A well-practised eye will, it is true, detect in a moment either the faults or the excellence of the rhyme or the flow; but the effect on the mind cannot be the same as when the impression is received through the ear.
Nor is the fuller appreciation of the poetry you read aloud the only advantage to be derived from the practice I recommend. Few accomplishments are more rare, though few more desirable, than that of reading aloud with ease and grace. Great are the sufferings inflicted on a sensitive ear by listening to one's favourite passages, touching in pathos, or glorious in sublimity, travestied into twaddle by the false taste or the want of practice of the reader. For it is not always from false taste that the species of reading above complained of proceeds; on the contrary, there may be a very correct perception of the writer's meaning and object, while from want of practice, from mere mechanical inexpertness, there may be an incapability of giving effect to that meaning: hence arises false emphasis, and a thousand other disagreeables.
In this art, this important art of reading aloud, simplicity ought to be the grand object of attainment, at the same time that it is the last that can be attained. It is a point to reach after long efforts; not to start from, as those of uncultivated or artificial taste would imagine. I must repeat, that it cannot be acquired without persevering practice. The best time to set vigorously about such practice would be when you have but just listened with dismay to the injuries inflicted on some favourite poet by the laboured or tasteless reading of an unpractised performer.
From reading aloud, I pass on to a still more important subject,—that of writing: both are intimately connected branches of the main one—cultivation of the mind. When this latter is attained in the first place, a slight individual direction of previously acquired powers will enable you to succeed in both the former. In your own case, however, as in that of all those who have not the active organisation which involves great facilities for mechanical efforts, it will be quite necessary to give a special direction to your studies for the attainment of any degree of excellence in both those arts. Those, on the contrary, whose organization is more lively and vigorous, and whose nature and habits fit them more for action than thought, will find little difficulty in making any degree of cultivation of mind an immediate stepping-stone to the other attainments: such persons can read at once with force and truth as soon as education has given them accurate perceptions; they will also write with ease, rapidity, and energy, as soon as the mind is furnished with suitable materials. This is a kind of superiority which you may often be inclined to envy, at least until experience has taught you, in the first place, that the law of compensation is universal, and in the second, that every thing is doubly valuable which is acquired through hard labour and many struggles. For the first, you may observe that such persons as possess naturally the mechanical facilities of which I have spoken will never attain to an equal degree of excellence with those whose naturally soft and inactive organization obliges them to labour over every step of their onward way. They can, I repeat, never attain to the same degree of excellence, either in feeling or expression, because they do not possess the same refined delicacy of perceptions, the same deep thoughtfulness and intuitive wisdom, as those who owe these advantages to the very organization from which they otherwise suffer. This is another illustration of the universal law—that action is always in inverse proportion to power. For the second, you will find that there is a pleasure in overcoming difficulties, compared with which all easily attained or naturally possessed advantages appear tame and vapid:[83] and besides the difference in the pleasurable excitement of the contest, you are to consider the advantage to the character that is derived from a battle and a victory.
When I speak to you of writing, and of your attaining to excellence in this art, I have nothing in view but the improvement of your private letters. It can seldom be desirable for a woman to challenge public criticism by appearing before the world as an author. "My wife does not write poetry, she lives it," was the reply of Richter, when his highly-gifted Caroline was applied to for literary contributions to her sister's publications. He described in these words the real nature of a woman's duties. Any degree of avoidable publicity must lessen her peace and happiness; and few circumstances can make it prudent for a woman to give up retirement and retired duties, and subject herself to public criticism, and probably public blame.
The writing, then, in which I have advised you to accomplish yourself, is the epistolary style alone, at once a means of communicating pleasure to your friends, and of conferring extensive and permanent benefits upon them. How useful has the kind, judicious, well-timed letter of a Christian friend often proved, even when the spoken word of the same friend might, during circumstances of excitement, have only increased imprudence or irritation!
Few printed books have effected more good than the private correspondence of pious, well-educated, and strong-minded persons. Indeed, the influence exercised by letters and conversation is so much the peculiar and appropriate sphere of a woman's usefulness, that all her studies should be pursued with an especial view to the attainment of these accomplishments. The same qualities are to be desired in both. The utmost simplicity—for nothing can be worse than speaking as if you were repeating a sentence out of a book, except writing a friendly letter as if you were writing out of a book,—a great abundance and readiness of information for the purpose of supplying a variety of illustrations, an intelligent perception of, and a cautious attention to, that which you are called upon to answer, a conciseness of expression, that is perfectly consistent with those minute details, which, gracefully managed, as women only can, form the chief charm of their conversation and writing,—with all these you should be careful to give free play to the peculiarities of your own individual mind: this will always, even where there is little or no talent, produce a pleasing degree of originality.
Before every thing else, however, let unstudied ease, I could almost add carelessness, be the marked characteristics of both your conversation and your writing. Refined taste will indeed insensibly produce the former, without any effort of your own, far better than the strictest rules could do.
The praises of nonsense have been often written and often spoken; nor can it ever be praised more than it deserves. However "within its magic circle none dare walk"[84] but those who have naturally quick and refined perceptions, assisted by careful cultivation. Narrow indeed is the boundary which divides unfeminine flippancy from the graceful nonsense which good authority and our own feelings pronounce to be "exquisite."[85] The unsuccessful attempt at its imitation always reminds me of Pilpay's fable of the Donkey and the Lapdog:—The poor donkey, who had been going on very usefully in its own drudging way, began to envy the lap-dog the caresses it received, and fancied that it would receive the same if it jumped upon its master as the lap-dog did: how awkwardly and unnaturally its attempts at playfulness were executed, how unwelcome they proved, I need not tell you. Nothing is more difficult than playfulness or even vivacity of manner—nothing is so sure a test of good breeding and high cultivation of mind; either may carry you safely through, but their union alone can render playfulness and vivacity entirely fascinating.
After all that I have written, I must again repeat what I began with,—that you are to try each different mode of study for yourself, and that the advice of others will be of use to you only when you have assimilated it with your own mind, testing it by your own practice, and giving it the fair trial of patient perseverance.