Chapter III: The Period of Conflict (1840-1876) (3)

The explanation is simple. Europeans have not yet rid themselves of the idea that America is the strange, wild land Cooper's _Pioneers_, and that any poetry produced here must naturally be uncouth, misshapen, defiant of all poetic laws or traditions. To such critics Whitman's crudity seems typical of a country where one is in nightly danger of losing his scalp, where arguments are settled by revolvers, and where a hungry man needs only to shoot a buffalo or a bear from his back door. Meanwhile America, the country that planted colleges and churches in a wilderness, that loves liberty because she honors law, that never saw a knight in armor but that has, even in her plainsmen and lumberjacks, a chivalry for woman that would adorn a Bayard,--that real America ignores the bulk of Whitman's work simply because she knows that, of all her poets, he is the least representative of her culture, her ideals, her heroic and aspiring life.

[Sidenote: DRUM TAPS]

The second division of Whitman's work is made up chiefly of verses written in war time, to some of which he gave the significant title, _Drum Taps_. In such poems as as "Beat, Beat, Drums," "Cavalry Crossing a Ford" and "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame" he reflected the emotional excitement of '61 and the stern days that followed. Note, for example, the startling vigor of "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors," which depicts an old negro woman by the roadside, looking with wonder on the free flag which she sees for the first time aloft over marching men:

Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human,
With your woolly-white and turban'd head and bare bony feet?
Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

Another side of the war is reflected in such poems as "Come up from the Fields, Father," an exquisite picture of an old mother and father receiving the news of their son's death on the battlefield. In the same class belong two fine tributes, "O Captain, My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," written in moments of noble emotion when the news came that Lincoln was dead. The former tribute, with its rhythmic swing and lyric refrain, indicates what Whitman might have done in poetry had he been a more patient workman. So also does "Pioneers," a lyric that is wholly American and Western and exultant:

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!

[Sidenote: LATER POEMS]

In the third class of Whitman's works are the poems written late in life, when he had learned to suppress his blatant egotism and to pay some little attention to poetic form and melody. Though his lines are still crude and irregular, many of them move to a powerful rhythm, such as the impressive "With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea," which suggests the surge and beat of breakers on the shore. In others he gives finely imaginative expression to an ideal or a yearning, and his verse rises to high poetic levels. Note this allegory of the spider, an insect that, when adrift or in a strange place, sends out delicate filaments on the air currents until one thread takes hold of some solid substance and is used as a bridge over the unknown:

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect
them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul

Among the best of Whitman's works are his poems to death. "Joy, Shipmate, Joy," "Death's Valley," "Darest Thou Now, O Soul," "Last Invocation," "Good-Bye, My Fancy,"--in such haunting lyrics he reflects the natural view of death, not as a terrible or tragic or final event but as a confident going forth to meet new experiences. Other notable poems that well repay the reading are "The Mystic Trumpeter," "The Man-of-War Bird," "The Ox Tamer," "Thanks in Old Age" and "Aboard at a Ship's Helm."

In naming the above works our purpose is simply to lure the reader away from the insufferable Whitmanesque "chant" and to attract attention to a few poems that sound a new note in literature, a note of freedom, of joy, of superb confidence, which warms the heart when we hear it. When these poems are known others will suggest themselves: "Rise, O Days, from Your Fathomless Deeps," "I Hear America Singing," "There was a Boy Went Forth," "The Road Unknown," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." There is magic in such names; but unfortunately in most cases the reader will find only an alluring title and a few scattered lines of poetry; the rest is Whitman.

[Sidenote: DEMOCRACY]

The author of the "Song of Myself" proclaimed himself the poet of democracy and wrote many verses on his alleged subject; but those who read them will soon tire of one whose idea of democracy was that any man is as good, as wise, as godlike as any other. Perhaps his best work in this field is "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood," a patriotic poem read at "Commencement" time in Dartmouth College (1872). There is too much of vainglorious boasting in the poem (for America should be modest, and can afford to be modest), but it has enough of prophetic vision and exalted imagination to make us overlook its unworthy spread-eagleism.

[Sidenote: PRAYER OF COLUMBUS]

As a farewell to Whitman one should read what is perhaps his noblest single work, "The Prayer of Columbus." The poem is supposed to reflect the thought of Columbus when, as a worn-out voyager, an old man on his last expedition, he looked out over his wrecked ships to the lonely sea beyond; but the reader may see in it another picture, that of a broken old man in his solitary house at Camden, writing with a trembling hand the lines which reflect his unshaken confidence:

My terminus near,
The clouds already closing in upon me,
The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost,
I yield my ships to Thee
My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,
My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd;
Let the old timbers part, I will not part,
I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,
Thee, Thee at least I know.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?
What do I know of life? what of myself?
I know not even my own work past or present;
Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,
Mocking, perplexing me.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine, unseal'd my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

* * * * *

THE PROSE WRITERS

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Emerson is the mountaineer of our literature; to read him is to have the impression of being on the heights. It is solitary there, far removed from ordinary affairs; but the air is keen, the outlook grand, the heavens near. Our companions are the familiar earth by day or the mysterious stars by night, and these are good if only to recall the silent splendor of God's universe amid the pother of human inventions. There also the very spirit of liberty, which seems to have its dwelling among the hills, enters into us and makes us sympathize with Emerson's message of individual freedom.

It is still a question whether Emerson should be classed with the poets or prose writers, and our only reason for placing him with the latter is that his "Nature" seems more typical than his "Wood Notes," though in truth both works convey precisely the same message. He was a great man who used prose or verse as suited his mood at the moment; but he was never a great poet, and only on rare occasions was he a great prose writer.

LIFE. Emerson has been called "the wingéd Franklin," "the Yankee
Shelley" and other contradictory names which strive to express the
union of shrewd sense and lofty idealism that led him to write
"Hitch your wagon to a star" and many another aphorism intended to
bring heaven and earth close together. We shall indicate enough of
his inheritance if we call him a Puritan of the Puritans, a
moralist descended from seven generations of heroic ministers who
had helped to make America a free nation, and who had practiced the
love of God and man and country before preaching it to their
congregations.

The quality of these ancestors entered into Emerson and gave him
the granite steadfastness that is one of his marked
characteristics. Meeting him in his serene old age one would hardly
suspect him of heroism; but to meet him in childhood is to
understand the kind of man he was, and must be. If you would
appreciate the quality of that childhood, picture to yourself a
bare house with an open fire and plenty of books, but little else
of comfort. There are a mother and six children in the house,
desperately poor; for the father is dead and has left his family
nothing and everything,--nothing that makes life rich, everything
in the way of ideals and blessed memories to make life wealthy. The
mother works as only a poor woman can from morning till night. The
children go to school by day; but instead of playing after
school-hours they run errands for the neighbors, drive cows from
pasture, shovel snow, pick huckleberries, earn an honest penny. In
the evening they read together before the open fire. When they are
hungry, as they often are, a Puritan aunt who shares their poverty
tells them stories of human endurance. The circle narrows when an
older brother goes to college; the rest reduce their meals and
spare their pennies in order to help him. After graduation he
teaches school and devotes his earnings to giving the next brother
his chance. All the while they speak courteously to each other,
remember their father's teaching that they are children of God, and
view their hard life steadily in the light of that sublime
doctrine.

[Sidenote: THE COLLEGE BOY]

The rest of the story is easily told. Emerson was born in Boston,
then a straggling town, in 1803. When his turn came he went to
Harvard, and largely supported himself there by such odd jobs as
only a poor student knows how to find. Wasted time he called it;
for he took little interest in college discipline or college fun
and was given to haphazard reading, "sinfully strolling from book
to book, from care to idleness," as he said. Later he declared that
the only good thing he found in Harvard was a solitary chamber.

[Sidenote: THE PREACHER]

After leaving college he taught school and shared his earnings,
according to family tradition. Then he began to study for the
ministry; or perhaps we should say "read," for Emerson never really
studied anything. At twenty-three he was licensed to preach, and
three years later was chosen pastor of the Second Church in Boston.
It was the famous Old North Church in which the Mathers had
preached, and the Puritan divines must have turned in their graves
when the young radical began to utter his heresies from the ancient
pulpit. He was loved and trusted by his congregation, but presently
he differed with them in the matter of the ritual and resigned his
ministry.

Next he traveled in Europe, where he found as little of value as he
had previously found in college. The old institutions, which roused
the romantic enthusiasm of Irving and Longfellow, were to him only
relics of barbarism. He went to Europe, he said, to see two men,
and he found them in Wordsworth and Carlyle. His friendship with
the latter and the letters which passed between "the sage of
Chelsea" and "the sage of Concord" (as collected and published by
Charles Eliot Norton in his _Correspondence of Carlyle and
Emerson_) are the most interesting result of his pilgrimage.

[Sidenote: THE LECTURER]

On his return he settled in the village of Concord, which was to be
his home for the remainder of his long life. He began to lecture,
and so well was the "Lyceum" established at that time that he was
soon known throughout the country. For forty years this lecturing
continued, and the strange thing about it is that in all that time
he hardly met one audience that understood him or that carried away
any definite idea of what he had talked about. Something noble in
the man seemed to attract people; as Lowell said, they did not go
to hear what Emerson said but to hear Emerson.

[Sidenote: THE WRITER]

Meanwhile he was writing prose and poetry. His literary work began
in college and consisted largely in recording such thoughts or
quotations as seemed worthy of preservation. In his private
_Journal_ (now published in several volumes) may be found
practically everything he put into the formal works which he sent
forth from Concord. These had at first a very small circle of
readers; but the circle widened steadily, and the phenomenon is
more remarkable in view of the fact that the author avoided
publicity and had no ambition for success. He lived contentedly in
a country village; he cultivated his garden and his neighbors; he
spent long hours alone with nature; he wrote the thoughts that came
to him and sent them to make their own way in the world, while he
himself remained, as he said, "far from fame behind the birch
trees."

The last years of his life were as the twilight of a perfect day.
His mental powers failed slowly; he seemed to drift out of the
present world into another of pure memories; even his friends
became spiritualized, lost the appearance of earth and assumed
their eternal semblance. When he stood beside the coffin of
Longfellow, looking intently into the poet's face, he was heard to
murmur, "A sweet, a gracious personality, but I have forgotten his
name." To the inevitable changes (the last came in 1882) he adapted
himself with the same serenity which marked his whole life. He even
smiled as he read the closing lines of his "Terminus":

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
"Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed."

EMERSON'S POETRY. There is a ruggedness in Emerson's verse which attracts some readers while it repels others by its unmelodious rhythm. It may help us to measure that verse if we recall the author's criticism thereof. In 1839 he wrote:

"I am naturally keenly susceptible to the pleasures of rhythm, and
cannot believe but one day I shall attain to that splendid dialect,
so ardent is my wish; and these wishes, I suppose, are ever only
the buds of power; but up to this hour I have never had a true
success in such attempts."

One must be lenient with a poet who confesses that he cannot attain the "splendid dialect," especially so since we are inclined to agree with him. In the following passage from "Each and All" we may discover the reason for his lack of success:

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky:
He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

Our first criticism is that the poem contains both fine and faulty lines, and that the total impression is an excellent one. Next, we note that the verse is labored; for Emerson was not a natural singer, like Whittier, and was hampered by his tendency to think too much instead of giving free expression to his emotion. [Footnote: Most good poems are characterized by both thought and feeling, and by a perfection of form that indicates artistic workmanship. With Emerson the thought is the main thing; feeling or emotion is subordinate or lacking, and he seldom has the patience to work over his thought until it assumes beautiful or perfect expression.] Finally, he is didactic; that is, he is teaching the lesson that you must not judge a thing by itself, as if it had no history or connections, but must consider it in its environment, as a part of its own world.

As in "Each and All" so in most of his verse Emerson is too much of a teacher or moralist to be a poet. In "The Rhodora," one of his most perfect poems, he proclaims that "Beauty is its own excuse for being"; but straightway he forgets the word and devotes his verse not to beauty but to some ethical lesson. Very rarely does he break away from this unpoetic habit, as when he interrupts the moralizing of his "World Soul" to write a lyric that we welcome for its own sake:

Spring still makes spring in the mind
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.
Over the winter glaciers
I see the summer glow,
And through the wide-piled snowdrift
The warm rosebuds below.

[Sidenote: TYPICAL POEMS]

The most readable of Emerson's poems are those in which he reflects his impressions of nature, such as "Seashore," "The Humble-Bee," "The Snow-Storm," "Days," "Fable," "Forbearance," "The Titmouse" and "Wood-Notes." In another class are his philosophical poems devoted to transcendental doctrines. The beginner will do well to skip these, since they are more of a puzzle than a source of pleasure. In a third class are poems of more personal interest, such as the noble "Threnody," a poem of grief written after the death of Emerson's little boy; "Good-Bye," in which the poet bids farewell to fame as he hies him to the country; "To Ellen," which half reveals his love story; "Written in Rome," which speaks of the society he found in solitude; and the "Concord Hymn," written at the dedication of Battle Monument, with its striking opening lines:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

PROSE WORKS. Perhaps the most typical of Emerson's prose works is his first book, to which he gave the name _Nature_ (1836). In this he records not his impressions of bird or beast or flower, as his neighbor Thoreau was doing in _Walden_, but rather his philosophy of the universe. "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit"; "Every animal function, from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the ten commandments"; "The foundations of man are not in matter but in spirit, and the element of spirit is eternity,"--scores of such expressions indicate that Emerson deals with the soul of things, not with their outward appearance. Does a flower appeal to him? Its scientific name and classification are of no consequence; like Wordsworth, he would understand what thought of God the flower speaks. To him nature is a mirror in which the Almighty reflects his thought; again it is a parable, a little story written in trees or hills or stars; frequently it is a living presence, speaking melodiously in winds or waters; and always it is an inspiration to learn wisdom at first hand:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.
It writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing
generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their
eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the
universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of
insight, and not of tradition?"

The last quotation might well be an introduction to Emerson's second work, _The American Scholar_ (1837), which was a plea for laying aside European models and fronting life as free men in a new world. Holmes called this work "our intellectual Declaration of Independence," and it was followed by a succession of volumes--_Essays_, _Representative Men_, _Conduct of Life_, _Society and Solitude_ and several others--all devoted to the same two doctrines of idealism and individuality.

[Sidenote: REPRESENTATIVE MEN]

Among these prose works the reader must make his own selection. All are worth reading; none is easy to read; even the best of them is better appreciated in brief instalments, since few can follow Emerson long without wearying. _English Traits_ is a keen but kindly criticism of "our cousins" overseas, which an American can read with more pleasure than an Englishman. _Representative Men_ is a series of essays on Plato, Shakespeare, Napoleon and other world figures, which may well be read in connection with Carlyle's _Heroes and Hero Worship_, since the two books reflect the same subject from widely different angles. Carlyle was in theory an aristocrat and a force-worshiper, Emerson a democrat and a believer in ideals. One author would relate us to his heroes in the attitude of slave to master, the other in the relation of brothers and equals.

[Sidenote: THE ESSAYS]

Of the shorter prose works, collected in various volumes of _Essays_, we shall name only a few in two main groups, which we may call the ideal and the practical. In the first group are such typical works as "The Over-Soul," "Compensation," "Spiritual Laws" and "History"; in the latter are "Heroism," "Self-Reliance," "Literary Ethics" (an address to young collegians), "Character" and "Manners."

It is difficult to criticize such writings, which have a daring originality of thought and a springlike freshness of expression that set them apart from all other essays ancient or modern. They are the most quotable, the fittest to "point a moral or adorn a tale" that have ever appeared in our literature; but they are also disjointed, oracular, hard to follow; and the explanation is found in the manner of their production. When Emerson projected a new lecture or essay he never thought his subject out or ordered it from beginning to end. That would have been another man's way of doing it. He collected from his notebooks such thoughts as seemed to bear upon his subject, strung them together, and made an end when he had enough. The connection or relation between his thoughts is always frail and often invisible; some compare it with the thread which holds the pearls of a necklace together; others quote with a smile the epigram of Goldwin Smith, who said that he found an Emersonian essay about as coherent as a bag of marbles. And that suggests a fair criticism of all Emerson's prose; namely, that it is a series of expressions excellent in themselves but having so little logical sequence that a paragraph from one essay may be placed at the beginning, middle or end of any other, where it seems to be equally at home.

THE DOCTRINE OF EMERSON. Since we constantly hear of "idealism" in connection with Emerson, let us understand the word if we can; or rather the fact, for idealism is the most significant quality of humanity. The term will be better understood if we place it beside "materialism," which expresses an opposite view of life. The difference may be summarized in the statement that the idealist is a man of spirit, or idea, in that he trusts the evidence of the soul; while the materialist is a man of flesh, or sense, in that he believes only what is evident to the senses. One judges the world by himself; the other judges himself by the world.

To illustrate our meaning: the materialist, looking outward, sees that the world is made up of force-driven matter, of gas, carbon and mineral; and he says, "Even so am I made up." He studies an object, sees that it has its appointed cycle of growth and decay, and concludes, "Even so do I appear and vanish." To him the world is the only reality, and the world perishes, and man is but a part of the world.

[Sidenote: THE IDEALIST]

The idealist, looking first within, perceives that self-consciousness is the great fact of life, and that consciousness expresses itself in words or deeds; then he looks outward, and is aware of another Consciousness that expresses itself in the lowly grass or in the stars of heaven. Looking inward he finds that he is governed by ideas of truth, beauty, goodness and duty; looking outward he everywhere finds evidence of truth and beauty and moral law in the world. He sees, moreover, that while his body changes constantly his self remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever; and again his discovery is a guide to the outer world, with its seedtime and harvest, which is but the symbol or garment of a Divine Self that abides without shadow of change in a constantly changing universe. To him the only reality is spirit, and spirit cannot be harmed by fire or flood; neither can it die or be buried, for it is immortal and imperishable.

Such, in simple words, was the idealism of Emerson, an idealism that was born in him and that governed him long before he became involved in transcendentalism, with its scraps of borrowed Hindu philosophy. It gave message or meaning to his first work, _Nature_, and to all the subsequent essays or poems in which he pictured the world as a symbol or visible expression of a spiritual reality. In other words, nature was to Emerson the Book of the Lord, and the chief thing of interest was not the book but the idea that was written therein.

[Sidenote: THE INDIVIDUALIST]

Having read the universe and determined its spiritual quality, Emerson turned his eyes on humanity. Presently he announced that a man's chief glory is his individuality; that he is a free being, different from every other; that his business is to obey his individual genius; that he should, therefore, ignore the Past with its traditions, and learn directly "from the Divine Soul which inspires all men." Having announced that doctrine, he spent the rest of his life in illustrating or enlarging it; and the sum of his teaching was, "Do not follow me or any other master; follow your own spirit. Never mind what history says, or philosophy or tradition or the saints and sages. The same inspiration which led the prophets is yours for the taking, and you have your work to do as they had theirs. Revere your own soul; trust your intuition; and whatever you find in your heart to do, do it without doubt or fear, though all the world thunder in your ears that you must do otherwise. As for the voice of authority, 'Let not a man quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the anointed and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.'"

Such was Emerson's pet doctrine of individualism. It appeared with startling vigor in _The American Scholar_ at a time when our writers were prone to imitate English poetry, German sentimentality or some other imported product. It came also with good grace from one whose life was noble, but it had a weak or dangerous or grotesque side that Emerson overlooked. Thus, every crank or fanatic or rainbow-chaser is also an individualist, and most of them believe as strongly as Emerson in the Over-Soul. The only difference is that they do not have his sense or integrity or humor to balance their individualism. While Emerson exalted individual liberty he seemed to forget that America is a country devoted to "liberty under law," and that at every period of her history she has had need to emphasize the law rather than the liberty. Moreover, individualism is a quality that takes care of itself, being finest in one who is least conscious of his own importance; and to study any strongly individual character, a Washington or a Lincoln for example, is to discover that he strove to be true to his race and traditions as well as to himself. Hence Emerson's doctrine, to live in the Present and have entire confidence in yourself, needs to be supplemented by another: to revere the Past with its immortal heroes, who by their labor and triumph have established some truths that no sane man will ever question.

[Sidenote: A NEW WORLD WRITER]

There are other interesting qualities of Emerson, his splendid optimism, for instance, which came partly from his spiritual view of the universe and partly from his association with nature; for the writer who is in daily contact with sunshine or rain and who trusts his soul's ideals of truth and beauty has no place for pessimism or despair; even in moments of darkness he looks upward and reads his lesson:

Teach me your mood, O patient stars,
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die!

Though he was and still is called a visionary, there is a practical quality in his writing which is better than anything you will find in _Poor Richard's Almanac_. Thus the burden of Franklin's teaching was the value of time, a lesson which the sage of Concord illuminates as with celestial light in his poem "Days," and to which he brings earth's candle in his prose essay "Work and Days." [Footnote: The two works should be read in connection as an interesting example of Emerson's use of prose and verse to reflect the same idea. Holmes selects the same two works to illustrate the essential difference between prose and poetry. See Holmes, _Ralph Waldo Emerson_, p. 310.] Indeed, the more one reads Emerson the more is one convinced that he is our typical New World writer, a rare genius who combines the best qualities of Franklin and Edwards, having the practical sense of the one and the spiritual insight of the other. [Footnote: In 1830 Channing published an essay, "National Literature," in which he said that Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards were the only writers up to that time who had worthily presented the American mind, with its practical and ideal sides, to foreign readers.] With his idealism and individuality, his imagination that soars to heaven but is equally at home on solid earth, his sound judgment to balance his mysticism, his forceful style that runs from epigram to sustained eloquence, his straight-fibered manhood in which criticism finds nothing to pardon or regret,--with all these sterling qualities he is one of the most representative writers that America has ever produced.

* * * * *

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

Some great writers belong to humanity, others to their own land or people. Hawthorne is in the latter class apparently, for ever since Lowell rashly characterized him as "the greatest imaginative genius since Shakespeare" our critics commonly speak of him in superlatives. Meanwhile most European critics (who acclaim such unequal writers as Cooper and Poe, Whitman and Mark Twain) either leave Hawthorne unread or else wonder what Americans find in him to stir their enthusiasm.

The explanation is that Hawthorne's field was so intensely local that only those who are familiar with it can appreciate him. Almost any reader can enjoy Cooper, since he deals with adventurous men whom everybody understands; but Hawthorne deals with the New England Puritan of the seventeenth century, a very peculiar hero, and to enjoy the novelist one must have some personal or historic interest in his subject. Moreover, he alienates many readers by presenting only the darker side of Puritanism. He is a man who never laughs and seldom smiles in his work; he passes over a hundred normal and therefore cheerful homes to pitch upon some gloomy habitation of sin or remorse, and makes that the burden of his tale. In no other romancer do we find genius of such high order at work in so barren a field.

LIFE. There is an air of reserve about Hawthorne which no biography
has ever penetrated. A schoolmate who met him daily once said, "I
love Hawthorne; I admire him; but I do not know him. He lives in a
mysterious world of thought and imagination which he never permits
me to enter." That characterization applies as well to-day as when
it was first spoken, almost a century ago. To his family and to a
very few friends Hawthorne was evidently a genial man, [Footnote:
Intimate but hardly trustworthy pictures of Hawthorne and his
family are presented by his son, Julian Hawthorne, in _Nathaniel
Hawthorne and his Wife_. A dozen other memoirs have appeared;
but Hawthorne did not want his biography written, and there are
many unanswered questions in the story of his life.] but from the
world and its affairs he always held aloof, wrapped in his mantle
of mystery.

A study of his childhood may help us to understand the somber
quality of all his work. He was descended from the Puritans who
came to Boston with John Winthrop, and was born in the seaport of
Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. He was only four years old when his
father, a sea captain, died in a foreign port; whereupon the mother
draped herself in weeds, retired from the sight of neighbors, and
for the next forty years made life as funereal as possible. Besides
the little boy there were two sisters in the family, and the elder
took her meals in her own room, as did the mother. The others went
about the darkened house on tiptoe, or peeped out at the world
through closed shutters.

The shadow of that unnatural home was upon Hawthorne to the end of
his life; it accounts in part for his shyness, his fear of society,
his lack of interest in his own age or nation.

[Sidenote: SECLUSION AT SALEM]

At seventeen Hawthorne went to Bowdoin College, where Longfellow
was his classmate and Franklin Pierce (later President of the
United States) one of his friends. His college life seems to have
been happy, even gay at times; but when he graduated (1825) and his
classmates scattered to find work in the world he returned to his
Salem home and secluded himself as if he had no interest in
humanity. It was doubtful, he said afterwards, whether a dozen
people knew of his existence in as many years.

All the while he was writing, gathering material for his romances
or patiently cultivating his fine style. For days he would brood
over a subject; then he would compose a story or parable for the
magazines. The stamp of originality was on all these works, but
they were seldom accepted. When they returned to him, having found
no appreciative editor, he was apt to burn them and complain that
he was neglected. Studying the man as he reveals himself at this
time in his _Note-Books_ (published in a garbled edition by
the Hawthorne family), one has the impression that he was a shy,
sensitive genius, almost morbidly afraid of the world. From a
distance he sent out his stories as "feelers", when these were
ignored he shrank into himself more deeply than before.

Love brought him out of his retreat, as it has accomplished many
another miracle. When he became engaged his immediate thought was
to find work, and one of his friends secured a position for him in
the Boston customhouse, where he weighed coal until he was replaced
by a party spoilsman. [Footnote: Hawthorne profited three times by
the spoils system. When his Boston experience was repeated at Salem
he took his revenge in the opening chapter of _The Scarlet
Letter_, which ridicules those who received political jobs from
the other party.] There were no civil-service rules in those days.
Hoping to secure a home, he invested his savings in Brook Farm,
worked there for a time with the reformers, detested them, lost his
money and gained the experience which he used later in his
_Blithedale Romance_. Then he married, and lived in poverty
and great happiness for four years in the "Old Manse" at Concord.
Another friend obtained for him political appointment as surveyor
of the Salem customhouse; again he was replaced by a spoilsman, and
again he complained bitterly. The loss proved a blessing, however,
since it gave him leisure to write _The Scarlet Letter_, a
novel which immediately placed Hawthorne in the front rank of
American writers.

[Sidenote: FAREWELL GREATNESS]

He was now before an appreciative world, and in the flush of fine
feeling that followed his triumph he wrote _The House of the
Seven Gables, A Wonder Book_ and _The Snow Image_.
Literature was calling him most hopefully when, at the very prime
of life, he turned his back on fortune. His friend Pierce had been
nominated by the Democrats (1852), and he was asked to write the
candidate's biography for campaign purposes. It was hardly a worthy
task, but he accepted it and did it well. When Pierce was elected
he "persuaded" Hawthorne to accept the office of consul at
Liverpool. The emoluments, some seven thousand dollars a year,
seemed enormous to one who had lived straitly, and in the four
years of Pierce's administration our novelist saved a sum which,
with the income from his books, placed him above the fear of want.
Then he went for a long vacation to Italy, where he collected the
material for his _Marble Faun_. But he wrote nothing more of
consequence.

[Sidenote: THE UNFINISHED STORY]

The remainder of his life was passed in a pleasant kind of
hermitage in Emerson's village of Concord. His habits of solitude
and idleness ("cursed habits," he called them) were again upon him;
though he began several romances--_Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_,
_Septimius Felton_, _The Ancestral Footstep_ and _The
Dolliver Romance_--he never made an end of them. In his work he
was prone to use some symbol of human ambition, and the symbol of
his own later years might well have been the unfinished manuscript
which lay upon the coffin when his body was laid under the pines in
the old Concord burying ground (1864). His friend Longfellow has
described the scene in his beautiful poem "Hawthorne."

SHORT STORIES AND SKETCHES. Many young people become familiar with Hawthorne as a teller of bedtime stories long before they meet him in the role of famous novelist. In his earlier days he wrote _Grandfather's Chair_ (modeled on a similar work by Scott), dealing with Colonial legends, and broadened his field in _Biographical Stories for Children_. Other and better works belonging to the same juvenile class are _A Wonder Book_ (1851) and _Tanglewood Tales_ (1853), which are modern versions of the classic myths and stories that Greek mothers used to tell their children long ago.

[Sidenote: PICTURES OF THE PAST]

The best of Hawthorne's original stories are collected in _Twice-Told Tales_, _Mosses from an Old Manse_ and _The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales_. As the bulk of this work is rather depressing we select a few typical tales, arranging them in three groups. In the first are certain sketches, as Hawthorne called them, which aim not to tell a story but to give an impression of the past. "The Old Manse" (in _Mosses from an Old Manse_) is an excellent introduction to this group. Others in which the author comes out from the gloom to give his humor a glimpse of pale sunshine are "A Rill from the Town Pump," "Main Street," "Little Annie's Ramble," "Sights from a Steeple" and, as suggestive of Hawthorne's solitary outings, "Footprints on the Seashore."

[Sidenote: ALLEGORIES]

In the second group are numerous allegories and symbolical stories. To understand Hawthorne's method of allegory [Footnote: An allegory is a figure of speech (in rhetoric) or a story (in literature) in which an external object is described in such a way that we apply the description to our own inner experience. Many proverbs, such as "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones," are condensed allegories. So also are fables and parables, such as the fable of the fox and the grapes, or the parable of the lost sheep. Bunyan's famous allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, describes a journey from one city to another, but in reading it we are supposed to think of a Christian's experience in passing through this world to the next.] read "The Snow Image," which is the story of a snowy figure that became warm, living and companionable to some children until it was spoiled by a hard-headed person, without imagination or real sense, who forgot that he was ever a child himself or that there is such a beautiful and precious thing as a child-view of the universe.

In his constant symbolism (that is, in his use of an outward sign or token to represent an idea) Hawthorne reflected a trait that is common to humanity in all ages. Thus, every nation has its concrete symbol, its flag or eagle or lion; a great religion is represented by a cross or a crescent; in art and poetry the sword stands for war and the dove for peace; an individual has his horseshoe or rabbit's foot or "mascot" as the simple expression of an idea that may be too complex for words. Among primitive people such symbols were associated with charms, magic, baleful or benignant influences; and Hawthorne accepted this superstitious idea in many of his works, though he was apt to hint, as in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," that the magic of his symbol might have a practical explanation. In this story the lady's gorgeous mantle is a symbol of pride; its blighting influence _may_ be due to the fact that,--but to tell the secret is to spoil the story, and that is not fair to Hawthorne or the reader.

[Sidenote: THE BLACK VEIL]

Some of these symbolic tales are too vague or shadowy to be convincing; in others the author makes artistic use of some simple object, such as a flower or an ornament, to suggest the mystery that broods over every life. In "The Minister's Black Veil," for example, a clergyman startles his congregation by appearing with a dark veil over his face. The veil itself is a familiar object; on a woman or a bonnet it would pass unnoticed; but on the minister it becomes a portentous thing, at once fascinating and repellent. Yesterday they knew the man as a familiar friend; to-day he is a stranger, and they fear him with a vague, nameless fear. Forty years he wears the mysterious thing, dies and is buried with it, and in all that time they never have a glimpse of his face. Though there is a deal of nonsense in the story, and a hocus-pocus instead of a mystery, we must remember that veil as a striking symbol of the loneliness of life, of the gulf that separates a human soul from every other.

Another and better symbolic tale is "The Great Stone Face," which appeals strongly to younger readers, especially to those who have lived much out of doors and who cherish the memory of some natural object, some noble tree or mossy cliff or singing brook, that is forever associated with their thoughts of childhood. To others the tale will have added interest in that it is supposed to portray the character of Emerson as Hawthorne knew him.

[Sidenote: LEGENDARY TALES]

In the third group are numerous stories dealing with Colonial history, and of these "The Gray Champion" and "The Gentle Boy" are fairly typical. Hawthorne has been highly praised in connection with these tales as "the artist who created the Puritan in literature." Most readers will gladly recognize the "artist," since every tale has its line or passage of beauty; but some will murmur at the "creation." The trouble with Hawthorne was that in creating his Puritan he took scant heed of the man whom the Almighty created. He was not a scholar or even a reader; his custom was to brood over an incident of the past (often a grotesque incident, such as he found in Winthrop's old _Journal_), and from his brooding he produced an imaginary character, some heartless fanatic or dismal wretch who had nothing of the Puritan except the label. Of the real Puritan, who knew the joy and courtesy as well as the stern discipline of life, our novelist had only the haziest notion. In consequence his "Gentle Boy" and parts also of his _Scarlet Letter_ leave an unwarranted stain on the memory of his ancestors. [Footnote: Occasionally, as in "The Gray Champion" and "Endicott and the Red Cross," Hawthorne paints the stern courage of the Puritan, but never his gentle or humane qualities. His typical tale presents the Puritan in the most unlovely guise. In "The Maypole of Merrymount," for example, Morton and his men are represented as inoffensive, art-loving people who were terrorized by the "dismal wretches" of a near-by colony of Puritans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Morton's crew were a lawless set and a scandal to New England; but they were tolerated until they put all the settlements in danger by debauching the Indians and selling them rum, muskets and gunpowder. The "dismal wretches" were the Pilgrims of Plymouth,--gentle, heroic men, lovers of learning and liberty, who profoundly influenced the whole subsequent history of America.]

THE FOUR ROMANCES. The romances of Hawthorne are all studies of the effects of sin on human development. If but one of these romances is to be read, let it be _The House of the Seven Gables_ (1851), which is a pleasanter story than Hawthorne commonly tells, and which portrays one character that he knew by experience rather than by imagination. Many of Hawthorne's stories run to a text, and the text here is, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." The characters are represented as "under a curse"; [Foonote: This is a reflection of a family tradition. An ancestor of Hawthorne was judge at the Salem witch trials, in 1692. One of the poor creatures condemned to death is said to have left a curse on the judge's family. In his _Note Books_ Hawthorne makes mention of the traditional curse, and analyzes its possible effect on his own character.] that is, they are bearing the burden and sorrow of some old iniquity committed before they were born; but the affliction is banished in a satisfactory way without leaving us in the haze of mystery that envelops so much of Hawthorne's work. His humor is also in evidence, his interest in life overcomes for a time his absorption in shadowy symbols, and his whole story is brightened by his evident love of Phoebe Pyncheon, the most natural and winsome of all his characters.

The other romances deal with the same general theme, the blighting effect of sin, but vary greatly in their scenes and characters. The _Marble Faun_ (published in England as _Transformation_, 1860) is the most popular, possibly because its scene is laid in Rome, a city to which all travelers go, or aspire to go, before they die; but though it moves in "an atmosphere of art," among the studios of "the eternal city," it is the least artistic of all the author's works. [Footnote: The _Marble Faun_ ends in a fog, as if the author did not know what to do with his characters. It has the amateurish fault of halting the narrative to talk with the reader; and it moralizes to such an extent that the heroine (who is pictured as of almost angelic virtue) eventually becomes a prig and a preacher,--two things that a woman must never be. Nevertheless, the romance has a host of enthusiastic readers, and to criticize it adversely is to bring a storm about one's ears.] In _The Blithedale Romance_ (1852) Hawthorne deals with the present rather than the past and apparently makes use of his observation, since his scenes and characters are strongly suggestive of the Brook Farm community of reformers, among whom he spent one critical and unhappy year. _The Scarlet Letter_ (1850) is not only the most original and powerful of the romances but is commonly ranked by our critics at the head of American fiction. The scene is laid in Boston, in the old Puritan days; the main characters are vividly drawn, and the plot moves to its gloomy but impressive climax as if Wyrd or Fate were at the bottom of it.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HAWTHORNE. Almost the first thing we notice in Hawthorne is his style, a smooth, leisurely, "classic" style which moves along, like a meadow brook, without hurry or exertion. Gradually as we read we become conscious of the novelist's characters, whom he introduces with a veil of mystery around them. They are interesting, as dreams and other mysterious things always are, but they are seldom real or natural or lifelike. At times we seem to be watching a pantomime of shadows, rather than a drama of living men and women.

[Sidenote: METHOD OF WORK]

The explanation of these shadowy characters is found in Hawthorne's method of work, as revealed by the _Note-Books_ in which he stored his material. Here is a typical record, which was occasioned, no doubt, by the author's meeting with some old nurse, whom he straightway changed from her real semblance to a walking allegory:

"Change from a gay young girl to an old woman. Melancholy events,
the effects of which have clustered around her character....
Becomes a lover of sick chambers, taking pleasure in receiving
dying breaths and laying out the dead. Having her mind full of
funeral reminiscences, and possessing more acquaintances beneath
the turf than above it."

This is enough of a story in itself; we need not read "Edward Fane's Rosebud" to see how Hawthorne filled in the details. The strange thing is that he never studied or questioned the poor woman to discover whether she was anything like what he imagined her to be. On another page we read:

"A snake taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from
fifteen to thirty five years, tormenting him most horribly." [Then
follows the inevitable moral.] "Type of envy or some other evil
passion."

There are many such story-records in the _Note-Books_, but among them you will find no indication that the story-teller ever examined the facts with a purpose to discover whether a snake could survive thirty-five years, or minutes, in the acids of a human stomach, or how long a Puritan church would tolerate a minister who went about with a veil on his face, or whether any other of his symbols had any vital connection with human experience. In a word, Hawthorne was prone to make life conform to his imagination, instead of making his imagination conform to life. Living as he did in the twilight, between the day and the night, he seems to have missed the chief lesson of each, the urge of the one and the repose of the other; and especially did he miss the great fact of cheerfulness. The deathless courage of man, his invincible hope that springs to life under the most adverse circumstances, like the cyclamen abloom under the snows of winter,--this primal and blessed fact seems to have escaped his notice. At times he hints at it, but he never gives it its true place at the beginning, middle and end of human life.

[Sidenote: ARTIST AND MORALIST]