For this reason the licentious in American literature is and must be cold, artificial, and repugnant. The erotic becomes mere bald immorality, without grace, gayety, color, or warmth to lend it dignity or render it tolerable. In the opulent, fervid period of the Renaissance, art was born of passion and inspired by it to greatness. The erotic was a legitimate element of all works of the imagination, because it was a part of the social life of the day, and because, being genuine, it could be made beautiful. When, after the Revolution in England and the spread of Calvinism on the Continent, the minds and manners of men were brought under closer restraint, licentiousness in art began to be no longer natural and spontaneous, and therefore no longer legitimate, until in the last century it degenerated into simple indecency. When the erotic ceased to be quite as much a matter of course, in fiction or poetry, as hatred, jealousy, or revenge, and the reader learned to pass it over with a frown or pick it out with a relish, according to his natural disgust of or morbid craving for the impure, it became a blemish. It was no longer real, but an indecent imitation. Compare "Romeo and Juliet," that divine poem of passion, with the abominations of Waters and Rochester, popular in their day, but now happily forgotten, or even Wycherly, not yet quite forgotten, and mark how wide the difference between the true and the false, the natural and the unnatural.
To-day, in America at least, the physical is subordinate to the spiritual. The mind is master, and the body in its bondage, if not enfeebled, has at least become trained to passive obedience. All impulses are submitted to the severe scrutiny of reason. Categories of right and wrong, or perhaps the politic and the impolitic, are strictly adhered to. Caution is largely in the ascendant. The world's opinion is an ever-present restraining element. All these are results, or at any rate concomitants of a loftier civilization. A society guided by moral and intellectual forces is unquestionably upon higher ground than one dominated by the physical. The world is, moreover, a more comfortable place to live in than it used to be when, on account of the color of the feather in one's hat, one must unsheathe and go at it, hammer and tongs, to save one's skin.
Passion does still exist in the human heart, but it is restrained and modified by the necessities and conditions of the social life of the day. To be a fit element of fiction it must be depicted in its nineteenth-century guise—in other words, decently. To be a truthful picture it can be depicted in no other way. To exhibit it posturing, writhing, and gasping in mere hysteria is to lower it beneath the standard of wholesome and worthy art. License without love, and immorality without passion, are as unpardonable in a novel as they are in human nature.
Political Oratory of Emery A. Storrs, by Isaac E. Adams (Belford, Clarke & Co.).—The compiler of Mr. Storrs's political speeches begins his introductory chapter with some questionable generalizations which are belittling and somewhat unjust to the large class of true orators to which his hero belongs. He says: "Few examples of political oratory have been embalmed in literature. Men, too, remembered for oratorical power are easily reckoned, and tower conspicuously along the shores of time. There was once a Demosthenes, once a Cicero, once a Burke. The time will come when, looking back upon the centuries of American history, it will be said there was, also, once a Webster and once a Lincoln."
We must be permitted to observe that the line cannot be clearly drawn between political and other oratory. In a broad sense, all the great orators known to history have been political orators, because they gained their fame chiefly in discussing the great and absorbing public questions of their day.
To these belongs Emery A. Storrs. Let a few extracts from this volume of speeches suffice to show the style of his oratory. At Chicago, in the darkest hours of our civil war, he said: "I have no doubt but that this, the most wicked rebellion that ever blackened the annals of history, will be ground to powder. I have no doubt but that our national integrity will be preserved. I have no doubt but that the union of these States will be restored, and that the nation will emerge from the fiery trial through which it has passed, brighter and better and stronger than it has ever been before. It would be impossible, however, that a conflict mighty as that from which we are now, I trust, emerging should not leave its deep and permanent impress upon our future national character. It will give tone to our politics, our literature, and our feelings as a people, for ages to come."
At Cleveland, in the campaign of 1880, he said: "Have you seen any trouble with the pillars of the government? The trouble was not with the pillars—they did not rock; the trouble was with the gentlemen who were looking at the pillars of the government. They were like the gentleman who had been attending a lecture on astronomy. Going home loaded with a great deal of Democratic logic, with a step weary and uncertain, with the earth revolving a great many times upon its axis, he affectionately clasped a lamp-post and said, 'Old Galileo was right about it: the world does move.'"
The logic of Mr. Storrs's speeches on war topics, which were immensely popular, is embraced in the single sentence: "I think there can be nothing more suicidal than to intrust into the hands of these men, who sought the destruction of our national life, the direction of our national interests."
Hence the convenient 300-page volume under review will be valuable to political speakers and writers who want their party zeal warmed up by the earnest appeals of an impassioned, conscientious, and clear-minded orator. The diction of Mr. Storrs is admirable, his language is almost always felicitous, and in his logic there is a happy blending of grace and force. If his range was not wide, he was always able to concentrate learning and ability enough on any given occasion to show a masterful oratorical power over immense masses of men.