LITERATURE AS AN ART.
As one looks forward to the America of fifty years hence, the main source of anxiety appears to be in a probable excess of prosperity, and in the want of a good grievance. We seem nearly at the end of those great public wrongs which require a special moral earthquake to end them. Except to secure the ballot for woman,—a contest which is thus far advancing very peaceably,—there seems nothing left which need be absolutely fought for; no great influence to keep us from a commonplace and perhaps debasing success. There will, no doubt, be still need of the statesman to adjust the details of government, and of the clergyman to keep an eye on private morals, including his own. There will also be social and religious changes, perhaps great ones; but there are no omens of any very fierce upheaval. And seeing the educational value to this generation of the reforms for which it has contended, and especially of the antislavery enterprise, one must feel an impulse of pity for our successors, who seem likely to have no convictions that they can honestly be mobbed for.
Can we spare these great tonics? It is the experience of history that all religious bodies are purified by persecution, and materialized by peace. No amount of accumulated virtue has thus far saved the merely devout communities from deteriorating, when let alone, into comfort and good dinners. This is most noticeable in detached organizations,—Moravians, Shakers, Quakers, Roman Catholics,—they all go the same way at last; when persecution and missionary toil are over, they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many Chinese?
I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion tedious,—the pursuit of Science and Art. Give to all this nation peace, freedom, prosperity, and even virtue, still there must be some absorbing interest, some career. That career can be sought only in two directions,—more and yet more material prosperity on the one side. Science and Art on the other. Every man's aim must either be riches, or something better than riches. Now the wealth is to be respected and desired, nor need anything be said against it. And certainly nothing need be said in its behalf, there is such a vast chorus of voices steadily occupied in proclaiming it. The Instincts of the American mind will take care of that; but to advocate the alternative career, the striving of the whole nature after something utterly apart from this world's wealth,—it is for this end that a stray voice is needed. It will not take long; the clamor of the market will re-absorb us to-morrow.
It can scarcely be said that Science and Art have as yet any place in America; or if they have, it is by virtue of their prospective value, as with the bonds of a Pacific railway. I use the ordinary classification, Science and Art, though it is literature only of which I now aim to speak. For under one of these two heads all literature must fall; it may be either a contribution to science through its matter, or to art through its form. The form of literature is usually called style and of the highest kind of literature, called poetry or belles-lettres, the style is an essential, and almost the essential part. It is in this aspect that the matter is now to be considered,—literature as an art.
The latest French traveller, Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, says well, that, for what he calls the academic class—or class devoted to pure literature—there is as yet no place in America. Such a class must conceal itself, he says, beneath the politician's garb, or the clergyman's cravat. We may observe that, when our people speak of literature, they are very apt to mean a newspaper article, or perhaps a sermon, or a legal plea. One editor said that it could be no more asserted that literature was ill paid in America, since Governor Andrew received ten thousand dollars for an argument against the prohibitory liquor law. Even in our largest cities, there are scarcely the rudiments of a literary class, apart from the newspapers. Now, journalism is an invaluable outlet for the leisure time of a literary man; but his main work must be given to something else, or his vocation must change its name. He needs the experience of journalism, as he needs that of the lyceum and the caucus,—nay, as he needs the gymnasium and the wherry,—to keep himself healthy and sound. But when he gives the main energy of his life to either, though he may not cease to be useful, he ceases to be a literary man.
It is useless to complain that, in America, Science is preceding Art; that is inevitable. As yet there is a shrinking even from pure science,—that is, from all science which is not directly marketable; and while this is so, art must be still further postponed. We have hitherto valued science for its applications, natural history as a branch of agriculture, mathematics for the sake of life-assurance tables, and even a college education as a training for members of Congress. Just so far as any of these departments have failed of these ends, there is a tendency to disparage them. We are a little like the President Dupaty of the French Assembly, who told the astronomer Laplace that he considered the discovery of a new planet to be far less important than that of a new pudding, as we have already more planets than we know what to do with, while we never can have puddings enough. We are now outgrowing this limited view of science, but in regard to literature the delusion still remains; if it is anything more than an amusement, it must afford solid information; it is not yet owned that it has value for itself, as an art. Of course, all true instruction, however conveyed, is palatable; to a healthy mind the Mécanique Céleste is good reading; so is Mill's "Political Economy," or De Morgan's "Formal Logic." But words are available for something which is more than knowledge. Words afford a more delicious music than the chords of any instrument; they are susceptible of richer colors than any painter's palette; and that they should be used merely for the transportation of intelligence, as a wheelbarrow carries brick, is not enough. The highest aspect of literature assimilates it to painting and music. Beyond and above all the domain of use lies beauty, and to aim at this makes literature an art.
A book without art is simply a commodity; it may be exceedingly valuable to the consumer, very profitable to the producer, but it does not come within the domain of pure literature. It is said that some high legal authority on copyright thus cites a case: "One Moore had written a book which he called 'Irish Melodies,'" and so on. Now, as Aristotle defined the shipbuilder's art to be all of the ship but the wood, so the literary art displayed in Moore's Melodies was precisely the thing ignored in this citation.
To pursue literature as an art is not therefore to be a mathematician nor a political economist; still less to be a successful journalist, like Greeley, or a lecturer with a thousand annual invitations, like Gough. These careers have really no more to do with literature than has the stage or the bar. Indeed, a man may earn twenty thousand dollars a year by writing "sensation stories," and have nothing to do with literature as an art. But to devote one's life to perfecting the manner, as well as the matter, of one's work; to expatriate one's self long years for it, like Motley; to overcome vast physical obstacles for it, like Prescott or Parkman; to live and die only to transfuse external nature into human words, like Thoreau; to chase dreams for a lifetime, like Hawthorne; to labor tranquilly and see a nation imbued with one's thoughts, like Emerson,—this it is to pursue literature as an art.
There is apparently something in the Anglo-Saxon mind which causes a slight shrinking from art as such, perhaps associating it with deception or frivolity,—which tolerates it, and, strange to say, even produces it in verse, but really shrinks from it in prose. Across the water, this tendency seems to increase. Just as an Englishman is ashamed to speak well, and pooh-poohs all oratory, so he is growing ashamed even to write well, at least in anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far less careful than ours,—less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod, more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, like Dean Alford in his recent book on language, as "an old party in a shovel"? These bad examples are to be regretted; for doubtless ten times as many original works are annually published in England as in America, and we have an hereditary right to seek from that nation those models of culture for which we must now turn to France.