And the night looks like a mellowed day.
Isles where all things save man seem to have grown hoar in calm.
In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.”
To a man of Stoddard’s genius and delicate perception, one thing could have been foreseen. These lands yet warm with the sunshine of youth would play melodies on his soul, as the winds on Æolian harps; melodies hitherto unknown to the jaded working world. That he could catch these airs and give them a tangible form, was not so sure. Others had heard these siren airs, but failed to yoke them to speech. Melville, now and then, had reproduced a few notes; notes full of dreamy beauty, making us long for the master who was to give the full and perfect song. That master was found in Stoddard. He produced, as Howells so finely has said, “the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that ever were written about the life of that summer ocean,” things “of the very make of the tropic spray,” which “know not if it be sea or sun.” Whether you open with a prodigal in Tahiti and see for yourself “that there are few such delicious bits of literature in the language,” or follow the writer, who, thanking the critics, prefers to find out for himself the worth of a writer, commences at the beginning with the charming tale of “Kana-ana,” you will be in company with the acute critic who has pronounced the life of the summer sea, “once done,” by Stoddard, “and that for all time.” What should we look for in such a book? “Pictures of life, for melody of language, for shapes and sounds of beauty;” and these are to be found without stint in the “South Sea Idyls.” The form of Kana-ana haunts me, “with his round, full girlish face, lips ripe and expressive, not quite so sensual as those of most of his race; not a bad nose, by any means; eyes perfectly glorious—regular almonds—with the mythical lashes that sweep.” Kana-ana, who had tasted of civilization, finding it hollow, pining for his own fair land, and when restored to the shade of his native palms, wasting away, dying delirious, in his tiny canoe, rocked to death by the spirit of the deep. Or is it Taboo—“the figure that was like the opposite halves of two men bodily joined together in an amateur attempt at human grafting, whose trunk was curved the wrong way; a great shoulder bullied a little shoulder, and kept it decidedly under; a long leg walked right around a short leg that was perpetually sitting itself down on invisible seats, or swinging itself for the mere pleasure of it,” meeting him by the enchanting cascade. Or is it Joe of Lahaina, whose young face seemed to embody a whole tropical romance. Joe, his bright scape-grace, met with months after in that isle of lost dreams and salty tears, the leper-land of Molokai. Who shall forget the end of that tale, where the author steals away in the darkness from the dying boy?
“I shall never see little Joe again, with his pitiful face, growing gradually as dreadful as a cobra’s, and almost as fascinating in its hideousness. I waited, a little way off in the darkness, waited and listened, till the last song was ended, and I knew he would be looking for me to say good night. But he did not find me, and he will never again find me in this life, for I left him sitting in the dark door of his sepulchre—sitting and singing in the mouth of his grave—clothed all in Death.”
It matters little whether it be Kana-ana, Taboo or Joe of Lahaina, the hand of a master was at their birth, the spell of the wizard is around them. The full development of Stoddard’s genius is not found in character-drawing, great as that gift undoubtedly is, but in his wonderful reproduction of the ever-changing hues of land and sea, under the tropical sun. What description is better fitted to fill the eye with beauty, the ear with melody, than these lines from the very first page of his “South Sea Idyls?”
“Once a green oasis blossomed before us—a garden in perfect bloom, girdled about with creamy waves; within its coral cincture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs stole down upon us; above all the triumphant palm trees clashed their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle was buried in night and distance.”
It is not easy to make extracts from this charming book. It is a mosaic, to be read as a whole. A tile, no matter how beautiful it may be, can give no adequate conception of the mosaic of which it forms a part. It may, however, stimulate us to procure it. These extracts taken at random, would that they might have the same effect. The book, once so rare, is now within the easy reach of all. The new edition lately published by the Scribners is all that one could ask, and is a fitting home for the undying melodies of the summer seas. To read it is to be reminded of the opening lines of Endymion.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,
Its loveliness increases; it will never