LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Osgood & Co.
Mr. Taylor's muse has of late become very still-faced, decorous and mindful of the art-proprieties. Cautious is she, and there is perhaps nothing in this pastoral that will cause the grammarian to wince, or make the censorious rhetorician writhe in his judgment-seat with the sense that she is committing herself. Not such were the early attributes of the great itinerant's poetry. When he used to unsling his minstrel harp in the wilds of California or on the sunrise mountains of the Orient, there were plenty of false notes, plenty of youthful vivacities that overbore the strings and were heard as a sudden crack, and, withal, a good deal of young frank fire. Now there is much finish and the least possible suspicion of ennui. But the life-history of Lars is worth reading. It is a calm procession of pictures, without pretence, except the slight pretence of classical correctness. The first part, which reflects Norwegian manners in a way reminding us more or less of the exquisite stories of Bjornsen, tells how two swains of Ulvik, Lars the hunter and Per the fisher, quarrel for love of Brita, and at a public wrestling decide the question by a combat, fighting with knives, in Norse fashion, while hooked to each other at the belt. They strip, à la Heenan and Sayers. Mr. Taylor, who does not often come behind the occasion when he can get a human figure to describe statue-wise or under a studio light, is perhaps a trifle too Phidian in bringing out the good looks of his fish-eating gladiators:
The low daylight clad
Their forms with awful fairness, beauty now
Of life, so warm and ripe and glorious, yet
So near the beauty terrible of Death.
Lars, the victor, has all the ill-luck. His foe falls lifeless, his sweetheart calls him a murderer, and he flies from the law. Another scene quickly shows him crossing the broad ocean, as so many Norwegians and Swedes had crossed before him, and seeking the protection of Swedish forts on Delaware banks. Long, sad days pass on the ocean,
Till shining fisher-sails
Came, stars of land that rose before the land;
and soon he leaps to shore in New Sweden, only to find that the civilization he seeks has set like a sinking planet into the abiding enlightenment of another race and creed. Governor Printz's fortress on Tinicum isle is a ruin of yellow bricks: the wanderer strays up the broad stream
To where, upon her hill, fair Wilmington
Looks to the river over marshy weeds.
He saw the low brick church with stunted tower,
The portal-arches, ivied now and old,
And passed the gate: lo! there the ancient stones
Bore Norland names and dear familiar words!
It seemed the dead a comfort spake.
The governor is a myth, the Swedes are dead, the Scandinavian tongues have been changed to English, and an English exactly conformed to King James's translation of the Scriptures. The first girl he speaks to checks him for addressing her with a civility:
"Nay," she said, "not lady! call me Ruth."
With the father of this primitive Nausicaa, on Hockessin Farm, the wanderer abides as herdsman. Soon, under the propaganda of Ruth's soft eyes and the drowsy spell of the Delawarean society, he joins the peaceful sect amongst which he labors. It is easier, though, to change his plural pronouns to the scriptural thou and thee of King James's translators than to tame his heroic Viking blood, swift to boil into wrath at the show of oppression. Such an outburst leads to a quaint scene of acknowledgment and repentance, where lies
Up beyond the woods, at crossing-roads,
The heart of all, the ancient meeting-house.
Lars, prayed over by the brethren, bursts forth in tears and supplications among the worshipers, and is received into full harmony with them:
So into joy revolved the doubtful year,
And, ere it closed, the gentle fold of Friends
Sheltered another member, even Lars....
And all the country-side assembled there
One winter Sabbath, when in snow and sky
The colors of transfiguration shone,
Within the meeting-house. There Ruth and Lars
Together sat upon the women's side;
And when the peace was perfect, they arose:
He took her by the hand, and spake these words,
As ordered: "In the presence of the Lord
And this assembly, by the hand I take
Ruth Mendenhall, and promise unto her,
Divine assistance blessing me, to be
A loving and a faithful husband, even
Till death shall separate us." Then spake Ruth
The like sweet words; and so the twain were one.
It is not often that a liturgy has been translated into metre with less change of its form and substance.
The imbedding of a raw Northern native in this lap of repose and in this transfiguring matrimonial alliance is the grand problem of the poem. What will Lars do, now that he is a man of peace and a Child of Light, with the burden of conscience? In America he is a saint and an apostle. In Europe he is known but as a proscribed murderer. The later scenes, where Lars, accompanied by his true and tender wife, meets his old love, his neighbors, and his rival restored to life, are of a more ambitious character than any that have preceded. The holy principles imbibed on the shores of Delaware are made to triumph, and Lars, dropping the sharp blade from his hand in the thronged arena whither he is forced once more, stands first as a laughing-stock, and then as an apostle, among his old neighbors. It is a position full of moral force, and we find ourselves—suddenly recovering in a degree from the calm view we had taken of the poem as a work of art—asking how we should be so sensible of the grandeur of the situation if the poet by his skill had not brought out its peculiarity.
A Lady of the Last Century. By Dr. Doran. London: Bentley.
This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her surroundings. Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of Horace, "I have lived." "She never had a fool for an acquaintance," says her biographer, "nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness." Her father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott's friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had a large family. His wife's mother married secondly Middleton, the biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual development. In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age. During her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich, and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary's husband.
Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant daughter of the duke of Kingston. Her husband was in every way estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how thoroughly she appreciated his character. They had only one child, who died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.
A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent, received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More, Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronté. Her principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener "Capability Brown."
She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true.
The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the whole book—a serious drawback, more especially to American readers.
The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Cushing has given another proof of the great capacity of some men to do very clever work, but to fail utterly in giving an adequate account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States. Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives, now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle—"Western Orientalisms." The tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens: "Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations" instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to," "howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such phrases without number.
Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr. Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that negotiation, and will give the reading and reflecting public, both abroad and at home, a very unfavorable impression of the great task in which he played so important a part, and of the qualities of mind and temper he must have brought to it, since at this late day he finds no better impetus to the work of writing its history than unexplained anger at one of the members of the board before which Mr. Cushing argued the cause of his country, and helped to win it.
Books Received.
The Drawing-Room Stage: A Series of Original Dramas, Comedies, Farces, and Entertainments for Amateur Theatricals and School Exhibitions. By George M. Baker. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
Five Years in an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed, late Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third edition. Revised by the Author. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By the late C.A. Sainte-Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Livingstone and his African Explorations: together with a Full Account of the Young, Stanley and Dawson Search Expeditions. New York: Adams, Victor & Co.
The Mother's Register: Current Notes of the Health of Children. From the French of Professor J.B. Fonssagrines. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. Translated from the French by J. M. Luyster. Illustrated. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Scientific and Industrial Education: its Importance to our Country. By G.B. Stebbins. Detroit: Daily Post Printing Establishment.
Never Again. By W.S. Mayo, M.D., author of "Kaloolah," "The Berber," etc. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
The World-Priest. From the German of Leopold Schafer. By Charles T. Brooks. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
The Cuban Question in the Spanish Parliament. London: Press of the Anglo-American Times.
Treason at Home: A Novel. By Mrs. Greenough. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
Myths and Myth-Makers. By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.
An Account of the Sphynx at Mount Auburn. Illustrated. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.