"I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy and singing for joy were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion."
PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE.[16]
THESE volumes have met with as warm a reception "as ever unripe author's quick conceit," to use Mr. Taylor's own language, could hope or wish; and so deservedly, that the critic's happy task, in examining them, is to point out, not what is most to be blamed, but what is most to be praised.
With joy we hail a new poet. Star after star has been withdrawn from our firmament, and when that of Coleridge set, we seemed in danger of being left, at best, to a gray and confounding twilight; but, lo! a "ray of pure white light" darts across the obscured depths of ether, and allures our eyes and hearts towards the rising orb from which it emanates. Let us tremble no more lest our summer pass away without its roses, but receive our present visitor as the harbinger of a harvest of delights.
The natural process of the mind in forming a judgment is comparison. The office of sound criticism is to teach that this comparison should be made, not between the productions of differently-constituted minds, but between any one of these and a fixed standard of perfection. Nevertheless it is not contrary to the canon to take a survey of the labors of many artists with reference to one, if we value them, not according to the degree of pleasure we have experienced from them, which must always depend upon our then age, the state of the passions and relations with life, but according to the success of the artist in attaining the object he himself had in view. To illustrate: In the same room hang two pictures, Raphael's Madonna and Martin's Destruction of Nineveh. A person enters, capable of admiring both, but young, excitable; he is delighted with the Madonna, but probably far more so with the other, because his imagination is at that time more developed than the pure love for beauty which is the characteristic of a taste in a higher state of cultivation. He prefers the Martin, because it excites in his mind a thousand images of sublimity and terror, recalls the brilliancy of Oriental history, and the stern pomp of the old prophetic day, and rouses his mind to a high state of action, then as congenial with its wants as at a later day would be the feeling of contented absorption, of perfect satisfaction with a production of the human soul, which one of Raphael's calmly beautiful creations is fitted to cause. Now, it would be very unfair for this person to pronounce the Martin superior to the Raphael, because it then gave him more pleasure. But if he said, the one is intended to excite the imagination, the other to gratify the taste, that which fulfils its object most completely must be the best, whether it give me most pleasure or no; he would be on the right ground, and might consider the two pictures relatively to one another, without danger of straying very far from the truth.
This is the ground we would assume in a hasty sketch, which will not, we hope, be deemed irrelevant, of the most prominent essays to which the last sixty years have given rise in the department of the work now before us, previous to stating our opinion of its merits. Many, we are aware, ridicule the idea of filling reviews with long dissertations, and say they only want brief accounts of such books as are coming out, by way of saving time. With such we cannot agree. We think the office of the reviewer is, indeed, in part, to point out to the public attention deserving works, which might otherwise slumber too long unknown on the bookseller's shelves, but still more to present to the reader as large a cluster of objects round one point as possible, thus, by suggestion, stimulating him to take a broader or more careful view of the subject than his indolence or his business would have permitted.
The terms Classical and Romantic, which have so long divided European critics, and exercised so powerful an influence upon their decisions, are not much known or heeded among us,—as, indeed, belles-lettres cannot, generally, in our busy state of things, be important or influential, as among a less free and more luxurious people, to whom the more important truths are proffered through those indirect but alluring mediums. Here, where every thing may be spoken or written, and the powers that be, abused without ceremony on the very highway, the Muse has nothing to do with dagger or bowl; hardly is the censor's wand permitted to her hand. Yet is her lyre by no means unheeded, and if it is rather by refining our tastes than by modelling our opinions that she influences us, yet is that influence far from unimportant. And the time is coming, perhaps in our day, we may (if war do not untimely check the national progress) even see and temper its beginning, when the broad West shall swarm with an active, happy, and cultivated population; when the South, freed from the incubus which now oppresses her best energies, shall be able to do justice to the resources of her soil and of her mind; when the East, gathering from every breeze the riches of the old world, shall be the unwearied and loving agent to those regions which lie far away from the great deep, our bulwark and our minister. Then will the division of labor be more complete; then will a surplus of talent be spared from the mart, the forum, and the pulpit; then will the fine arts assume their proper dignity, as the expression of what is highest and most ethereal in the mind of a people. Then will our quarries be thoroughly explored, and furnish materials for stately fabrics to adorn the face of all the land, while our ports shall be crowded with foreign artists flocking to take lessons in the school of American architecture. Then will our floral treasures be arranged into harmonious gardens, which, environing tasteful homes, shall dimple all the landscape. Then will our Allstons and our Greenoughs preside over great academies, and be raised far above any need, except of giving outward form to the beautiful ideas which animate them; and ornament from the exhaustless stores of genius the marble halls where the people meet to rejoice, or to mourn, or where dwell those wise and good whom the people delight to honor. Then shall music answer to and exalt the national spirit, and the poet's brows shall be graced with the civic as well as the myrtle crown. Then shall we have an American mind, as well as an American system, and, no longer under the sad necessity of exchanging money for thoughts, traffic on perfectly equal terms with the other hemisphere. Then—ah, not yet!—shall our literature make its own laws, and give its own watchwords; till then we must learn and borrow from that of nations who possess a higher degree of cultivation though a much lower one of happiness.
The term Classical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile adherence to the Unities, but in its wide and best sense, it means such a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judicious limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the interest, perfect the illusion, and make the impression most distinct and forcible. Although no advocates for the old French school, with its slavish obedience to rule, which introduces follies greater than those it would guard against, we lay the blame, not on their view of the drama, but on the then bigoted nationality of the French mind, which converted the Mussulman prophet into a De Retz, the Roman princess into a French grisette, and infected the clear and buoyant atmosphere of Greece with the vapors of the Seine. We speak of the old French Drama: with the modern we do not profess to be acquainted, having met with scarcely any specimens in our own bookstores or libraries; but if it has been revolutionized with the rest of their literature, it is probably as unlike as possible to the former models.
We shall speak of productions in the classical spirit first; because Mr. Taylor is a disciple of the other school, though otherwise we should have adopted a contrary course.
The most perfect specimens of this style with which we are acquainted are the Filippo, the Saul, and the Myrrha of Alfieri; the Wallenstein of Schiller; the Tasso and the Iphigenia of Gœthe. England furnishes nothing of the sort. She is thoroughly Shakspearian.