COURTEOUS READER,
I should like to write a Preface, if I could.—Such an ample field is afforded, for appealing to the sympathy and generosity of the “Liberal Public.” Such emphatic words as “youthful diffidence,” “consciousness of errors,” “request of friends,” “leisure hours,” “relief in solitude,”—all these once attracted my delighted attention, and I resolved, if I ever should write a book, to present therewith a very sentimental Preface. But upon this subject my opinions are changed. Negatively speaking of my volume—“youthful diffidence” I cannot plead; “consciousness of errors,” I might, which I own I have had time to correct. I do not publish at the “request of friends,” for no friends, to my knowledge, were ever particularly anxious for such an event. Nor for the amusement of my “leisure hours,” for, since my remembrance, I never had any. Nor as a “relief in solitude,” for I am never alone. And permit me to add, not for gold, for my muse will never become a Crœsus. Lastly, not for Fame, for light is my regard for her vain breath.
A Preface is an article which I am by no means prepared to attempt, being apprehensive that my labors might terminate like those of a certain venerable individual, of spelling-book celebrity, who, in companionship with his son, and a long-eared fellow-traveller, by his anxiety to please everybody, found, to his mortification, that he could please nobody. Now, with the very moderate desire of pleasing somebody, I have determined to write no preface to my book, because I am not prepared to make a single fashionable apology for its publication. At the present era of book-making, all prefatory introductions seem to be disregarded as superfluous by the reading community, except to works of deep erudition, or on subjects which may require preliminary elucidations from the author. All others are merely glanced over like the “programme of an entertainment,” or a “bill of the play,” and obtain no further notice. Scarcely one reader out of ten has the least interest or curiosity to learn what motive induced the author to write the volume, which he has either bought or borrowed for his entertainment. He certainly has a right to expect it will contain some matter either to improve, inform, or amuse the mind. If disappointed, no apology, however gracefully made, will effect a change in his opinion; and the author may expect to receive the same compliment which a certain learned doctor (more famed for candor than politeness) once paid to his delinquent pupil, who made an elaborate apology for his errors, that he who was good at making “a handsome apology, was generally good for nothing else.”
Thine respectfully,
K. A. W.
Since we have suffered our author to speak for herself, nobody can accuse us of unfairness, since that captious gentleman, Nobody, is not obliged to think as we do, but can, if he so pleases, pronounce Mrs. Katharine Augusta Ware to be the most modest, unassuming, charming pilgrim, that ever journeyed to the fountain of Helicon, or toiled up the steeps of Parnassus.
We have, in our time, been constrained by our vocation, to spell out a good many pieces of bombast; but we can safely say that, in our serious belief, no rhetorician was ever better furnished with an illustration for that not very rare quality of style, than in the effusion with which we begin to be overwhelmed on page one, under the imposing title “The Power of the Passions.” We had thought of turning the whole into prose, but as we have not the space to spare, and the readers can easily do it for themselves, whenever we shall have occasion to cite a passage, we content ourselves with a cursory description, and no very acute analysis, since the philosophy is quite as incomprehensible as the lines are vapid, and the ideas commonplace. Imprimis, we are favored with the strikingly novel information that there was a time, a good while ago, when man stood in God’s own image communing with angels in a bower,
“When first creation dawned upon his view.”
This fair world, we are next agreeably astonished to learn, was given to man by high Omnipotence. At this interesting period, Creation owned her Lord, and all that moved confessed his reign, and the forest monarch bowed down before him, beside the young lamb; (bah!) moreover, birds hailed the rising day, and there were flowers and trees and fruits cum multis aliis of the sort.
Such was fair Paradise! When Woman smiled,
All Eden brightened with a richer glow!
Led by the hand of Deity, she came
To dwell in kind companionship with man,
A sharer of his pleasures and his toils,
Which nature’s genial bosom richly paid:
Love, joy, and harmony, and peace, were there—
God saw his glorious work, and it was good.
These lines are cited, because they are the only good ones in the poem, and because it occurs to us that we have seen something rather like them in the works of a respectable poet of the middle ages—one Milton. In the remainder of the effusion, Mrs. Ware is unquestionably original.
Brief hour of human purity and truth!
Malignant Envy, in the bland disguise
Of friendship, stole, yea, twined his serpent folds
Around fair Wisdom’s consecrated Tree.
“Eat, woman, eat—ye shall not surely die!”
Thus spake the tempter of mankind. They ate—
A sudden darkness gathered o’er the sky.
Wild raged the storm, earth’s firm foundations shook,
While ocean trembled from her deepest cells;
Blue, livid lightnings flashed with lurid glare,
Wreathing in flames the blackened arch of heaven;
While the loud thunder’s deep, continuous roar
Proclaimed, in God’s own voice, that Man was lost!
The four verses we have italicised are fiercely grand; more terrible than any we ever saw, except those by which they are succeeded. After the thunder-clap, lions roared, tigers yelled, hyenas cried, wolves howled, leviathans drifted ashore, birds of ill omen shrieked, and there was a dreadful rumpus in general among beasts, such as are usually to be seen in a Zoological Garden. The Arch-Enemy chuckles over this sport, rives his chain, and stalks over the globe, taking the precaution, however, to veil his hideous form and smile demoniac, (why, we cannot well perceive,) and finally speaks. His observations are left to the ingenuity of the reader; but he had no sooner “concluded his remarks,” than
“Wild spirits filled the air, the earth,
The sea.”
These we suppose are the Passions, mentioned in the title. Taking them as they are introduced, they are the most outrageous set of ill-behaved monsters that ever were seen, and are as dissimilar to those polite entities, classified under the same names, and said by the Fourrierists to be easily subjected to the domination of reason and the affections, as can well be imagined. It must be noted, however, that Mrs. Ware is more original in the individuals she recommends to our attention as the Passions, than she is in her figures of speech.
First, Murder came, his right hand red
With the pure blood of his young brother’s heart,
For which his own, in every clime and age,
Hath deeply paid. “Cursed art thou!” said God,
And set his mark upon the murderer’s brow.
We were not, until now, aware that Murder was a Passion, considering it rather as a deed, consequent upon some one of the Passions. Next in order comes Remorse, “whose step is followed by Despair.” “Next comes Revenge.” And what Passion, reader, do you imagine follows next? “ ’Tis War, insatiate War.” Another new Passion. Afterwards “pale Jealousy is seen,” in an awful taking because “the treasured ideal of his soul is false;” accordingly, he rushes blindly forth, meets his haughty foe, and, though he is blind, “their eyes have met,” and
The fierce volcano’s flame
Ne’er flashed more wildly than his furious glance!
No more. ’Tis done—the double deed of death.
The reeking steel, red from his rival’s heart,
Is quivering now within her heaving breast.
Here is murder in the first degree once more. Now some people may call this strong writing; we call it fustian run mad. Next come Riot and Folly and Theft and Love and Misery and Guilt, of which we do not recognise any one but Love as belonging to the Passions. Just here there occurs a passage, which is so clearly applicable to the “divine Fanny Elssler,” that, “in the opinion of this court,” an action on the case for heavy damages will lie. Although the danseuse alluded to figures under no name whatsoever, and is merely described as “Another,” we beg leave to put it to the immense jury, consisting of the subscribers to this Magazine, what other than the “splendiferous Madam,” above named, can possibly be signified? Read the remarkable passage, and record your verdicts.
Another, too, in tinselled garb, is near,
’Mid scenic splendor, like a thing of light—
With limbs scarce veiled, and gestures wild and strange,
She gaily bounds in the lascivious dance,
Moving as if her element were air,
And music was the echo of her step.
Around her bold, unblushing brow are twined
The deadly nightshade and the curling vine,
Enwreathed with flowers luxuriant and fair,
Yet poisonous as the Upas in their breath.
Her sparkling eye, keen as the basilisk’s,
Who marks his prey, beams with a flashing light—
False as the flame which hovers o’er the gulf
Of dark oblivion—tempting to destroy.
Mysterious power! men shudder while they gaze—
Despise, yet own her fascinating spell.
As bursts the “deafening thunder of applause,”
’Mid showers of votive wreaths, and parfum vif—
Descending like bright Juno from her cloud,
With glance erratic round th’ enchanted ring—
She smiles on all above, and all below,
With regal condescension, and accepts
The worthless homage offered at her shrine.
Let not the reader hastily conclude that he has yet ascended with Mrs. Katharine A. Ware to the cloud-capped summit of turgidity. In the concluding passages of her perfectly ferocious poem, she excels herself. A higher Alp of nonsense towers above the smaller Alps we have already passed. To change the metaphor, all the former passages are mere rattling musket shot, compared to this concentrated, thundering discharge of the artillery of bombast:—
Last in the train of human misery,
Unconscious Madness rushed. The storm that beat
On his unsheltered head and naked breast,
Was calm to that which wildly raged within:
All the dark passions that deform the soul
By turns usurped departed Reason’s throne.
His rolling eye, red as the meteor’s flash,
In fierce defiance wildly glanced around;
While his Herculean frame dilated rose,
As if exulting in its giant strength!
Uprooted trees were strewn across his path—
The remnants of his sanguinary meal,
Still warm with life, lay quivering at his feet;
They caught his eye. Not Etna’s wildest roar
E’er came more deep than his demoniac laugh!
As rolls the distant thunder on—it ceased.
And we cease; but not altogether. Cry not, oh reader, with king-killing Macbeth, “hold, enough!” till we shall have at least ferreted out some stanzas worth commendation, in the one hundred and forty “mortal pages,” which drag their slow length after “The Power of the Passions”—which title, we beg leave to suggest, should be changed to the somewhat Hibernian one of “A Power of Passions,” which would be more expressive of the number of new ones “making their first appearance on any stage.”
All the gross errors of persons who deem themselves poets, but are not—who make verses, to which neither gods, men nor columns can yield applause—are displayed, not only in the effusion which we have too tenderly handled, but in most of the remaining rubbish of metre, which this mistaken lady has raked together and piled up for the diversion of the public in England. It is said of those, who make constant efforts to utter happy repartees and smart jokes, that it would be a wonder if they did not now and then stumble upon a clever hit. The remark may with truth be applied to the indefatigable concoctor of rhymes. Desperate must be his condition, if, at large intervals, good couplets did not slip from his pen. Poor as most of Mrs. Ware’s poems are, stanzas are scattered through them which are really beautiful, and have the air of being in their present position by mistake. Occasionally, also, when the subject is dictated by feeling; when the thoughts well from the heart, and are like those which are entertained by the author in common with other people of sensibility; when she does not strive to be very fine, very grand and very fascinating, her lines run smoothly and gracefully along. Take as a favorable example of her versification one stanza, from a poem called “Diamond Island,” which, as we are told, is a delightful little island, situated in Lake George, and well known to the Northern tourists for its picturesque beauty, and the brilliant crystals to be found on its shores:—
How sweet to stray along thy flowery shore,
Where crystals sparkle in the sunny ray;
While the red boatman plies his silvery oar
To the wild measure of some rustic lay.
As a specimen of the sometimes able and sometimes slovenly mode in which Mrs. Ware poetizes, take the following couplets as an example. In describing what scenes are beheld by “The Genius of Græcia,” she finely writes:—
“Views the broad Stadium, where the Gymnic art
Nerved the young arm and energized the heart.”
A little further on, our ears are tortured with—
“Where Scio’s isle blushes with Christian gore,
And hostile fiends still yell around the shore.”
Well nigh tired of animadversion, let us employ the remainder of this article with selections that will be read with satisfaction, and which may strike some sympathetic and responsive chords. We need not bestow any higher praise upon the following pieces, chosen with care, as by far the best in the volume, (though we will venture to assert that the author considers them the poorest,) than to remark that we consider them worthy of the space they occupy in this magazine.
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