"Judge ye gods, of my surprise,
A lady naked in her chemise!"
This is unquestionably very fine. True, there is some contradiction in nudity and attire; but splendid contradiction is an eternal element of poetry. What would Milton's "Paradise Lost" be without it? The reader cannot tell whether the surprise of the poet is at the lady or her drapery. There is no use in asking a great poet what he meant in writing his brilliant lines. If as candid as Browning, he would answer as Browning did, that "he had not the slightest idea what he meant." Nothing remains for us but to congratulate the public on the advent of a new poet who is equally great on subjects of land or sea.
There is a good deal of reviewing done on this principle, and reputations made by this sort of writing as fully without foundation, and I looked forward to further employment.
The editor to whom I sent these primal specimens of my new vocation seemed undecided what to do with them—throw them into his waste-paper basket or submit them to his readers. I assured him I had seen a number of criticisms less restrained than mine, on performances quite as slender as the sonnets I had described. With kindly consideration, lest he might be repressing a rising genius in me, he asked me to give my opinion upon a charming little poem by Longfellow—to commend, as he hoped I could, as a new edition in which he was interested was about to be published.
The object of the poet, I found, was to awaken certain young ladies, whose only fault consisted in getting up late in the morning. The lines addressed to them, if I rightly remember, began thus:—
"Awake! Arise! and greet the day.
Angels are knocking at the door.
They are in haste and may not stay,
And once departed come no more."
This verse reminds the readers of Omar Khayyam. Two ideas in it are his, and the terms used are his; but I resisted this temptation to imitate those popular critics, whose aim is not to discover the graces of a new poet, but his plagiarisms, and to show that everybody reproduces the ideas of everybody else, and prove that—
"Nothing is, and all things seem
And we the shadows of a dream"—
and of old, antediluvian dreams. Disdaining this royal road to critical renown, I commenced by praising the enchanting invocation of the poet, who when the ladies heard it would leap out of bed and dress. I observed that to the reader who did not look below the surface—did not "read between the lines," is the favourite phrase—the poem presented some mysteries of diction. Instead of appearing as the angel in Leigh Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem" did, who diffused himself in the room like a vision, these peripatetic visitants presented themselves like celestial postmen "knocking at the door." Then why were they out so early themselves? Had they more calls to make than they could well accomplish in the time allowed them? Why were they "in haste"? No wonder mankind lack repose if angels are in a hurry. The Kingdom of the Blest is supposed to be the land of rest Manifestly these morning angels had to be back by a stipulated time, and like a tax-collector could make no second call. Apparently Longfellow's angels are like Mr. Stead's favourite spirit Julia. They are harassed with appointments, commissions, and cares. It is of no use being a spirit if you cannot move about with regal leisureliness, such as was displayed by the first Shah of Persia who visited us. The writer has seen nothing like it in any European monarch. While in the lines now in question supernatural misgivings of angelic perturbation are awakened. But as an example of poetry, irrespective of its meaning and suggestions, every reader will covet a new edition of the American poet, and no library could be complete without a copy upon its shelves.
I had visited the poet at his Cambridge home, and was proud of the opportunity of adding ever so small an addition to the pyramid of regard raised to his memory.