a Missionary merely,Who through the cannon’s throat this truth expressed,Unconsciously, divinely and sincerely,The Tools to him that handles ’em the best.Madly enough, indeed, the man did preach,Amid much rant, as all Enthusiasts do,And yet with as articulate a speechAs the strange case, perhaps, allowed him to.Or call him a Backwoodsman, if you will;Who, forced to fell unpenetrated woods,And doomed innumerable wolves to kill,Got drunk sometimes, and stole his neighbor’s goods;Whom will the Sower follow ne’ertheless,And as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.

Or let us try the following description of the Hotel de Ville in the French Revolution:

‘O evening sun of July! how at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar officers; and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville. Babel-tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles endless in front of an Electoral Committee.’

French Revolution: Book v., Chap. vii.

SONNET II.—THE HOTEL DE VILLE

O evening sun of most serene July!How at this hour thy slant refulgence poursOn reapers working in the open sky,And women spinning at their cottage doors,On ships far out upon the silent main,On gay Versailles, where through the light quadrilleHussars are leading forth a high-rouged train,And on the hell-porch-like Hotel de Ville.Not Babel’s tower with all its million tongues,Save Bedlam too therewith had added been,To mingle burning brains with roaring lungs,Could feebly imitate that dreadful din;One endless forest of distracted steelBristling around that mad Hotel de Ville!

Or to return to Professor Teufeldröckh’s vast chaos of ideas. Let us try another passage therefrom:

‘It struck me much as I sat beside the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of history. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the midday when Cæsar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry; this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, unnamed, unseen.’

Sartor Resartus: Book II., Chap. iii.

SONNET III.—ETERNITY OF NATURE

One silent noonday, as I sat besideThe gurgling flow of Kuhbach’s little river,Methought how, even as I saw it glide,That stream had flowed and gurgled on forever.Yes, on the day when Joshua passed the floodOf ancient Jordan; when across the NileCæsar swam (hardly, doubtless, through the mud,)Yet kept his Commentaries dry the while,This little Kuhbach, like Siloa’s rill,Or Tiber’s Tide, assiduous and serene,Ev’n then, the same as now, was murmuring stillAcross the wilderness, unnamed, unseen.Art’s but a mushroom—only Nature’s old;In yon grey crag six thousand years behold!

From the same chapter of the same book we venture one more extract. It is where the Professor is full of grief and reminiscences; where, reflecting on his first experience of wo in the death of Father Andreas, he becomes once more spirit-clad in quite inexpressible melancholy, and says, ‘I have now pitched my tent under a cypress-tree,’ etc.:

SONNET IV.—BLISS IN GRIEF

Under a cypress-tree I pitch my tent:The tomb shall be my fortress; at its gateI sit and watch each hostile armament,And all the pains and penalties of Fate.And oh ye loved ones! that already sleep,Hushed in the noiseless bed of endless rest,For whom, while living, I could only weep,But never help in all your sore distress,And ye who still your lonely burthen bear,Spilling your blood beneath life’s bitter thrall,A little while and we shall all meet there,And one kind Mother’s bosom screen us all;Oppression’s harness will no longer tireOr gall us there, nor Sorrow’s whip of fire.

But we are borrowing too much from our embryo volume. Patience, dear Public! until we can find a publisher. In the mean time, examine the specimens we have presented to you. Can any one tell us where to look for sonnets, more satisfactory than these? We congratulate our country on the prospect of our soon having an American literature. Let our industrious young aspirants try a work in which they may succeed in producing something of sterling value. A year or two will suffice to turn half the plodding prose writers of Britain into original poets. Every brilliant article that appears in the Quarterly might here renascent spring forth like Arethusa, in a new and more melodious voice; bubbling up in a pretty epic or stormy lyric. See, for example, how easily Sidney Smith might be done into rhyme:

SONNET V

I never meet at any public dinnerA Pennsylvanian, but my fingers itchTo pluck his borrowed plumage from the sinner,And with the spoil the company enrich.His pocket-handkerchief I would bestowOn the poor orphan; and his worsted socksShould to the widow in requital goFor having sunk her all in Yankee stocks;To John the footman I would give his hat,Which only cost six shillings in Broadway:As for his diamond ring—I’d speak for that;His gold watch too my losses might repay:Himself might home in the next steamer hie,For who would take him—or his word? Not I.

‘Legends of the Conquest of Spain.’—Some eighteen years ago, a work in a single volume, entitled as above, and written by the author of the ‘Sketch-Book,’ was issued from the press of Murray, the celebrated London book-seller. It would seem to have been put forth as a kind of avant-courier of ‘The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada;’ but unlike that elaborate work, was never republished in this country, and has never been included in any of the complete editions of Mr. Irving’s writings. We are indebted to the kind courtesy of a gentleman who has been spending some months with our distinguished countryman and correspondent at Madrid, for a copy of the book, which he obtained at that capital. We have good reason to believe that it has been encountered by few if any readers on this side the Atlantic. A very stirring extract from its pages will be found elsewhere in this Magazine. Mr. Irving introduces the legends to his readers with a few prefatory sentences, in which he states that he has ventured to dip more deeply into the enchanted fountains of old Spanish chronicle than has usually been done by those who have treated of the eventful period of which he writes; but in so doing, he only more fully illustrates the character of the people and the times. He has thrown the records into the form of legends, not claiming for them the authenticity of sober history, yet giving nothing that had not a historical foundation. ‘All the facts herein contained,’ says the writer, ‘however extravagant some of them may be deemed, will be found in the works of sage and reverend chroniclers of yore, growing side by side with long acknowledged truths, and might be supported by learned and imposing references in the margin.’ To discard every thing wild and marvellous in this portion of Spanish history is to discard some of its most beautiful, instructive, and national features; it is to judge of Spain by the standard of probability suited to tamer and more prosaic countries. Spain is virtually a land of poetry and romance, where every-day life partakes of adventure, and where the least agitation or excitement carries every thing up into extravagant enterprise and daring exploit. The Spaniards in all ages have been of swelling and braggart spirit, soaring in thought, and valiant though vainglorious in deed. When the nation had recovered in some degree from the storm of Moslem invasion, and sage men sought to inquire and write the particulars of the tremendous reverses which it produced, it was too late to ascertain them in their exact verity. The gloom and melancholy that had overshadowed the land had given birth to a thousand superstitious fancies; the woes and terrors of the past were clothed with supernatural miracles and portents, and the actors in the fearful drama had already assumed the dubious characteristics of romance. Or if a writer from among the conquerors undertook to touch upon the theme, it was embellished with all the wild extravagances of an oriental imagination, which afterward stole into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence the chronicles are apt to be tinctured with those saintly miracles which savor of the pious labors of the cloister, or those fanciful fictions that betray their Arabian Authors. Scarce one of their historical facts but has been connected in the original with some romantic fiction, and even in its divorced state, bears traces of its former alliance. The records in preceding pages are ‘illuminated’ by these prefatory remarks of our author, if their truth be not altogether established! How the Count Julian receives the account of the dishonor of his child, and his conduct thereupon; and how Don Roderick hastens, through various tribulation, to his final overthrow; will be matter for another number. Meanwhile the reader will not fail to note the great beauty of the descriptions, which in the hands of our great master of the power and beauty of ‘the grand old English tongue,’ assume form and color, and stand out like living pictures to the eye.

American Ptyalism: ‘Quid Rides?’—A pleasant correspondent, whom our readers have long known, and as long admired and esteemed, in a familiar gossip, (by favor of ‘Uncle Samuel’s mail-bag,) with the Editor, gives us the following ‘running account’ of his ruminations over an early-morning quid of that ‘flavorous weed’ so well beloved of our friend Colonel Stone. It is in some sort a defence of American ptyalism, and in the tendency of its inculcations, reminds us of the arguments in favor of the cultivation of a refined style of murder, which should constitute it one of the fine arts, to which we gave a place many months back: ‘After having in my broken dreams perambulated every part and parcel of the universe, and then tossed about for hours on an ocean of bodily discomforts, each a dagger to repose, and mental disquietudes, of which any one was enough to wither all the poppies of Somnus, I rose about four o’ my watch, and commenced chewing the narcotic weed of Virginia. For you must know that in childhood almost, through a precocious mannishness and a desire of experimental knowledge, I commenced the habit of tobacco-chewing, and the vice born of a freak, has ‘grown with my growth,’ till now it holds me as in a ‘vice’ screwed up and secured by a giant. (Please observe that there’s a pun in that last sentence.) Where the conventionalities of society compel me to attidunize my appearance and customs into the stiffness of gentility, I puff the Havana; but when the privacy of my own room or the solitude of the roads and fields permit me to vulgarize to my liking, I thrust a ball of ‘Mrs. Miller’s fine-cut,’ or a fragment of the ‘natural James’ River sweet,’ between the sub-maxillary bone and its carnal casement, and then masticate and expectorate ‘à la Yankee.’ or ‘more Americano.’ Pah! oh! fie! for shame! and all other interjections indicative of horror, or expressive of disgust. ‘Quousque tandem?’ Beg your pardon, Mrs. Trollope. ‘Quamdiu etiam?’ I implore your commiseration, Captain Basil. ‘Oh, tempora! oh, mores!’ Have mercy, illustrious and praise-bespattered, and almost Sir-Waltered Boz. Do not, under the uneasy weight of glory, and in the intoxicating consciousness of a right to the oligarchic exclusiveness of the goose-quill ‘haute volèe,’ strike right and left among your sturdy democratic adorers, because they choose to convert their mandibles into quid-grinders, and their χασματ᾿ ὀδόντων into ceaseless jet d’eaux of saliva. Reflect that the ‘quid’ assists in a philosophic investigation of the ‘quiddities’ of things, and that from this habit alone perhaps we have made such advances in casuistry as to have discovered equity in repudiation, freedom in mobocracy, and the sword of justice in the bowie-knife. Chewing is eminently democratic, since all chewers are ‘pro hâc vice’ on a perfect equality, and a ‘millionaire;’ or, for that matter, a ‘billionaire,’ if we had him, would not hesitate to take out of his mouth a moiety of his last ‘chew’ and give it to an itinerant Lazarus. What can be more admirable than this ‘de bon air’ plebeianism, and universal right-hand of fellowship? Does not he who extends among the people the use of this democratizing weed, emphatically give them a ‘quid pro quo?’ Are not slovenliness and filth the virtues of republics, while neatness and elegance are vices of court-growth, and expand into their most ramified and minute perfectness of polish only in the palaces of kings? Furthermore, oh laurelled and triumphant Pickwick! if expectoration be filthy, it must be because the ‘thing expectorated’ is unclean; and if so, is it not more decent to become rid of the ‘unclean thing’ by the readiest process, than to retain it, making the stomach a receptacle of abominations? And are you, Sir Baronet of the realm imaginary, subject to no gross corporeal needs and operations? And if, as you will say, you perform those foul rites in a state of retiracy, are you not adding the sin of hypocrisy to your preëxistent guilt? If it has succeeded to you, as to few penny-a-liners, to have emerged by the sale of your Attic-salt from the attics of Grub-street into the ‘swept and garnished chambers’ of the Regent, and if after quaffing the ale of Bow-street, procured by caricatures of Old Baily reports, you have sipped your hockheimer, while standing, scarce yet unbewildered, in the gas-light splendor reflected from the ‘vis-á-vis’ mirrors of Almack’s, yet do not exalt yourself above all that is fleshly. Reflect that you, so lately unrivalled, can now see a Eugene Sue whose brow is umbraged by laurels of a more luxuriant and lovely green. Cease your expectorations of bile upon a great people; admit that mastication of the ‘odorous vegeble’ is a Spartan virtue; and we will again vote you an Anak in the kingdom of pen and paper. Then again shall we be led to believe that your praises and your vituperations are equally unpurchasable. Then once more shall we think you would swallow no golden pill, nor suffer your throat to be ulcerated by a silver quinsy.’

Gossip With Readers and Correspondents.—If any of our readers are desirous of looking into the rationale of irrationality, to employ a highly ‘unitive’ phrase, let them take up, if they can command it, the ‘Annual Report of the Managers of the New York State Lunatic Asylum,’ one of the clearest and most comprehensive documents in its kind that we have ever perused. It proceeds from the capable pen of A. Brigham, M. D. the superintendent and physician of the institution, and is full upon the definition, causes and classification of insanity; the size and shape of the heads of the patients; the pulse; description of the building; daily routine of business, diet, labor, amusements, religious worship, visitors, suggestions to those who have friends whom they expect to commit to the care of the asylum, etc., etc. The cause of insanity in fifty out of two hundred and seventy-six patients is attributed to religious anxiety, produced by long attendance on protracted religious meetings, etc. Want of sleep is decidedly the most frequent and immediate cause of insanity, and one the most important to guard against. ‘So rarely (says the superintendent) do you see a recent case of insanity that is not preceded by want of sleep, that we regard it as almost the sure precursor of mental derangement.’ As evidences of the difficulty of arranging the insane in classes, founded on symptoms, Dr. Brigham gives us the following synopsis of individual peculiarities noticed among certain of the inmates of the Asylum:

‘In addition to emperors, queens, prophets and priests, we have one that says he is nobody, a nonentity. One that was never born, and one that was born of her grandmother, and another dropped by the devil flying over the world. One has had the throat cut out and put in wrong, so that what is swallowed passes into the head, and another has his head cut off and replaced every night. One thinks himself a child, and talks and acts like a child. Many appear as if constantly intoxicated. One has the gift of tongues, another deals in magic, several in animal magnetism. One thinks he is a white polar bear. A number have hallucinations of sight, others of hearing. One repeats whatever is said to him, another repeats constantly words of the same sound, as door, floor. One is pursued by the sheriff, many by the devil. One has invented the perpetual motion and is soon to be rich; others have already acquired vast fortunes: scraps of paper, buttons and chips are to them, large amounts of money. Many pilfer continually and without any apparent motive, while others secrete every thing they can find, their own articles as well as those of others. A majority are disposed to hoard up trifling and useless articles, as scraps of tin, leather, strings, nails, buttons, etc., and are much grieved to part with them. One will not eat unless alone, some never wish to eat, while others are always starving. One with a few sticks and straws fills his room with officers and soldiers, ships and sailors, carriages and horses, the management of which occupies all his time and thoughts. Some have good memory as regards most things, and singularly defective as to others. One does not recollect the names of his associates, which he hears every hour, yet his memory is good in other respects. One says he is Thomas Paine, author of the ‘Age of Reason,’ a work he has never read; another calls himself General Washington; and one old lady of diminutive size calls herself General Scott, and is never so good-natured as when thus addressed. One is always in court attending a trial, and wondering and asking when the court is to rise. Another has to eat up the building, drink dry the canal, and swallow the Little Falls village, and is continually telling of the difficulty of the task.’

The superintendent prefers a classification founded upon the faculties of the mind that appear to be disordered; and he thinks he could place all his patients in one of the three following classes: Intellectual Insanity, or disorder of the intellect without noticeable disturbance of the feelings and propensities; Moral Insanity or derangement of the feelings, affections, and passions, without any remarkable disorder of the intellect; and General Insanity, in which both the intellectual faculties and the feelings and affections are disordered. The State Asylum is a fine imposing edifice, delightfully situated near the pleasant village of Utica, in Oneida county, and is becoming greatly distinguished for success in the treatment and cure of insanity. ••• We heard a little anecdote at a bal costumé the other evening, (whether from the dignified and stately Helen Macgregor or the beautiful Medora, we ‘cannot well make out,’) which is worth repeating. A retired green-grocer, rejoicing in the euphonious name of Tibbs, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife’s entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the ‘middling interest’ by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: ‘Halloa! Tibbs! who thought to see you here! What’s the news at Hackney?’ In dismay that his ridiculous secret was out, he hurried from the scene, and hastened home in a state of great excitement from the mortification to which he had been subjected. ‘I told you I should be known,’ said he to his wife; ‘I knew I should!’ ‘No wonder!’ she replied; ‘you’ve got your name and residence on your steel cap: ‘Mr. Tibbs, Hackney!’’ He had forgotten to remove the address which the London costumer had affixed to it as a direction! ••• How many thousand times, in thinking of the onward career of our glorious and thrice-blessed country, have we felt the emotions to which our esteemed friend and contributor, Polygon, gives forceful expression in the closing lines of a beautiful poem of his, which we have encountered to-day for the first time: