The book is the most philosophic treatment of the develop-
ment of our fiction that has been written, seizing upon the central
fact of the steady growth of the idea of personality in the novel from
Greek days to the present time.
ment of our fiction that has been written, seizing upon the central
fact of the steady growth of the idea of personality in the novel from
Greek days to the present time.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v15 - Kab to Les
Before his Awful Will, Blinton's
mere modern obstinacy shrank back like a child abashed. The
Stranger glided to him and whispered, “Buy these. ”
« These were a complete set of Auerbach's novels in Eng-
lish; which, I need not say, Blinton would never have dreamt of
purchasing had he been left to his own devices.
«Buy these! ” repeated the Adept, or whatever he was, in a
,
cruel whisper. Paying the sum demanded, and trailing his vast
load of German romance, poor Blinton followed the fiend.
They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, Glatigny's
Jour de l'An d'un Vagabond' was exposed.
“Look,” said Blinton: "there is a book I have wanted some
time. Glatignys are getting rather scarce, and it is an amusing
trifle. ”
Nay, buy that,” said the implacable Stranger, pointing with
a hooked forefinger at Alison's History of Europe' in an indefi-
nite number of volumes. Blinton shuddered.
“What, buy that — and why? In Heaven's name, what could
I do with it? "
“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, "and that” (indicating the
Ilios' of Dr. Schliemann,--a bulky work), “and these” (pointing
'
to all Theodore Alois Buckley's translations of the classics), and
these” (glancing at the collected writings of the late Mr. Hain
Friswell, and at a Life,' in more than one volume, of Mr. Glad-
stone).
The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along, carrying the
bargains under his arm. Now one book fell out, now another
dropped by the way. Sometimes a portion of Alison came pon-
derously to earth; sometimes the Gentle Life' sank resignedly
to the ground. The Adept kept picking them up again, and
packing them under the arm of the weary Blinton.
The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and
tried to enter into conversation with his tormentor.
»
(
## p. 8884 (#512) ###########################################
8884
ANDREW LANG
"He does know about books,” thought Blinton, and he must
have a weak spot somewhere. ”
So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational
style. He talked of bindings, of Maioli, of Grolier, of De Thou,
of Derome, of Clovis Eve, of Roger Payne, of Trautz, and eke of
Bauzonnet. He discoursed of first editions, of black-letter, and
even of illustrations and vignettes. He approached the topic of
Bibles; but here his tyrant, with a fierce yet timid glance, inter-
rupted him.
Buy those! ” he hissed through his teeth.
« ”
“Those were the complete publications of the Folk-Lore
Society.
Blinton did not care for folk-lore (very bad men never do);
but he had to act as he was told.
Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire
the Ethics) of Aristotle in the agreeable versions of Williams
and Chace. Next he secured (Strathmore,' 'Chandos,' 'Under
Two Flags,' and Two Little Wooden Shoes,' and several dozen
more of Ouida's novels. The next stall was entirely filled with
school-books, old geographies, Livys, Delectuses, Arnold's Greek
Exercises,' Ollendorffs, and what not.
“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and
piled them on Blinton's head.
He tied up Quida's novels in two parcels with string, and
fastened each to one of the buttons above the tails of Blinton's
coat.
“ You are tired ? ” asked the tormentor. “Never mind: these
books will soon be off your hands. "
So speaking, the Stranger with amazing speed hurried Blinton
back through Holywell Street, along the Strand and up to Picca-
dilly, stopping at last at the door of Blinton's famous and very
expensive binder.
The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of
Blinton's treasures. Then the miserable Blinton found himself,
as it were automatically and without the exercise of his will,
speaking thus:-
"Here are some things I have picked up,- extremely rare,-
and you will oblige me by binding them in your best manner,
regardless of expense. Morocco, of course; crushed levant mo-
rocco, doublé, every book of them, petits fers, my crest and coat
of arms, plenty of gilding: Spare no cost. Don't keep me
(
CC
## p. 8885 (#513) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8885
(
waiting, as you generally do;" for indeed bookbinders are the
most dilatory of the human species.
Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary
questions, Blinton's tormentor had hurried that amateur out of
the room.
“Come on to the sale," he cried.
What sale ? » asked Blinton.
«Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky
day. ”
“But I have forgotten my catalogue. ”
«Where is it ? »
“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of
the ebony bookcase at home. ”
The Stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated
itself till the hand disappeared from view round the corner.
In a moment the hand returned with the catalogue.
The pair
sped on to Messrs. Sotheby's auction rooms in Wellington Street.
Everyone knows the appearance of a great book sale. The
long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles from a little
distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort of
excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct
himself. If he bids in his own person some bookseller will out-
bid him; partly because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows
little about books, and suspects that the amateur may in this
case know more. Besides, professionals always dislike amateurs,
and in this game they have a very great advantage. Blinton
knew all this, and was in the habit of giving his commissions to
a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally) as if a demon
had entered into him. (Tirante il Bianco Valorissimo Cavaliere)
was being competed for: an excessively rare romance of chivalry,
in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari's library.
The book is one of the rarest of the Aldine Press, and beauti-
fully adorned with Canevari's device,- a simple and elegant affair
in gold and colors. “Apollo is driving his chariot across the
green waves towards the rock, on which winged Pegasus is paw-
ing the ground”; though why this action of the horse should be
called “pawing ” (the animal notoriously not possessing paws), it
is hard to say.
Round this graceful design is the inscription
OPAQ KAT MIL 10E99 (straight and not crooked). In his ordinary
mood Blinton could only have admired “Tirante il Bianco' from
a distance. But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into
>
## p. 8886 (#514) ###########################################
8886
ANDREW LANG
>
»
>>
the lists, and challenged the great Mr. - the Napoleon of
bookselling. The price had already reached five hundred pounds.
« Six hundred,” cried Blinton.
“Guineas," said the great Mr.
«Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton,
“Guineas,” replied the other,
This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. struck
his flag, with a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said “Four
thousand. ” The cheers of the audience rewarded the largest
bid ever made for any book. As if he had not done enough, the
Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with Mr. for
every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally
fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the
brain, when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless
wealth, and is determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for
the last time. Blinton owed some fifty thousand pounds; and
exclaimed audibly, as the influence of the fiend died out, "I am
a ruined man. "
« Then your books must be sold,” cried the Stranger; and
leaping on a chair, he addressed the audience:-
Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton's sale, which will
immediately take place. The collection contains some very re-
markable early English poets, many first editions of the French
classics, most of the rarer Aldines, and a singular assortment of
Americana. ”
In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room
were filled with Blinton's books, all tied up in big lots of some
thirty volumes each. His early Molières were fastened to old
French dictionaries and school-books. His Shakespeare quartos
were in the same lot with tattered railway novels.
(happily almost unique) of Richard Barnfield's Affectionate Shep-
heard’ was coupled with two old volumes of Chips from a Ger-
man Workshop and a cheap, imperfect example of Tom Brown's
School Days. ' Hooke's Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot
of American devotional works, where it kept company with an
Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine Hypnerotomachia. '
The auc-
tioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the
whole affair was a “knock-out. ” His most treasured spoils were
parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing
to be present at one's own sale. No man would bid above a
few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the
His copy
(
## p. 8887 (#515) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8887
plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last
his Adonais,' uncut, bound by Lortic, went in company with
some old Bradshaws,' the Court Guide' of 1881, and an odd
volume of the Sunday at Home, for sixpence. The Stranger
smiled a smile of peculiar malignity. Blinton leaped up to pro-
test; the room seemed to shake around him, but words would not
come to his lips.
Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp
shook his shoulder:-
« Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying! ”
He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep
after dinner; and Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him
from his awful vision. Beside him lay L'Enfer du Bibliophile,
vu et decrit par Charles Asselineau' (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX. ).
»
FROM (LETTER TO MONSIEUR DE MOLIÈRE, VALET DE
CHAMBRE DU ROI)
W""
In "Letters to Dead Authors )
Monsieur:
'ITH what awe does a writer venture into the presence of
the great Molière ! As a courtier in your time would
scratch humbly (with his comb! ) at the door of the Grand
Monarch, so I presume to draw near your dwelling among the
Immortals. You, like the King who among all his titles has now
none so proud as that of the friend of Molière — you found your
dominions small, humble, and distracted; you raised them to the
dignity of an empire: what Louis the XIV. did for France you
achieved for French comedy; and the bâton of Scapin still wields
its sway, though the sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim.
For the King the Pyrenees (or so he fancied) ceased to exist;
by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If
England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that
France ferum victorem cepit, and restored the dynasty of Comedy
to the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden
borrowed 'L'Étourdi,' our tardy apish nation has lived in mat-
ters theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France.
In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered.
While you lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was
the congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic
## p. 8888 (#516) ###########################################
8888
ANDREW LANG
>
grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of
Molière. Now they are diversely occupied; and it is their affair
to lend modesty where they borrow wit, and to spare a blush to
the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. But still, as has ever been
our wont since Etherege saw and envied and imitated your suc-
cesses— still we pilfer the plays of France, and take our bien, as
you said in your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We
are the privateers of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that
a comedy pleases the town which has not first been “cut out”
from the countrymen of Molière. Why this should be, and
what «tenebriferous star” (as Paracelsus, your companion in the
Dialogues des Morts,' would have believed) thus darkens the sun
of English humor, we know not; but certainly our dependence
on France is the sincerest tribute to you. Without you, neither
Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor «a wilderness of monkeys” like Scar-
ron, could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to
Europe.
While we owe to you, monsieur, the beautiful advent of Com-
edy, fair and beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes, . it
is still to you that we must turn when of comedies we desire the
best. If you studied with daily and nightly care the works of
Plautus and Terence, if you let no musty bouquin escape you"
(so your enemies declared), it was to some purpose that you
labored. Shakespeare excepted, you eclipsed all who came before
you: and from those that follow, however fresh, we turn;
turn from Regnard and Beaumarchais, from Sheridan and Gold-
smith, from Musset and Pailleron and Labiche, to that crowded
world of your creation. « Creations” one may well say, for you
anticipated Nature herself: you gave us, before she did, in
Alceste a Rousseau who was a gentleman, not a lacquey; in a
mot of Don Juan's the secret of the new religion and the watch-
word of Comte, l'amour de l'humanité.
Before you where can we find, save in Rabelais, a French-
man with humor; and where, unless it be in Montaigne, the wise
philosophy of a secular civilization ? With a heart the most ten-
der, delicate, loving, and generous,-a heart often in agony and
torment, — you had to make life endurable (we cannot doubt it)
without any whisper of promise or hope or warning from reli-
gion. Yes, in an age when the greatest mind of all, the mind of
Pascal, proclaimed that the only hope was in voluntary blindness,
that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens, you,
»
we
## p. 8889 (#517) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8889
monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to pretend to see what you
found invisible.
In religion you beheld no promise of help. When the Jesuits
and Jansenists of your time saw, each of them, in Tartuffe the
portrait of their rivals (as each of the laughable Marquises in
your play conceived that you were girding at his neighbor), you
all the while were mocking every credulous excess of faith. In
the sermons preached to Agnès we surely hear your private
laughter; in the arguments for credulity which are presented
to Don Juan by his valet we listen to the eternal self-defense of
superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for the perma-
nent element of life — precisely where Pascal recognized all that
was most fleeting and unsubstantial — in divertissement; in the
pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence,
an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the gods of the
Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played,
as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note comes in! What
pity, and in the laughter what an accent of tears, as of rain in
the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and human as you;
none has had a heart like you to feel for his butts, and to leave
them sometimes, in a sense, superior to their tormentors. Sgan-
arelle, M. de Pourceaugnac, George Dandin, and the rest — our
sympathy somehow is with them, after all; and M. Pourceaugnac
is a gentleman, despite his misadventures.
Though triumphant Youth and malicious Love in your plays
may batter and defeat Jealousy and Old Age, yet they have not
all the victory, or you did not mean that they should win it.
They go off with laughter, and their victim with a grimace;
but in him we that are past our youth behold an actor in an un-
ending tragedy,—the defeat of a generation. Your sympathy is
not wholly with the dogs that are having their day; you can
throw a bone or a crust to the dog that has had his, and has
been taught that it is over and ended. Yourself not unlearned
in shame, in jealousy, in endurance of the wanton pride of men,
(how could the poor player and the husband of Celimène be
untaught in that experience ? ) you never sided quite heartily, as
other comedians have done, with young prosperity and rank and
power.
## p. 8890 (#518) ###########################################
8890
ANDREW LANG
LES ROSES DE SÂDI
From Ban and Arrière Ban)
his morning I I
T'They were thrust in the band that my bodice incloses,
But the breast-knots were broken, the roses went free.
The breast-knots were broken: the roses together
Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather,
And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea.
And the sea was as red as when sunset uncloses;
But my raiment is sweet from the scent of the roses,-
Thou shalt know, love, how fragrant a memory can be.
THE ODYSSEY
Prefixed to the Butcher-Lang translation
A
S ONE that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan Isle forgets the Main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,-
So, gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers;
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
## p. 8891 (#519) ###########################################
8891
SIDNEY LANIER
(1842-1881)
BY RICHARD BURTON
HE quiet steady widening of the influence of Sidney Lanier
since his death is more than a pleasant justification of faith
to those who have loved him and believed in him from the
first. It suggests the comforting thought that good literature, uncon-
ventional in form and original in quality, although for this very
reason slower to get a hearing, is sure to
receive the eventual recognition it deserves.
Sixteen years have elapsed since Lanier's
taking-off; and he is now seen more clearly
every day to be the most important native
singer the Southern United States has pro-
duced, and one of the most distinctive and
lovely of American singers wherever born.
Enthusiastic admirers and followers he has
always attracted to him; now the general
opinion begins to swing round to what
seemed to many, a little time ago, the ex-
travagant encomium of partiality and preju-
dice.
SIDNEY LANIER
The circumstances of Sidney Lanier's
life furnish a pathetically tragic setting to his pure-souled, beautiful
work. A Georgian, he was born at Macon, February 30, 1842; his
father was a well-known lawyer of that city. The family on the
male side was of Huguenot French descent; on the maternal side the
stock was Scotch. Sidney was educated at Oglethorpe College in his
native State. The war found him on the Confederate side; and while
a prisoner he consoled his spirit with his beloved flute and wrote
fugitive verses, - early pledges of the twin master passions of Lanier's
whole life, literature and music. It was while immured thus that
he and Father Tabb, the Maryland poet-priest, struck up the friend-
ship which the latter has commemorated in more than one loving
song. Lanier's constitution was delicate; and the exposures and hard-
ships of war developed the seeds of the consumption which he fought
heroically through young manhood and into middle life, and finally
## p. 8892 (#520) ###########################################
8892
SIDNEY LANIER
succumbed to. Some years of experimental occupation followed upon
the war experience: he was successively clerk, teacher, and lawyer,
taking up the legal profession at the earnest instigation of his father,
who could not realize that Lanier's vocation was so different from his
own. The letter which the son wrote from Baltimore, taking the
decisive step that made him a literary man and musician for better
or worse, is impressive and revelatory of his character:-
«I have given your last letter the fullest and most careful consideration.
After doing so, I feel sure that Macon is not the place for me. If you could
taste the delicious crystalline air and the champagne breeze that I've just been
rushing about in, I am equally sure that in point of climate you would agree
with me that my chance of life is ten times as great here as in Macon. Then
as to business. Why should I — nay, how can I – settle myself down to be a
third-rate struggling lawyer for the balance of my little life, as long as there
is a certainty almost absolute that I can do some other thing so much better?
My dear father, think how for twenty years, through poverty, through
pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere
of a farcical college and of a bare army, and then of an exacting business
life,- through all of the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with
literary people and literary ways,– I say, think how, in spite of all these
depressing circumstances and of a thousand more which I could enumerate,
these two figures of music and of poetry have kept in my heart so that I
could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to
have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts,
after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much
bitterness ? »
One can well believe that with a man like Lanier, such a choice
had in it the solemnity of a consecration. His ideal of Art in the
broad sense—whether literary or other — was so lofty that a dedica-
tion of himself to the service was the most serious of acts. Nor,
through whatever of set-back, stress, and failure, did he for a moment
swerve from that ideal; he held himself as a very priest of Beauty,
dignifying at once himself and his calling.
Lanier's literary career began with the publishing of a novel,
(Tiger Lilies) (1867), a book founded on his war experiences, and not
a success: fiction was not his natural medium of expression. There
is luxuriant unpruned imagination in the story, however, and it is
evident that a poet in his first ferment of fancy is hiding there.
Meanwhile Lanier was sending his poems to the magazines and get-
ting them back again, the proverbial editor on the lookout for bud-
ding genius proving mostly chimerical. Gradually a critic here and
there became aware of his worth. Corn. ' one of his finely repre-
sentative pieces, appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1875, and at-
tracted attention which led to his being employed to write the words
for a cantata by Dudley Buck, performed at the Centennial Exhibition
## p. 8893 (#521) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8893
in the next year. The Centennial year, too, marks the appearance of
the first edition of his poems,-a volume containing tentative imma-
ture verse, though promising much to one of critical foresight. The
Independent and the Century also opened their doors to the South-
ern singer. But these chance contributions to periodicals— birds of
passage finding a lodgment as it might hap — were grotesquely in-
adequate for the support of a man with a family; — for so far back as
1867, the year his first book was published, he had married Miss Mary
H. Day, also of Macon,- a woman who in all the gracious ministries
of heart and home and spirit was his leal mate. Hence was he
forced to do hack-work; a sorry spectacle of Pegasus in harness. He
could only use his pen between hemorrhages; and the slender finan-
cial resources thus heavily taxed would have utterly failed had it not
been for the kind ministries of brother and father. Lanier made a
guide-book on Florida, as unlike the customary manual as an Arabian
blood mare is unlike a dray-horse. He edited Froissart for boys, -a
more congenial task; and did youth the same service with respect to
King Arthur, the Mabinogion,' and Bishop Percy. Brave, beautiful
books they are; for the full-mouthed old words and the bygone deeds
of chivalry both appealed to the poet-editor. Then in 1879 came what
looked like brighter fortune: he was appointed lecturer on English
literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to which city he
had gone in 1873 to take the position of first flute in the Peabody
Orchestra. It must be remembered that to the end music and poetry
were the beacon stars in Lanier's overcast, uncertain skies.
Now a
modest yearly income at least was assured, — for the first time in his
experience.
The alleviation was but brief; for two years later, in the
mountains of North Carolina, whither he had wearily gone to make one
more struggle for breath, Sidney Lanier's noble soul was loosened
from its frail tenement of flesh, and, his wife beside him, he fell on
sleep :-
« From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure. »
But that final span of time enabled him to prosecute with diligence
and system his favorite studies in the old English literature, and to
leave two critical volumes of great value and individuality. (The
Science of English Verse,' published in 1880, is an elaborate and
unique analysis of the technical structure and underlying principles
of the native metric, developing a new and most interesting theory:
that the time quality obtains in English poetry as in music; this
thesis being aptly illustrated from the sister art. "The English Novel
and the Principles of its Development,' which appeared three years
later, in 1883, is made up of lectures delivered at Johns Hopkins, at
## p. 8894 (#522) ###########################################
8894
SIDNEY LANIER
a time when Lanier was obliged to sit down while speaking, so weak
was he.
The book is the most philosophic treatment of the develop-
ment of our fiction that has been written, seizing upon the central
fact of the steady growth of the idea of personality in the novel from
Greek days to the present time. It was not until 1884, several years
after his death, that his poems were collected finally into a volume,
with an admirable introductory essay upon the man and his work
by Dr. William Hayes Ward. With this book Lanier came into his
own of praise and love.
Lanier's characteristics as a poet - and despite his achievements
in prose, it is as a poet he must be considered primarily - are such
as to separate him from other American makers of literature. In the
first place, his work has the glow and color of the South, - an exuber-
ance of imagination and a rhythmic sweep which awaken a kind of
exultant delight in the sensitive reader. A consummate artist, Lanier
showed himself a pioneer in the handling of words and metres: his
richness of rhymes and alliterations, his marvelous feeling for tone-
color, fellow him with an English poet like Swinburne. He opened
new possibilities of metrical and stanzaic arrangements, and there-
with revealed new powers of word-use and combination in modern
English poetry; drawing on the treasures of the older word-hoard
which his study, taste, and instinct suggested. He certainly broad-
ened in this way the technic of verse, and on this side of his art
was truly remarkable. He was too that rare thing, a song-writer.
His Song of the Chattahoochee,' (A Song of the Future,' (A Song of
Love,' An Evening Song,' and others, are not only to be read but
set to music; they are felt to be songs in the full and literal sense.
The fact that he was a trained musician, a maker in the neighbor
art, qualified him peculiarly in this respect. The musician helped the
poet, the poet enriched the maker of music.
Looking to the essential traits that are to technic as the completed
structure to the scaffolding that makes it possible, Lanier was a man
of fine culture, much read, assimilative, strong of thought, endowed
with sane imagination. He did not take petty conceits or stale and
attenuated ideas and deck them out in the fine garments of art: he
had the modern zest for fact, and was abreast of the times in his
conceptions. - often an intellectual forerunner. On the problems of
State, religion, society, science, art, and literature, his words were
deep and wise; and his work reveals him as an advanced thinker on
the vital themes of his century. And along with this marked breadth
and independency of thought went a profound ethical earnestness,
having in it a subtle spirituality that above all else makes this poet
distinctive and precious. In his own lovely phrase, reversing the
wonted words, he believed in the holiness of beauty»: he perceived
(
## p. 8895 (#523) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8895
that beauty is but one phase of that Triune power, the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful, divinely interplaying into each other, never
to be dissevered without violence to each and all. Lanier applied
the Platonic philosophy to art, and it had for him perfect credence,
absolute allegiance.
These gifts and powers, then, - technical mastery, original thought,
and spiritual perception and fervor,- are to be recognized in his best
poems. In the shorter, simpler lyrics, notice how the characteristic
qualities shine out. How full of the broad spirit of worship is the
(Ballad of Trees and the Master'; how valiantly soul rises above
the failing flesh in “The Stirrup Cup'! What a knightly devotion to
womanhood is expressed in My Springs,' as high a strain as was
ever sung to wife! What a hymning of the ideal relation of word
and deed is heard in the melodious measures of Life and Song'!
And when we turn to the larger, more broadly conceived pieces, what
a stanch Americanism blows like a sea-wind through the remarkable
(Psalm of the West'; with what exaltation yet fearless fraternity the
Christ is glorified in that noble poem, “The Crystal'; and what a les-
son on the mean, sordid standards of trade is preached in 'The Sym-
phony,'— that wonderful creation, which under the allegory of music,
is vital with high suggestions for every aspiring soul. Nor must that
side of the work in which Nature is limned and worshiped be passed
by; for it includes some of the most unforgettable things. Lanier's
attitude towards Nature was that of a passionate lover; a pantheist
who felt God in everything. Clover,' From the Flats, Tampa
Robins,' Corn,' The Bee,' (The Dove,' are poems of this class, and
such as have come from no other American singer. They express his
loving observation of the picturesque phenomena of his own and other
Southern States. They transmute Nature in an ideality which fills
the air with voices not of earth, and makes the very grass whisper
immortal words.
The culmination of Lanier's art and thought and spiritual force is
found in the Hymns of the Marshes); two of which, (Sunrise' and
“The Marshes of Glynn,' are magnificently imaginative organ-chants
of a dying man, never so strong of soul as when his body hung by
a tenuous thread to life. The finest of this great series, a majestic
swan-song, was written when Lanier lay so weak that he could not
lift hand to mouth. And the marvel of it is, that poetry never was
made through which pulsed and surged a more puissant vitality.
a
These Marsh Hymns) stand among the major productions of modern
poetry.
It may be granted that Sidney Lanier in the full tide of plethoric
utterance sometimes sacrificed lucidity. His teeming fancy was now
and then in surplusage, and ran into the arabesque; though this is
(
## p. 8896 (#524) ###########################################
8896
SIDNEY LANIER
not true of his latest work. It is possible, again, that he pushed to
an extreme his theory of the close inter-relations of music and verse,
claiming for the latter not only lyric but symphonic powers,
- a view
illustrated to a degree in his Centennial Ode with its verbal orches-
tration. Poetry is a human product, and subject to human limitations.
Had Lanier lived longer, had he had a freer opportunity, doubtless
his literary bequest would have been richer and more completely
expressive of himself. But as it is, in quality and in accomplishment
Sidney Lanier takes his place as an American poet of distinction.
He is one of those rare illustrations of the union, in a son of genius,
of high character and artistic production in harmony therewith; a
spectacle feeding the heart with tender thoughts and pure ideals:-
“His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand. ”
Richard Burton
A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
INTO
NTO the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to him,
The little gray leaves were kind to him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to him
When into the woods he came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And he was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo him last,
From under the trees they drew him last;
'Twas on a tree they slew him — last,
When out of the woods he came.
## p. 8897 (#525) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8897
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
OUT
UT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side,
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried, Abide, abide,
The willful water-weeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed, Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade; the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold;
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
O'erleaning, with fickering meaning and sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl;
And many a luminous jewel alone -
Crystal clear or acloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, and amethyst -
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
XV-557
## p. 8898 (#526) ###########################################
8898
SIDNEY LANIER
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of duty call —
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main ;
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers inortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.
TAMPA ROBINS
From Poems of Sidney Lanier. Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
T**
He robin laughed in the orange-tree ::
“Ho, windy North, a fig for thee;
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me,-
Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.
“Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears),
And thrid the heavenly orange-tree
With orbits bright of minstrelsy.
“If that I hate wild winter's spite,–
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave, –
Why should I ache, the season's slave?
I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree,
Gramercy, winter's tyranny.
“I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I'll call down through the green and gold,
Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me;
Bestir thee under the orange-tree. ”
## p. 8899 (#527) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8899
EVENING SONG
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
L
OOK off, dear Love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea;
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands:
Ah! longer, longer, we.
Now in the sea's red vintage inelts the sun,
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done:
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart-
Never our lips, our hands.
LIFE AND SONG
I
From Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
F LIFE were caught by a clarionet,
And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy, and trill its fret,
And utter its heart in every deed,
Then would this breathing clarionet
Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o' the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,
Or clearly sung his true, true thought,
Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought
The perfect one of man and wife;
Or lived and sung, that Life and Song
Might each express the other's all,
Careless if life or art were long
Since both were one, to stand or fall:
So that the wonder struck the crowd,
Who shouted it about the land:
His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand !
## p. 8900 (#528) ###########################################
8900
SIDNEY LANIER
FROM THE MARSHES OF GLYNN)
In Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
0"
H, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea ?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of
Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and
free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God;
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh; lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast; full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying
lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir:
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run:
And the sea and the marsh are one.
## p. 8901 (#529) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8901
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height;
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men;
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide
comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn.
FROM THE FLATS
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyrighted 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
W"
HAT heart-ache - ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.
Nature hath no surprise;
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms -- this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.
Oh, might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears
Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Lull sings a little brook!
## p. 8902 (#530) ###########################################
8902
SIDNEY LANIER
A SONG OF THE FUTURE
SAT.
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
AIL fast, sail fast,
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea;
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste;
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste:
Go, trembling song,
And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou’rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
THE STIRRUP CUP
From “Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
D
EATH, thou’rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.
Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt;
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt:
'Tis thy rich stirrup cup to me;
I'll drink it down right smilingly.
## p. 8903 (#531) ###########################################
8903
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY M. M. RAMSEY
.
ica. »
HE Río Bravo del Norte, better known to English-speaking
readers as the Rio Grande, serves as a dividing line between
what may be termed “Saxon America” and “Latin Amer-
The latter, and now quite familiar, designation might more
aptly take the form Celtiberian America; since the European portion
of its population belongs mainly to the same race that has occupied
the Iberian peninsula from the dawn of history,- a people allied to
and similar to the great Celtic race that has been for untold ages
pushed by men of other mold ever towards the western sea and the
setting sun.
The Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Moors became
successively masters of the Iberian soil, while the great body of the
people remained substantially the same in all their inherent charac-
teristics. The spirit of clanship, always a prominent organic feature
among the Celts, and productive of numerous petty principalities, was
the primal cause of the present dialectic divergences, which are so
great as to render the common forms of speech of many of the prov-
inces of Spain mutually unintelligible to their respective inhabitants.
Before the discovery of America the majority of these clans had
become united into what was to be known as the Kingdom of Spain;
while the people inhabiting a strip of territory along the western
coast maintained a separate independence under the crown of Portu-
gal. The modern distinction between Spanish and Portuguese, which
has been perpetuated upon South-American soil, is therefore a purely
political one: no marked geographical features distinguish their terri-
torial boundaries; the Portuguese language is so close to one of the
Spanish dialects that a Gallician can be understood more readily in
Lisbon than in Madrid; and the mental temperament, the tastes and
emotions, the modes of thought, - in short, all that is individual as
distinguished from what is superficial and acquired, — will be found
identical among the people of both nations.
Between these Iberian Celts, or Celtiberians, and the Teutonic
race, German, Saxon, Scandinavian, — there are marked contrasts
which have an important bearing upon the subject under investi-
gation. The Celt is vivacious, imaginative, impulsive, with strong,
even violent emotions,-a being to love or fear; the Teuton counts
## p. 8904 (#532) ###########################################
8904
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
the cost, relies more upon facts than fancies, and is not so much to
be loved or feared as to be trusted. The Celt loyal and devout,
prone to reverence God, saint, or secular chief, and will bear a great
weight of law or ceremonial; the Teuton is fond of individual free-
dom, and hates all trammels. Each is brave in his way; but while
the Celt would fight for glory or mere love of fighting, the Teuton
would rather not fight at all unless something were to be accom-
plished.
The Roman dominion in the peninsula lasted about six hundred
and twenty years, and the Gothic kingdom two hundred and ninety-
three; and during these nine centuries the inhabitants had become
Romanized, Latinized, and Christianized, - indeed, intensely orthodox.
In the Moorish invasion they were confronted by a people alien in
race, language, and religion, - abhorred as infidels and polygamists;
and with some intervals of relaxation, there followed seven hundred
and eighty years of a war of races, in which each felt that religion
was the principal point of dispute. At length the Christian succeeded
in expelling the Moors and the Jews and establishing the Inquisition;
and thenceforth, where his hand could reach, no form of unbelief or
misbelief should be tolerated. That long “holy war” furrowed the
face of early Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin-American literature with
lines of thought to be found nowhere else on the globe; and the
effect has not yet entirely passed away. *
Shut off from the rest of the world by the mountain wall of the
Pyrenees, absorbed in religious wars and purgations and distant con-
quests, Spain and Portugal gave little heed to the change that was
coming over the mind of Europe. That change was wide, deep, and
many-sided. It has sometimes been called in English “the Baconian
philosophy. ” It was turning men's minds from words and notions to
facts and things: the world was no longer to be understood by sitting
down and thinking with closed eyes, or by reading Aristotle and
Ptolemy, but by going into the light of day, observing, experiment-
ing, and above all, measuring. The little learning that existed on
the Iberian peninsula was centuries old, and was in the possession
of the ecclesiastics, -- a conservative class, opposed to every change.
The mass of the people were profoundly ignorant, knowing only their
daily labors, their favorite sports, a few prayers and formularies of
the Church, and the legends of the neighborhood. Every further
extension of intelligence was regarded with dread, as opening a way
to the “new knowledge,” to heresy and unbelief.
*
* l'ide Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historical Works; Suárez, “Historia General
de la República del Ecuador, iii. 377; García Cubas, Diccionario Histór.
Biogr. de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,' sub voce León y García. '
## p. 8905 (#533) ###########################################
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8905
We of Saxon America are apt to look complacently upon ourselves
as considerably in advance of our neighbors to the South, at least in
material prosperity. But let us consider a moment the difference of
circumstances under which we have grown up. From the discovery
of Haiti to the founding of Jamestown was one hundred and twenty-
five years; to the landing of the Pilgrims, one hundred and thirty-
eight. During those years Europe had been growing - England and
Holland quite vigorously. Papal omnipotence had been rejected; and
already the divine right of kings and bishops was in peril. The prel-
ates had been obliged to hold a conference with the Puritans, instead
of burning them. The priority of Spain and Portugal was therefore
a disadvantage: they reached the Western Hemisphere in their intel-
lectual infancy; England in her rough, growing youth.
The American possessions of Spain and Portugal were practically
twice as remote as those of England. A royal edict took seventeen
months to travel from Madrid to Lima;* and history has not recorded
the speed of private packages. The English colonists kept close to
the eastern edge of the continent, and to navigable waters; the
most important settlements in Latin America were far inland, and
could communicate with the outer world only by means of pack-mules.
The maritime districts of the tropical regions were scarcely habit-
able by Europeans; and when the colonists moved into the interior,
it was to be shaken by earthquakes and scared by the blaze of volca-
noes. +
The English settlements were private enterprises, undertaken to
find roomy homes for the development of liberty, manhood, and
womanhood; whereas the colonization of Latin America was a national
project, and all who set out for the New World were under royal
patronage and control. Their prime object was to find gold and
honors for a needy monarch and equally needy adventurers, and gew-
gaws for court ladies. John Smith, indeed, informs us that the Eng-
lish were not without their craze for gold; but fortunately they found
little to encourage it. As the quest for gold was the chief motive
with the Spaniards, they clustered around the old seats of aboriginal
civilization, — the plateau of Mexico, Cundinamarca, Quito, and Lima.
Subsequently communities of Europeans were established at Caracas,
Santiago de Chile, the mouth of the Plata, and at various points along
the Brazilian coast; but these did not attain prominence as literary
centres until far into the eighteenth century. In the mean time, the
intervening portions of the continent were pathless expanses of prairie
* Suárez, Historia General de la República del Ecuador,' iv. 412.
+ In the middle of the seventeenth century there were, within fifty years,
five destructive earthquakes, followed by famines. - Miguel Lobo, Historia
General de las Antiguas Colonias Hispano-Americanas. '
## p. 8906 (#534) ###########################################
8906
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
and forest traversed by mighty rivers and lofty mountain ranges.
This isolation was extremely unfavorable to progress. *
We have already referred to the causes which made the Latin-
American colonist of those ages what Mr. Carlyle might have called
“a religious animal”; and in the matter of acquiring and settling the
new continent, the Church naturally took an active part. In addition
to the bishops and the parochial clergy, whose duty was to provide
for the spiritual needs of the European settlers, large numbers of the
monastic orders were assigned to the conversion of the natives. By
far the most important of these religious bodies was the Society of
Jesus, whose members are popularly known as Jesuits. They were the
latest in making their appearance; but their great business ability
enabled them to outstrip all the rest. They were able, by persuasion
or force, to command all the Indian labor they needed: and they
established great cattle ranches and sheep farms, together with mills,
workshops, warehouses, and routes of trade. Paraguay became in
effect a Jesuit State, until its prosperity raised combinations hostile
to the order.
Although these missionary monks undoubtedly exploited the Indian
to the benefit of their own treasuries, there is yet just reason to honor
their memories. Their influence was peaceful, industrial, civilizing up
to a limit. To preserve that limit uncrossed, the Inquisition was intro-
duced in 1569. It had not only the oversight of faith and morals, but
also the control of education and of the admission of books into the
country.
Such instruction as the “Holy Office was willing to sanction was
with scarcely an exception imparted by members of the monastic
orders. The frailes in their monasteries taught gratuitously reading
and the prayers of the Church; but these slender advantages were
available only in the towns. Boys might also be taught writing and
the four operations of arithmetic. As to the girls, they were taught
by the nuns reading, prayers, and the use of the needle; a few added
music and painting. It was shrewdly objected that if they should
learn to write, they might correspond with their lovers and lead to
no end of complications. Aristides Rojas, the Venezuelan historian,
has related how the first municipal school was established in Caracas.
It was twenty-four years after the founding of the city, and it required
a mission to Spain and two years of lobbying to obtain the royal
* A recent Chilean writer, José Bernardo Suárez, complaining of this mu-
tual isolation, remarks: “In Chile we know more about what is going on in
France than we do about occurrences in Venezuela or Ecuador. The several
governments ought to take concerted action to put an end to this state of
affairs, which is highly prejudicial, etc. -- Rasgos Biográficos de Mujeres
Célebres de América, page 51.
## p. 8907 (#535) ###########################################
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8907
permission to have a school at all; and its field of usefulness was at
first limited to Spanish grammar and rhetoric. *
Books could be imported only on permits, obtainable with diffi-
culty, after close scrutiny and long delay. An equally strict surveil-
lance was exercised over colonial literary productions: each volume
of each edition had to be registered separately, after donating twenty
copies to the legal and regal authorities; and the publisher had not
even the privilege of fixing the price.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
It was in such arid and sulphurous soil as has been described
that Latin-American literature had to germinate. The first cultivators
had to overcome difficulties unknown to those of happier countries;
and it is with a feeling of wonder mixed with reverence that we
realize how patiently and successfully they did overcome them.
Learning made its first appearance-
where alone it could — among
the monks.
mere modern obstinacy shrank back like a child abashed. The
Stranger glided to him and whispered, “Buy these. ”
« These were a complete set of Auerbach's novels in Eng-
lish; which, I need not say, Blinton would never have dreamt of
purchasing had he been left to his own devices.
«Buy these! ” repeated the Adept, or whatever he was, in a
,
cruel whisper. Paying the sum demanded, and trailing his vast
load of German romance, poor Blinton followed the fiend.
They reached a stall where, amongst much trash, Glatigny's
Jour de l'An d'un Vagabond' was exposed.
“Look,” said Blinton: "there is a book I have wanted some
time. Glatignys are getting rather scarce, and it is an amusing
trifle. ”
Nay, buy that,” said the implacable Stranger, pointing with
a hooked forefinger at Alison's History of Europe' in an indefi-
nite number of volumes. Blinton shuddered.
“What, buy that — and why? In Heaven's name, what could
I do with it? "
“Buy it,” repeated the persecutor, "and that” (indicating the
Ilios' of Dr. Schliemann,--a bulky work), “and these” (pointing
'
to all Theodore Alois Buckley's translations of the classics), and
these” (glancing at the collected writings of the late Mr. Hain
Friswell, and at a Life,' in more than one volume, of Mr. Glad-
stone).
The miserable Blinton paid, and trudged along, carrying the
bargains under his arm. Now one book fell out, now another
dropped by the way. Sometimes a portion of Alison came pon-
derously to earth; sometimes the Gentle Life' sank resignedly
to the ground. The Adept kept picking them up again, and
packing them under the arm of the weary Blinton.
The victim now attempted to put on an air of geniality, and
tried to enter into conversation with his tormentor.
»
(
## p. 8884 (#512) ###########################################
8884
ANDREW LANG
"He does know about books,” thought Blinton, and he must
have a weak spot somewhere. ”
So the wretched amateur made play in his best conversational
style. He talked of bindings, of Maioli, of Grolier, of De Thou,
of Derome, of Clovis Eve, of Roger Payne, of Trautz, and eke of
Bauzonnet. He discoursed of first editions, of black-letter, and
even of illustrations and vignettes. He approached the topic of
Bibles; but here his tyrant, with a fierce yet timid glance, inter-
rupted him.
Buy those! ” he hissed through his teeth.
« ”
“Those were the complete publications of the Folk-Lore
Society.
Blinton did not care for folk-lore (very bad men never do);
but he had to act as he was told.
Then, without pause or remorse, he was charged to acquire
the Ethics) of Aristotle in the agreeable versions of Williams
and Chace. Next he secured (Strathmore,' 'Chandos,' 'Under
Two Flags,' and Two Little Wooden Shoes,' and several dozen
more of Ouida's novels. The next stall was entirely filled with
school-books, old geographies, Livys, Delectuses, Arnold's Greek
Exercises,' Ollendorffs, and what not.
“Buy them all,” hissed the fiend. He seized whole boxes and
piled them on Blinton's head.
He tied up Quida's novels in two parcels with string, and
fastened each to one of the buttons above the tails of Blinton's
coat.
“ You are tired ? ” asked the tormentor. “Never mind: these
books will soon be off your hands. "
So speaking, the Stranger with amazing speed hurried Blinton
back through Holywell Street, along the Strand and up to Picca-
dilly, stopping at last at the door of Blinton's famous and very
expensive binder.
The binder opened his eyes, as well he might, at the vision of
Blinton's treasures. Then the miserable Blinton found himself,
as it were automatically and without the exercise of his will,
speaking thus:-
"Here are some things I have picked up,- extremely rare,-
and you will oblige me by binding them in your best manner,
regardless of expense. Morocco, of course; crushed levant mo-
rocco, doublé, every book of them, petits fers, my crest and coat
of arms, plenty of gilding: Spare no cost. Don't keep me
(
CC
## p. 8885 (#513) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8885
(
waiting, as you generally do;" for indeed bookbinders are the
most dilatory of the human species.
Before the astonished binder could ask the most necessary
questions, Blinton's tormentor had hurried that amateur out of
the room.
“Come on to the sale," he cried.
What sale ? » asked Blinton.
«Why, the Beckford sale; it is the thirteenth day, a lucky
day. ”
“But I have forgotten my catalogue. ”
«Where is it ? »
“In the third shelf from the top, on the right-hand side of
the ebony bookcase at home. ”
The Stranger stretched out his arm, which swiftly elongated
itself till the hand disappeared from view round the corner.
In a moment the hand returned with the catalogue.
The pair
sped on to Messrs. Sotheby's auction rooms in Wellington Street.
Everyone knows the appearance of a great book sale. The
long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles from a little
distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort of
excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct
himself. If he bids in his own person some bookseller will out-
bid him; partly because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows
little about books, and suspects that the amateur may in this
case know more. Besides, professionals always dislike amateurs,
and in this game they have a very great advantage. Blinton
knew all this, and was in the habit of giving his commissions to
a broker. But now he felt (and very naturally) as if a demon
had entered into him. (Tirante il Bianco Valorissimo Cavaliere)
was being competed for: an excessively rare romance of chivalry,
in magnificent red Venetian morocco, from Canevari's library.
The book is one of the rarest of the Aldine Press, and beauti-
fully adorned with Canevari's device,- a simple and elegant affair
in gold and colors. “Apollo is driving his chariot across the
green waves towards the rock, on which winged Pegasus is paw-
ing the ground”; though why this action of the horse should be
called “pawing ” (the animal notoriously not possessing paws), it
is hard to say.
Round this graceful design is the inscription
OPAQ KAT MIL 10E99 (straight and not crooked). In his ordinary
mood Blinton could only have admired “Tirante il Bianco' from
a distance. But now, the demon inspiring him, he rushed into
>
## p. 8886 (#514) ###########################################
8886
ANDREW LANG
>
»
>>
the lists, and challenged the great Mr. - the Napoleon of
bookselling. The price had already reached five hundred pounds.
« Six hundred,” cried Blinton.
“Guineas," said the great Mr.
«Seven hundred,” screamed Blinton,
“Guineas,” replied the other,
This arithmetical dialogue went on till even Mr. struck
his flag, with a sigh, when the maddened Blinton had said “Four
thousand. ” The cheers of the audience rewarded the largest
bid ever made for any book. As if he had not done enough, the
Stranger now impelled Blinton to contend with Mr. for
every expensive work that appeared. The audience naturally
fancied that Blinton was in the earlier stage of softening of the
brain, when a man conceives himself to have inherited boundless
wealth, and is determined to live up to it. The hammer fell for
the last time. Blinton owed some fifty thousand pounds; and
exclaimed audibly, as the influence of the fiend died out, "I am
a ruined man. "
« Then your books must be sold,” cried the Stranger; and
leaping on a chair, he addressed the audience:-
Gentlemen, I invite you to Mr. Blinton's sale, which will
immediately take place. The collection contains some very re-
markable early English poets, many first editions of the French
classics, most of the rarer Aldines, and a singular assortment of
Americana. ”
In a moment, as if by magic, the shelves round the room
were filled with Blinton's books, all tied up in big lots of some
thirty volumes each. His early Molières were fastened to old
French dictionaries and school-books. His Shakespeare quartos
were in the same lot with tattered railway novels.
(happily almost unique) of Richard Barnfield's Affectionate Shep-
heard’ was coupled with two old volumes of Chips from a Ger-
man Workshop and a cheap, imperfect example of Tom Brown's
School Days. ' Hooke's Amanda' was at the bottom of a lot
of American devotional works, where it kept company with an
Elzevir Tacitus and the Aldine Hypnerotomachia. '
The auc-
tioneer put up lot after lot, and Blinton plainly saw that the
whole affair was a “knock-out. ” His most treasured spoils were
parted with at the price of waste paper. It is an awful thing
to be present at one's own sale. No man would bid above a
few shillings. Well did Blinton know that after the knock-out the
His copy
(
## p. 8887 (#515) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8887
plunder would be shared among the grinning bidders. At last
his Adonais,' uncut, bound by Lortic, went in company with
some old Bradshaws,' the Court Guide' of 1881, and an odd
volume of the Sunday at Home, for sixpence. The Stranger
smiled a smile of peculiar malignity. Blinton leaped up to pro-
test; the room seemed to shake around him, but words would not
come to his lips.
Then he heard a familiar voice observe, as a familiar grasp
shook his shoulder:-
« Tom, Tom, what a nightmare you are enjoying! ”
He was in his own arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep
after dinner; and Mrs. Blinton was doing her best to arouse him
from his awful vision. Beside him lay L'Enfer du Bibliophile,
vu et decrit par Charles Asselineau' (Paris: Tardieu, MDCCCLX. ).
»
FROM (LETTER TO MONSIEUR DE MOLIÈRE, VALET DE
CHAMBRE DU ROI)
W""
In "Letters to Dead Authors )
Monsieur:
'ITH what awe does a writer venture into the presence of
the great Molière ! As a courtier in your time would
scratch humbly (with his comb! ) at the door of the Grand
Monarch, so I presume to draw near your dwelling among the
Immortals. You, like the King who among all his titles has now
none so proud as that of the friend of Molière — you found your
dominions small, humble, and distracted; you raised them to the
dignity of an empire: what Louis the XIV. did for France you
achieved for French comedy; and the bâton of Scapin still wields
its sway, though the sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim.
For the King the Pyrenees (or so he fancied) ceased to exist;
by a more magnificent conquest you overcame the Channel. If
England vanquished your country's arms, it was through you that
France ferum victorem cepit, and restored the dynasty of Comedy
to the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden
borrowed 'L'Étourdi,' our tardy apish nation has lived in mat-
ters theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France.
In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered.
While you lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was
the congenial business of English playwrights to foist their rustic
## p. 8888 (#516) ###########################################
8888
ANDREW LANG
>
grossness and their large Fescennine jests into the urban page of
Molière. Now they are diversely occupied; and it is their affair
to lend modesty where they borrow wit, and to spare a blush to
the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. But still, as has ever been
our wont since Etherege saw and envied and imitated your suc-
cesses— still we pilfer the plays of France, and take our bien, as
you said in your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We
are the privateers of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that
a comedy pleases the town which has not first been “cut out”
from the countrymen of Molière. Why this should be, and
what «tenebriferous star” (as Paracelsus, your companion in the
Dialogues des Morts,' would have believed) thus darkens the sun
of English humor, we know not; but certainly our dependence
on France is the sincerest tribute to you. Without you, neither
Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor «a wilderness of monkeys” like Scar-
ron, could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to
Europe.
While we owe to you, monsieur, the beautiful advent of Com-
edy, fair and beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes, . it
is still to you that we must turn when of comedies we desire the
best. If you studied with daily and nightly care the works of
Plautus and Terence, if you let no musty bouquin escape you"
(so your enemies declared), it was to some purpose that you
labored. Shakespeare excepted, you eclipsed all who came before
you: and from those that follow, however fresh, we turn;
turn from Regnard and Beaumarchais, from Sheridan and Gold-
smith, from Musset and Pailleron and Labiche, to that crowded
world of your creation. « Creations” one may well say, for you
anticipated Nature herself: you gave us, before she did, in
Alceste a Rousseau who was a gentleman, not a lacquey; in a
mot of Don Juan's the secret of the new religion and the watch-
word of Comte, l'amour de l'humanité.
Before you where can we find, save in Rabelais, a French-
man with humor; and where, unless it be in Montaigne, the wise
philosophy of a secular civilization ? With a heart the most ten-
der, delicate, loving, and generous,-a heart often in agony and
torment, — you had to make life endurable (we cannot doubt it)
without any whisper of promise or hope or warning from reli-
gion. Yes, in an age when the greatest mind of all, the mind of
Pascal, proclaimed that the only hope was in voluntary blindness,
that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens, you,
»
we
## p. 8889 (#517) ###########################################
ANDREW LANG
8889
monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to pretend to see what you
found invisible.
In religion you beheld no promise of help. When the Jesuits
and Jansenists of your time saw, each of them, in Tartuffe the
portrait of their rivals (as each of the laughable Marquises in
your play conceived that you were girding at his neighbor), you
all the while were mocking every credulous excess of faith. In
the sermons preached to Agnès we surely hear your private
laughter; in the arguments for credulity which are presented
to Don Juan by his valet we listen to the eternal self-defense of
superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for the perma-
nent element of life — precisely where Pascal recognized all that
was most fleeting and unsubstantial — in divertissement; in the
pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence,
an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the gods of the
Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played,
as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note comes in! What
pity, and in the laughter what an accent of tears, as of rain in
the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and human as you;
none has had a heart like you to feel for his butts, and to leave
them sometimes, in a sense, superior to their tormentors. Sgan-
arelle, M. de Pourceaugnac, George Dandin, and the rest — our
sympathy somehow is with them, after all; and M. Pourceaugnac
is a gentleman, despite his misadventures.
Though triumphant Youth and malicious Love in your plays
may batter and defeat Jealousy and Old Age, yet they have not
all the victory, or you did not mean that they should win it.
They go off with laughter, and their victim with a grimace;
but in him we that are past our youth behold an actor in an un-
ending tragedy,—the defeat of a generation. Your sympathy is
not wholly with the dogs that are having their day; you can
throw a bone or a crust to the dog that has had his, and has
been taught that it is over and ended. Yourself not unlearned
in shame, in jealousy, in endurance of the wanton pride of men,
(how could the poor player and the husband of Celimène be
untaught in that experience ? ) you never sided quite heartily, as
other comedians have done, with young prosperity and rank and
power.
## p. 8890 (#518) ###########################################
8890
ANDREW LANG
LES ROSES DE SÂDI
From Ban and Arrière Ban)
his morning I I
T'They were thrust in the band that my bodice incloses,
But the breast-knots were broken, the roses went free.
The breast-knots were broken: the roses together
Floated forth on the wings of the wind and the weather,
And they drifted afar down the streams of the sea.
And the sea was as red as when sunset uncloses;
But my raiment is sweet from the scent of the roses,-
Thou shalt know, love, how fragrant a memory can be.
THE ODYSSEY
Prefixed to the Butcher-Lang translation
A
S ONE that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan Isle forgets the Main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,-
So, gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers;
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
## p. 8891 (#519) ###########################################
8891
SIDNEY LANIER
(1842-1881)
BY RICHARD BURTON
HE quiet steady widening of the influence of Sidney Lanier
since his death is more than a pleasant justification of faith
to those who have loved him and believed in him from the
first. It suggests the comforting thought that good literature, uncon-
ventional in form and original in quality, although for this very
reason slower to get a hearing, is sure to
receive the eventual recognition it deserves.
Sixteen years have elapsed since Lanier's
taking-off; and he is now seen more clearly
every day to be the most important native
singer the Southern United States has pro-
duced, and one of the most distinctive and
lovely of American singers wherever born.
Enthusiastic admirers and followers he has
always attracted to him; now the general
opinion begins to swing round to what
seemed to many, a little time ago, the ex-
travagant encomium of partiality and preju-
dice.
SIDNEY LANIER
The circumstances of Sidney Lanier's
life furnish a pathetically tragic setting to his pure-souled, beautiful
work. A Georgian, he was born at Macon, February 30, 1842; his
father was a well-known lawyer of that city. The family on the
male side was of Huguenot French descent; on the maternal side the
stock was Scotch. Sidney was educated at Oglethorpe College in his
native State. The war found him on the Confederate side; and while
a prisoner he consoled his spirit with his beloved flute and wrote
fugitive verses, - early pledges of the twin master passions of Lanier's
whole life, literature and music. It was while immured thus that
he and Father Tabb, the Maryland poet-priest, struck up the friend-
ship which the latter has commemorated in more than one loving
song. Lanier's constitution was delicate; and the exposures and hard-
ships of war developed the seeds of the consumption which he fought
heroically through young manhood and into middle life, and finally
## p. 8892 (#520) ###########################################
8892
SIDNEY LANIER
succumbed to. Some years of experimental occupation followed upon
the war experience: he was successively clerk, teacher, and lawyer,
taking up the legal profession at the earnest instigation of his father,
who could not realize that Lanier's vocation was so different from his
own. The letter which the son wrote from Baltimore, taking the
decisive step that made him a literary man and musician for better
or worse, is impressive and revelatory of his character:-
«I have given your last letter the fullest and most careful consideration.
After doing so, I feel sure that Macon is not the place for me. If you could
taste the delicious crystalline air and the champagne breeze that I've just been
rushing about in, I am equally sure that in point of climate you would agree
with me that my chance of life is ten times as great here as in Macon. Then
as to business. Why should I — nay, how can I – settle myself down to be a
third-rate struggling lawyer for the balance of my little life, as long as there
is a certainty almost absolute that I can do some other thing so much better?
My dear father, think how for twenty years, through poverty, through
pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial atmosphere
of a farcical college and of a bare army, and then of an exacting business
life,- through all of the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with
literary people and literary ways,– I say, think how, in spite of all these
depressing circumstances and of a thousand more which I could enumerate,
these two figures of music and of poetry have kept in my heart so that I
could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me, that I begin to
have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime arts,
after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much
bitterness ? »
One can well believe that with a man like Lanier, such a choice
had in it the solemnity of a consecration. His ideal of Art in the
broad sense—whether literary or other — was so lofty that a dedica-
tion of himself to the service was the most serious of acts. Nor,
through whatever of set-back, stress, and failure, did he for a moment
swerve from that ideal; he held himself as a very priest of Beauty,
dignifying at once himself and his calling.
Lanier's literary career began with the publishing of a novel,
(Tiger Lilies) (1867), a book founded on his war experiences, and not
a success: fiction was not his natural medium of expression. There
is luxuriant unpruned imagination in the story, however, and it is
evident that a poet in his first ferment of fancy is hiding there.
Meanwhile Lanier was sending his poems to the magazines and get-
ting them back again, the proverbial editor on the lookout for bud-
ding genius proving mostly chimerical. Gradually a critic here and
there became aware of his worth. Corn. ' one of his finely repre-
sentative pieces, appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1875, and at-
tracted attention which led to his being employed to write the words
for a cantata by Dudley Buck, performed at the Centennial Exhibition
## p. 8893 (#521) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8893
in the next year. The Centennial year, too, marks the appearance of
the first edition of his poems,-a volume containing tentative imma-
ture verse, though promising much to one of critical foresight. The
Independent and the Century also opened their doors to the South-
ern singer. But these chance contributions to periodicals— birds of
passage finding a lodgment as it might hap — were grotesquely in-
adequate for the support of a man with a family; — for so far back as
1867, the year his first book was published, he had married Miss Mary
H. Day, also of Macon,- a woman who in all the gracious ministries
of heart and home and spirit was his leal mate. Hence was he
forced to do hack-work; a sorry spectacle of Pegasus in harness. He
could only use his pen between hemorrhages; and the slender finan-
cial resources thus heavily taxed would have utterly failed had it not
been for the kind ministries of brother and father. Lanier made a
guide-book on Florida, as unlike the customary manual as an Arabian
blood mare is unlike a dray-horse. He edited Froissart for boys, -a
more congenial task; and did youth the same service with respect to
King Arthur, the Mabinogion,' and Bishop Percy. Brave, beautiful
books they are; for the full-mouthed old words and the bygone deeds
of chivalry both appealed to the poet-editor. Then in 1879 came what
looked like brighter fortune: he was appointed lecturer on English
literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to which city he
had gone in 1873 to take the position of first flute in the Peabody
Orchestra. It must be remembered that to the end music and poetry
were the beacon stars in Lanier's overcast, uncertain skies.
Now a
modest yearly income at least was assured, — for the first time in his
experience.
The alleviation was but brief; for two years later, in the
mountains of North Carolina, whither he had wearily gone to make one
more struggle for breath, Sidney Lanier's noble soul was loosened
from its frail tenement of flesh, and, his wife beside him, he fell on
sleep :-
« From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure. »
But that final span of time enabled him to prosecute with diligence
and system his favorite studies in the old English literature, and to
leave two critical volumes of great value and individuality. (The
Science of English Verse,' published in 1880, is an elaborate and
unique analysis of the technical structure and underlying principles
of the native metric, developing a new and most interesting theory:
that the time quality obtains in English poetry as in music; this
thesis being aptly illustrated from the sister art. "The English Novel
and the Principles of its Development,' which appeared three years
later, in 1883, is made up of lectures delivered at Johns Hopkins, at
## p. 8894 (#522) ###########################################
8894
SIDNEY LANIER
a time when Lanier was obliged to sit down while speaking, so weak
was he.
The book is the most philosophic treatment of the develop-
ment of our fiction that has been written, seizing upon the central
fact of the steady growth of the idea of personality in the novel from
Greek days to the present time. It was not until 1884, several years
after his death, that his poems were collected finally into a volume,
with an admirable introductory essay upon the man and his work
by Dr. William Hayes Ward. With this book Lanier came into his
own of praise and love.
Lanier's characteristics as a poet - and despite his achievements
in prose, it is as a poet he must be considered primarily - are such
as to separate him from other American makers of literature. In the
first place, his work has the glow and color of the South, - an exuber-
ance of imagination and a rhythmic sweep which awaken a kind of
exultant delight in the sensitive reader. A consummate artist, Lanier
showed himself a pioneer in the handling of words and metres: his
richness of rhymes and alliterations, his marvelous feeling for tone-
color, fellow him with an English poet like Swinburne. He opened
new possibilities of metrical and stanzaic arrangements, and there-
with revealed new powers of word-use and combination in modern
English poetry; drawing on the treasures of the older word-hoard
which his study, taste, and instinct suggested. He certainly broad-
ened in this way the technic of verse, and on this side of his art
was truly remarkable. He was too that rare thing, a song-writer.
His Song of the Chattahoochee,' (A Song of the Future,' (A Song of
Love,' An Evening Song,' and others, are not only to be read but
set to music; they are felt to be songs in the full and literal sense.
The fact that he was a trained musician, a maker in the neighbor
art, qualified him peculiarly in this respect. The musician helped the
poet, the poet enriched the maker of music.
Looking to the essential traits that are to technic as the completed
structure to the scaffolding that makes it possible, Lanier was a man
of fine culture, much read, assimilative, strong of thought, endowed
with sane imagination. He did not take petty conceits or stale and
attenuated ideas and deck them out in the fine garments of art: he
had the modern zest for fact, and was abreast of the times in his
conceptions. - often an intellectual forerunner. On the problems of
State, religion, society, science, art, and literature, his words were
deep and wise; and his work reveals him as an advanced thinker on
the vital themes of his century. And along with this marked breadth
and independency of thought went a profound ethical earnestness,
having in it a subtle spirituality that above all else makes this poet
distinctive and precious. In his own lovely phrase, reversing the
wonted words, he believed in the holiness of beauty»: he perceived
(
## p. 8895 (#523) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8895
that beauty is but one phase of that Triune power, the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful, divinely interplaying into each other, never
to be dissevered without violence to each and all. Lanier applied
the Platonic philosophy to art, and it had for him perfect credence,
absolute allegiance.
These gifts and powers, then, - technical mastery, original thought,
and spiritual perception and fervor,- are to be recognized in his best
poems. In the shorter, simpler lyrics, notice how the characteristic
qualities shine out. How full of the broad spirit of worship is the
(Ballad of Trees and the Master'; how valiantly soul rises above
the failing flesh in “The Stirrup Cup'! What a knightly devotion to
womanhood is expressed in My Springs,' as high a strain as was
ever sung to wife! What a hymning of the ideal relation of word
and deed is heard in the melodious measures of Life and Song'!
And when we turn to the larger, more broadly conceived pieces, what
a stanch Americanism blows like a sea-wind through the remarkable
(Psalm of the West'; with what exaltation yet fearless fraternity the
Christ is glorified in that noble poem, “The Crystal'; and what a les-
son on the mean, sordid standards of trade is preached in 'The Sym-
phony,'— that wonderful creation, which under the allegory of music,
is vital with high suggestions for every aspiring soul. Nor must that
side of the work in which Nature is limned and worshiped be passed
by; for it includes some of the most unforgettable things. Lanier's
attitude towards Nature was that of a passionate lover; a pantheist
who felt God in everything. Clover,' From the Flats, Tampa
Robins,' Corn,' The Bee,' (The Dove,' are poems of this class, and
such as have come from no other American singer. They express his
loving observation of the picturesque phenomena of his own and other
Southern States. They transmute Nature in an ideality which fills
the air with voices not of earth, and makes the very grass whisper
immortal words.
The culmination of Lanier's art and thought and spiritual force is
found in the Hymns of the Marshes); two of which, (Sunrise' and
“The Marshes of Glynn,' are magnificently imaginative organ-chants
of a dying man, never so strong of soul as when his body hung by
a tenuous thread to life. The finest of this great series, a majestic
swan-song, was written when Lanier lay so weak that he could not
lift hand to mouth. And the marvel of it is, that poetry never was
made through which pulsed and surged a more puissant vitality.
a
These Marsh Hymns) stand among the major productions of modern
poetry.
It may be granted that Sidney Lanier in the full tide of plethoric
utterance sometimes sacrificed lucidity. His teeming fancy was now
and then in surplusage, and ran into the arabesque; though this is
(
## p. 8896 (#524) ###########################################
8896
SIDNEY LANIER
not true of his latest work. It is possible, again, that he pushed to
an extreme his theory of the close inter-relations of music and verse,
claiming for the latter not only lyric but symphonic powers,
- a view
illustrated to a degree in his Centennial Ode with its verbal orches-
tration. Poetry is a human product, and subject to human limitations.
Had Lanier lived longer, had he had a freer opportunity, doubtless
his literary bequest would have been richer and more completely
expressive of himself. But as it is, in quality and in accomplishment
Sidney Lanier takes his place as an American poet of distinction.
He is one of those rare illustrations of the union, in a son of genius,
of high character and artistic production in harmony therewith; a
spectacle feeding the heart with tender thoughts and pure ideals:-
“His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand. ”
Richard Burton
A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
INTO
NTO the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to him,
The little gray leaves were kind to him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to him
When into the woods he came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And he was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo him last,
From under the trees they drew him last;
'Twas on a tree they slew him — last,
When out of the woods he came.
## p. 8897 (#525) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8897
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
OUT
UT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side,
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.
All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried, Abide, abide,
The willful water-weeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed, Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.
High o'er the hills of Habersham,
Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold
Fair tales of shade; the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold;
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
O'erleaning, with fickering meaning and sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold
Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.
And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl;
And many a luminous jewel alone -
Crystal clear or acloud with mist,
Ruby, garnet, and amethyst -
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
XV-557
## p. 8898 (#526) ###########################################
8898
SIDNEY LANIER
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.
But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward the voices of duty call —
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main ;
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers inortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.
TAMPA ROBINS
From Poems of Sidney Lanier. Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
T**
He robin laughed in the orange-tree ::
“Ho, windy North, a fig for thee;
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me,-
Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.
“Burn, golden globes in leafy sky,
My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres
(Blithe meteor that no mortal fears),
And thrid the heavenly orange-tree
With orbits bright of minstrelsy.
“If that I hate wild winter's spite,–
The gibbet trees, the world in white,
The sky but gray wind over a grave, –
Why should I ache, the season's slave?
I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree,
Gramercy, winter's tyranny.
“I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I'll call down through the green and gold,
Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me;
Bestir thee under the orange-tree. ”
## p. 8899 (#527) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8899
EVENING SONG
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
L
OOK off, dear Love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea;
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands:
Ah! longer, longer, we.
Now in the sea's red vintage inelts the sun,
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine,
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'Tis done:
Love, lay thine hand in mine.
Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort heaven's heart;
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted sands.
O night! divorce our sun and sky apart-
Never our lips, our hands.
LIFE AND SONG
I
From Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
F LIFE were caught by a clarionet,
And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy, and trill its fret,
And utter its heart in every deed,
Then would this breathing clarionet
Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o' the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,
Or clearly sung his true, true thought,
Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought
The perfect one of man and wife;
Or lived and sung, that Life and Song
Might each express the other's all,
Careless if life or art were long
Since both were one, to stand or fall:
So that the wonder struck the crowd,
Who shouted it about the land:
His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand !
## p. 8900 (#528) ###########################################
8900
SIDNEY LANIER
FROM THE MARSHES OF GLYNN)
In Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
0"
H, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea ?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of
Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and
free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain.
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God;
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh; lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast; full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
Here and there,
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying
lanes,
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow; a thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir:
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run:
And the sea and the marsh are one.
## p. 8901 (#529) ###########################################
SIDNEY LANIER
8901
How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height;
And it is night.
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men;
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide
comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvelous marshes of Glynn.
FROM THE FLATS
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyrighted 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
W"
HAT heart-ache - ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.
Nature hath no surprise;
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms -- this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.
Oh, might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears
Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Lull sings a little brook!
## p. 8902 (#530) ###########################################
8902
SIDNEY LANIER
A SONG OF THE FUTURE
SAT.
From (Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
AIL fast, sail fast,
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea;
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste;
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste:
Go, trembling song,
And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou’rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.
THE STIRRUP CUP
From “Poems of Sidney Lanier. ) Copyright 1884 and 1891, by Mary D. Lanier,
and published by Charles Scribner's Sons
D
EATH, thou’rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.
Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt;
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt:
'Tis thy rich stirrup cup to me;
I'll drink it down right smilingly.
## p. 8903 (#531) ###########################################
8903
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY M. M. RAMSEY
.
ica. »
HE Río Bravo del Norte, better known to English-speaking
readers as the Rio Grande, serves as a dividing line between
what may be termed “Saxon America” and “Latin Amer-
The latter, and now quite familiar, designation might more
aptly take the form Celtiberian America; since the European portion
of its population belongs mainly to the same race that has occupied
the Iberian peninsula from the dawn of history,- a people allied to
and similar to the great Celtic race that has been for untold ages
pushed by men of other mold ever towards the western sea and the
setting sun.
The Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Moors became
successively masters of the Iberian soil, while the great body of the
people remained substantially the same in all their inherent charac-
teristics. The spirit of clanship, always a prominent organic feature
among the Celts, and productive of numerous petty principalities, was
the primal cause of the present dialectic divergences, which are so
great as to render the common forms of speech of many of the prov-
inces of Spain mutually unintelligible to their respective inhabitants.
Before the discovery of America the majority of these clans had
become united into what was to be known as the Kingdom of Spain;
while the people inhabiting a strip of territory along the western
coast maintained a separate independence under the crown of Portu-
gal. The modern distinction between Spanish and Portuguese, which
has been perpetuated upon South-American soil, is therefore a purely
political one: no marked geographical features distinguish their terri-
torial boundaries; the Portuguese language is so close to one of the
Spanish dialects that a Gallician can be understood more readily in
Lisbon than in Madrid; and the mental temperament, the tastes and
emotions, the modes of thought, - in short, all that is individual as
distinguished from what is superficial and acquired, — will be found
identical among the people of both nations.
Between these Iberian Celts, or Celtiberians, and the Teutonic
race, German, Saxon, Scandinavian, — there are marked contrasts
which have an important bearing upon the subject under investi-
gation. The Celt is vivacious, imaginative, impulsive, with strong,
even violent emotions,-a being to love or fear; the Teuton counts
## p. 8904 (#532) ###########################################
8904
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
the cost, relies more upon facts than fancies, and is not so much to
be loved or feared as to be trusted. The Celt loyal and devout,
prone to reverence God, saint, or secular chief, and will bear a great
weight of law or ceremonial; the Teuton is fond of individual free-
dom, and hates all trammels. Each is brave in his way; but while
the Celt would fight for glory or mere love of fighting, the Teuton
would rather not fight at all unless something were to be accom-
plished.
The Roman dominion in the peninsula lasted about six hundred
and twenty years, and the Gothic kingdom two hundred and ninety-
three; and during these nine centuries the inhabitants had become
Romanized, Latinized, and Christianized, - indeed, intensely orthodox.
In the Moorish invasion they were confronted by a people alien in
race, language, and religion, - abhorred as infidels and polygamists;
and with some intervals of relaxation, there followed seven hundred
and eighty years of a war of races, in which each felt that religion
was the principal point of dispute. At length the Christian succeeded
in expelling the Moors and the Jews and establishing the Inquisition;
and thenceforth, where his hand could reach, no form of unbelief or
misbelief should be tolerated. That long “holy war” furrowed the
face of early Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin-American literature with
lines of thought to be found nowhere else on the globe; and the
effect has not yet entirely passed away. *
Shut off from the rest of the world by the mountain wall of the
Pyrenees, absorbed in religious wars and purgations and distant con-
quests, Spain and Portugal gave little heed to the change that was
coming over the mind of Europe. That change was wide, deep, and
many-sided. It has sometimes been called in English “the Baconian
philosophy. ” It was turning men's minds from words and notions to
facts and things: the world was no longer to be understood by sitting
down and thinking with closed eyes, or by reading Aristotle and
Ptolemy, but by going into the light of day, observing, experiment-
ing, and above all, measuring. The little learning that existed on
the Iberian peninsula was centuries old, and was in the possession
of the ecclesiastics, -- a conservative class, opposed to every change.
The mass of the people were profoundly ignorant, knowing only their
daily labors, their favorite sports, a few prayers and formularies of
the Church, and the legends of the neighborhood. Every further
extension of intelligence was regarded with dread, as opening a way
to the “new knowledge,” to heresy and unbelief.
*
* l'ide Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historical Works; Suárez, “Historia General
de la República del Ecuador, iii. 377; García Cubas, Diccionario Histór.
Biogr. de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,' sub voce León y García. '
## p. 8905 (#533) ###########################################
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8905
We of Saxon America are apt to look complacently upon ourselves
as considerably in advance of our neighbors to the South, at least in
material prosperity. But let us consider a moment the difference of
circumstances under which we have grown up. From the discovery
of Haiti to the founding of Jamestown was one hundred and twenty-
five years; to the landing of the Pilgrims, one hundred and thirty-
eight. During those years Europe had been growing - England and
Holland quite vigorously. Papal omnipotence had been rejected; and
already the divine right of kings and bishops was in peril. The prel-
ates had been obliged to hold a conference with the Puritans, instead
of burning them. The priority of Spain and Portugal was therefore
a disadvantage: they reached the Western Hemisphere in their intel-
lectual infancy; England in her rough, growing youth.
The American possessions of Spain and Portugal were practically
twice as remote as those of England. A royal edict took seventeen
months to travel from Madrid to Lima;* and history has not recorded
the speed of private packages. The English colonists kept close to
the eastern edge of the continent, and to navigable waters; the
most important settlements in Latin America were far inland, and
could communicate with the outer world only by means of pack-mules.
The maritime districts of the tropical regions were scarcely habit-
able by Europeans; and when the colonists moved into the interior,
it was to be shaken by earthquakes and scared by the blaze of volca-
noes. +
The English settlements were private enterprises, undertaken to
find roomy homes for the development of liberty, manhood, and
womanhood; whereas the colonization of Latin America was a national
project, and all who set out for the New World were under royal
patronage and control. Their prime object was to find gold and
honors for a needy monarch and equally needy adventurers, and gew-
gaws for court ladies. John Smith, indeed, informs us that the Eng-
lish were not without their craze for gold; but fortunately they found
little to encourage it. As the quest for gold was the chief motive
with the Spaniards, they clustered around the old seats of aboriginal
civilization, — the plateau of Mexico, Cundinamarca, Quito, and Lima.
Subsequently communities of Europeans were established at Caracas,
Santiago de Chile, the mouth of the Plata, and at various points along
the Brazilian coast; but these did not attain prominence as literary
centres until far into the eighteenth century. In the mean time, the
intervening portions of the continent were pathless expanses of prairie
* Suárez, Historia General de la República del Ecuador,' iv. 412.
+ In the middle of the seventeenth century there were, within fifty years,
five destructive earthquakes, followed by famines. - Miguel Lobo, Historia
General de las Antiguas Colonias Hispano-Americanas. '
## p. 8906 (#534) ###########################################
8906
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
and forest traversed by mighty rivers and lofty mountain ranges.
This isolation was extremely unfavorable to progress. *
We have already referred to the causes which made the Latin-
American colonist of those ages what Mr. Carlyle might have called
“a religious animal”; and in the matter of acquiring and settling the
new continent, the Church naturally took an active part. In addition
to the bishops and the parochial clergy, whose duty was to provide
for the spiritual needs of the European settlers, large numbers of the
monastic orders were assigned to the conversion of the natives. By
far the most important of these religious bodies was the Society of
Jesus, whose members are popularly known as Jesuits. They were the
latest in making their appearance; but their great business ability
enabled them to outstrip all the rest. They were able, by persuasion
or force, to command all the Indian labor they needed: and they
established great cattle ranches and sheep farms, together with mills,
workshops, warehouses, and routes of trade. Paraguay became in
effect a Jesuit State, until its prosperity raised combinations hostile
to the order.
Although these missionary monks undoubtedly exploited the Indian
to the benefit of their own treasuries, there is yet just reason to honor
their memories. Their influence was peaceful, industrial, civilizing up
to a limit. To preserve that limit uncrossed, the Inquisition was intro-
duced in 1569. It had not only the oversight of faith and morals, but
also the control of education and of the admission of books into the
country.
Such instruction as the “Holy Office was willing to sanction was
with scarcely an exception imparted by members of the monastic
orders. The frailes in their monasteries taught gratuitously reading
and the prayers of the Church; but these slender advantages were
available only in the towns. Boys might also be taught writing and
the four operations of arithmetic. As to the girls, they were taught
by the nuns reading, prayers, and the use of the needle; a few added
music and painting. It was shrewdly objected that if they should
learn to write, they might correspond with their lovers and lead to
no end of complications. Aristides Rojas, the Venezuelan historian,
has related how the first municipal school was established in Caracas.
It was twenty-four years after the founding of the city, and it required
a mission to Spain and two years of lobbying to obtain the royal
* A recent Chilean writer, José Bernardo Suárez, complaining of this mu-
tual isolation, remarks: “In Chile we know more about what is going on in
France than we do about occurrences in Venezuela or Ecuador. The several
governments ought to take concerted action to put an end to this state of
affairs, which is highly prejudicial, etc. -- Rasgos Biográficos de Mujeres
Célebres de América, page 51.
## p. 8907 (#535) ###########################################
LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE
8907
permission to have a school at all; and its field of usefulness was at
first limited to Spanish grammar and rhetoric. *
Books could be imported only on permits, obtainable with diffi-
culty, after close scrutiny and long delay. An equally strict surveil-
lance was exercised over colonial literary productions: each volume
of each edition had to be registered separately, after donating twenty
copies to the legal and regal authorities; and the publisher had not
even the privilege of fixing the price.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
It was in such arid and sulphurous soil as has been described
that Latin-American literature had to germinate. The first cultivators
had to overcome difficulties unknown to those of happier countries;
and it is with a feeling of wonder mixed with reverence that we
realize how patiently and successfully they did overcome them.
Learning made its first appearance-
where alone it could — among
the monks.
