When I was at the opera, a few nights since, I saw in a private box a benevolent-looking gentleman of middle age, evidently well-born and accustomed to wealth. He was accompanied by a lady in elegant mourning,—a lady of decided beauty and distinguished appearance.
Miss Flora McFlimsey was there:—"That," said she, "is Mrs. Morris, of Fourteenth Street,—a mysterious governess in the family of Mr. Osgood; and the gentleman is Mr. Osgood."
NATURE AND THE PHILOSOPHER.
What dost thou here, pale chemist, with thy brow
Knotted with pains of thought, nigh hump-backed o'er
Thy alembics and thy stills? These garden-flowers,
Whose perfumes spice the balmy summer-air,
Teach us as well as thee. Thou dost condense
Healthy aromas into poison-drops,
Narcotic drugs of dangerous strength and power,—
And wines of paradise to thee become
Intoxicating essences of hell.
Cold crystallizer of the warm heaven's gold!
Thou rigorous analyst! thou subtile brain!
Gathering thought's sunshine to a focus heat
That blinds and burns and maddens! What, my friend!
Are we, then, salamanders? Do we live
A charmèd life? Do gases feed like air?
Pray you, pack up your crucibles and go!
Your statements are too awfully abstract;
Your logic strikes too near our warm tap-roots:
We shall breathe freer in our natural air
Of common sense. What are your gallipots
And Latin labels to this fresh bouquet?—
Friend, 'tis a pure June morning. Ask the bees,
The butterflies, the birds, the little girls.
We are after flowers. You are after—what?
Aconite, hellebore, pulsatilla, rheum.
Take them and go! and take your burning lens!
We dare not bask in the sun's genial beams
Drawn to that spear-like point. Truth comes and goes,
Life-giving in diffusion. Nature flows, extends,
And veils us with herself,—herself God's veil.
But you persist in opening your bladders,
And the three gases that compose the air
You bid us take a breath of, one by one.
For Mother Nature you should have respect:
She does not like these teasings and these jokes.
Philosopher you seem; you'd state all fair;
You would go deep and broad. You're right; but then
Forget not there's an outer to your inner,—
A whole that binds your parts,—a truth for man
As well as chemist,—and your lecture-room,
With magic vials and quaint essences
And odors strange, may teach your students less
Than this June morning, with the sun and flowers.
THOMAS JEFFERSON.[1]
The biography before us is so voluminous that it can hardly maintain the popularity to which its subject entitles it. He must be a bold man, and to some degree forgetful of the brevity of life, who, for any ordinary purpose of information or amusement, undertakes to read these huge octavos. True, the theme is somewhat extended; Jefferson's life was a protracted and busy one; he took a leading part in complicated transactions, and promulgated doctrines which cannot be summarily discussed. But the author's prolixity has not grown out of the extent of his theme alone. He is both diffuse and digressive. He introduces much irrelevant matter, and tells everything in a round-about-way. By a judicious exercise of the arts of elimination and compression, we think that all which illustrates the subject might have been comprised in one volume much smaller than the smallest of these.
But Mr. Randall's most serious fault arises from his desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her lofty lineaments carried a trace of the Puritan severity. They were those of the helmed Minerva, and not of the cestus-girdled Venus." We do not mention this in order to justify a strain of captious criticism, but to ask Mr. Randall, in all seriousness, how it was possible for him to associate a staid and sensible New England matron with Venus and Minerva? What would he say of a writer who should gravely tell us that Washington's features were those of the cloud-compelling Jupiter, not of Mars, slayer of men,—and that Franklin's countenance resembled that of the wily Ulysses, not that of the far-ruling Agamemnon? We might fill this paper with passages like the one we have quoted. What is the use of this kind of writing? It does not convey any meaning; there is no beauty in it; it increases the size and price of books; it corrupts the taste of the young, is offensive to persons of good sense, and mortifying to those who take pride in the literary reputation of their country. It is the bane of our literature. Many of our prose-writers constantly put language upon paper the use of which in ordinary life would be received by a court as evidence of insanity. If they do so for display, they take the readiest course to defeat their purpose. There is nothing so fascinating as simplicity and earnestness. A writer who has an object, and goes right on to accomplish it, will compel the attention of his readers. But it seems, that in art, as well as in morals and politics, the plainest truths are the last to be understood.
We make these strictures with reluctance. This biography, in many respects, is valuable, and Mr. Randall might easily have made it interesting. He had a subject worthy of any pen, and an abundance of new material. He does not lack skill. His unstudied passages, though never elegant, are well enough. He is industrious. Though we must dissent from some of his conclusions, he is entitled to the praise of being accurate, and is free from prejudice,—except that amiable prejudice which has been well called the lues Boswelliana.[1] His delineations of famous personages, though marked by the faults of which we have spoken, show quite unusual perception of character. He has a thorough appreciation of Jefferson's noblest characteristics, and an honorable sympathy with the philosophy of which Jefferson was a teacher.
[Footnote 1: The Life of Thomas Jefferson. By HENRY S. RANDALL, LL.
D. In three volumes. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1858.]
With resources and qualifications like these, he might have produced a biography which the country would have received with gratitude, and which would have conferred an enviable reputation upon him; as it is, through his neglect of a few wholesome rules which he must have learned when a school-boy, the years of labor he has spent over this book will go for nothing, and the hopes he has built upon it will be disappointed.