International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 6, August 5, 1850

ON THE DEATH OF S. MARGARET FULLER.

BY G.F.R. JAMES

An Illustration of the high prices paid to fortunate artists in these times may be found in the fact that Alboni, the famous contralto singer, has been engaged to sing at Madrid, at the enormous rate of $400 dollars per day, while Roger, the tenor, who used to sing at the Comic Opera at Paris, and who was transplanted to the Grand Opera to assist in the production of Meyerbeer's "Prophet," has been engaged to sing with her at the more moderate salary of $8000 a month. This is almost equal to the extravagant sum guaranteed to Jenny Lind for performing in this country. It would be a curious inquiry why singers and dancers are always paid so much more exorbitantly than painters, sculptors or musical composers, especially as the pleasure they confer is of a merely evanescent character, while the works of the latter remain a perpetual source of delight and refinement to all generations.

FRASER'S MAGAZINE UPON THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA

The last number of Fraser's Magazine has a long article upon THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA, in which the subject is treated with more than the customary civility of English criticism upon this subject. We are half inclined, indeed, to believe the article was written "above Bleecker," or by an inhabitant of that quarter now in London. Omitting the illustrative extracts, we copy the greater portion of the review, in which most of those who are admitted to be poets are characterized.

"When Halleck said of New York—

he rather understated than exaggerated the fact. Mr. Griswold, besides the ninety regular poets in his collection, gives an appendix of about seventy fugitive pieces by as many authors; and bitter complaints have been made against him in various quarters for not including some seventy, or a hundred and seventy more, 'who,' it is said, and probably with truth, 'have as good a right to be there as many of those admitted.' Still it is possible to pick out a few of general reputation, whom literati from all parts of the Union would agree in sustaining as specimens of distinguished American poets, though they would differ in assigning their relative position. Thus, if the Republic had to choose a laureate, Boston would probably deposit a nearly unanimous vote for Longfellow; the suffrages of New York might he divided between Bryant and Halleck; and the southern cities would doubtless give a large majority for Poe. But these gentlemen, and some three or four more, would be acknowledged by all as occupying the first rank. Perhaps, on the whole, the preponderance of native authority justifies us in heading the list with Bryant, who, at any rate, has the additional title of seniority in authorship, if not in actual years.

"William Cullen Bryant is, as we learn from Mr. Griswold, about fifty-five years old, and was born in Massachusetts, though his literary career is chiefly associated with New York, of which he is a resident. With a precocity extraordinary, even in a country where precocity is the rule instead of the exception, he began to write and publish at the age of thirteen, and has, therefore, been full forty years before the American public, and that not in the capacity of poet alone—having for more than half that period edited the Evening Post, one of the ablest and most respectable papers in the United States, and the oldest organ, we believe, of the Democratic party in New York. He has been called, and with justice, a poet of nature. The prairie solitude, the summer evening landscape, the night wind of autumn, the water-bird flitting homeward through the twilight—such are the favorite subjects of inspiration. Thanatopsis, one of his most admired pieces, was written at the age of eighteen, and exhibits a finish of style, no less than a maturity of thought, very remarkable for so youthful a production. Mr. Bryant's poems have been for some years pretty well known on this side the water,—better known, at any rate, than any other transatlantic verses; on which account, being somewhat limited for space, we forbear to make any extracts from them.

"FITZ-GREENE HALLECK is also a New-Englander by birth and a New Yorker by adoption. He is Bryant's contemporary and friend, but the spirit and style of his versification are very different; and so, it is said, are his political affinities. While Bryant is a bulwark of the Democracy, Halleck is reported to be not only an admirer of the obsolete Federalists, but an avowed Monarchist. To be sure, this is only his private reputation: no trace of such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth book of his Knickerbocker is throughout a palpable satire on the administration of Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy. Perhaps, however, he may since have changed his views. Willis, too, the 'Free Penciler,' who has been half his life prating about lords and ladies, and great people, and has become a sort of Jenkins to the fashionable life of New York; he also is one of the Democratic party. Peradventure he may vote the 'Locofoco ticket' in the hope of propitiating the boys (as the canaille of American cities are properly called), and saving his printing-office from the fate of the Italian Opera House in Astor Place. But what shall we say of Cooper, who, by his anti-democratic opinions, has made himself one of the most unpopular men in his country, and whose recent political novels rival the writings of Judge Haliburton in the virulence as well as the cleverness of their satire upon Republican institutions? He, too, is a Democrat. To us, who are not behind the curtain, these things are a mystery incapable of explanation. To return to our present subject. Halleck made his début in the poetical world by some satirical pieces called The Croakers, which created as much sensation at their appearance as the anonymous Salmagundi which commenced Irving's literary career. These were succeeded by Fanny, a poem in the Don Juan metre. Fanny has no particular plot or story, but is a satirical review of all the celebrities, literary, fashionable, and political, of New York at that day (1821). And the satire was probably very good at the time and in the place; but, unfortunately for the extent and permanence of its reputation, most of these celebrities are utterly unknown, not merely beyond the limits of the Union, but beyond those of New York. Among all the personages enumerated we can find but two names that an European reader would be likely to know anything about,—Clinton and Van Buren. Nay, more, in the rapid growth and change of things American, the present generation of New Yorkers are likely to lose sight of the lions of their immediate progenitors; and unless some Manhattanese scholiast should write a commentary on the poem in time, its allusions, and with them most of its wit, will be in danger of perishing entirely. What we can judge of in Fanny are one or two graceful lyrics interspersed in it, though even these are marred by untimely comicality and local allusions. The nominal hero, while wandering about at night after the wreck of his fortunes, hears a band playing outside a public place of entertainment. It must have been a better band than that which now, from the Museum opposite the Astor House, drives to frenzy the hapless stranger.... In Halleck's subsequent productions the influence of Campbell is more perceptible than that of Byron, and with manifest advantage. It may be said of his compositions, as it can be affirmed of few American verses, that they have a real innate harmony, something not dependent on the number of syllables in each line, or capable of being dissected out into feet, but growing in them, as it were, and created by the fine ear of the writer. Their sentiments, too, are exalted and ennobling; eminently genial and honest, they stamp the author for a good man and true,—Nature's aristocracy.... For some unexplained reason Halleck has not written, or at least not published, anything new for several years, though continually solicited to do so; for he is a great favorite with his countrymen, especially with the New Yorkers. His time, however, has been by no means passed in idleness. Fashionable as writing is in America, it is not considered desirable or, indeed, altogether reputable, that the poet should be only a poet. Halleck has been in business most of his life; and was lately head-clerk of the wealthy merchant, John Jacob Astor, who left him a handsome annuity. This was increased by Mr. Astor's son and heir, a man of well-known liberality; so that between the two there is a chance of the poet's being enabled to 'meditate the tuneful Muse' for the remainder of his days free from all distractions of business.

"LONGFELLOW, the pet poet of Boston, is a much younger man than either Bryant or Halleck, and has made his reputation only within the last twelve years, during which time he has been one of the most noted lions of American Athens. The city of Boston, as every one knows who has been there, or who has met with any book or man emanating from it, claims to be the literary metropolis of the United States, and assumes the slightly-pretending soubriquet just quoted. The American Athenians have their thinking and writing done for them by a coterie whose distinctive characteristics are Socinianism in theology, a præter-Puritan prudery in ethics, a German tendency in metaphysics, and throughout all a firm persuasion that Boston is the fountain-head of art, scholarship, and literature for the western world, and particularly that New York is a Nazareth in such things, out of which can come nothing good. For the Bostonians, who certainly cultivate literature with more general devotion, if not always with more individual success than the New Yorkers, can never forgive their commercial neighbors for possessing by birth the two most eminent prose-writers of the country—Irving and Cooper; and by adoption, two of the leading poets—Bryant and Halleck. Nor are the good people of the 'Empire State' slow to resent these exhibitions of small jealousy; but, on the contrary, as the way of the world is, they are apt to retort by greater absurdities. So shy are they of appearing to be guided by the dicta of their eastern friends, that to this day there is scarcely man or woman on Manhattan Island who will confess a liking for Tennyson, Mrs. Barrett Browning, or Robert Browning, simply because these poets were taken up and patronized (metaphorically speaking, of course,) by the 'Mutual Admiration Society' of Boston.

"The immediate influences of this camaraderie are highly flattering and apparently beneficial to the subject of them, but its ultimate effects are most injurious to the proper development of his powers. When the merest trifles that a man throws off are inordinately praised, he soon becomes content with producing the merest trifles. Longfellow has grown unaccustomed to do himself justice. Half his volumes are filled up with translations; graceful and accurate, indeed; but translations, and often from originals of very moderate merit. His last original poem, Evangeline, is a sort of pastoral in hexameters. The resuscitation of this classical metre had a queer effect upon the American quidnuncs. Some of the critics evidently believed it to be a bran-new metre invented for the nonce by the author, a delusion which they of the 'Mutual Admiration' rather winked at; and the parodists who endeavored to ridicule the new measure were evidently not quite sure whether seven feet or nine made a hexameter. It is really to be regretted that Longfellow has been cajoled into playing these tricks with himself, for his earlier pieces were works of much promise, and, had they been worthily followed out, might have entitled him to a high place among the poets of the language.... Longfellow's poetry, whenever he really lays himself out to write poetry, has a definite idea and purpose in it—no small merit now-a-days. His versification is generally harmonious, and he displays a fair command of metre. Sometimes he takes a fancy to an obsolete or out-of-the-way stanza; one of his longest and best poems, The Skeleton in Armor, is exactly in the measure of Drayton's fine ballad on Agincourt. His chief fault is an over-fondness for simile and metaphor. He seems to think indispensable the introduction into everything he writes of a certain (or sometimes a very uncertain) number of these figures. Accordingly his poems are crowded with comparisons, sometimes very pretty and pleasing, at others so far-fetched that the string of tortured images which lead off Alfred de Musset's bizarre Ode to the Moon can hardly equal them. This making figures (whether from any connection with the calculating habits of the people or not) is a terrible propensity of American writers, whether of prose or verse. Their orators are especial sinners in this respect. We have seen speeches stuck as full of metaphors (more or less mixed) as Burton's Anatomy is of quotations.

"Such persons as know from experience that literary people are not always in private life what their writings would betoken, that Miss Bunions do not precisely resemble March violets, and mourners upon paper may be laughers over mahogany—such persons will not be surprised to hear that the Longfellow is a very jolly fellow, a lover of fun and good dinners, and of an amiability and personal popularity that have aided not a little the popularity of his writings in verse and prose—for he writes prose too, prettier, quainter, more figurative, and more poetic if anything, than his poetry. He is also a professor at Harvard College, near Boston.

"EDGAR A. POE, like Longfellow and most of the other American poets, wrote prose as well as poetry, having produced a number of wild, grotesque, and powerfully-imagined tales; unlike most of them he was a literary man pur sang. He depended for support entirely on his writings, and his career was more like the precarious existence of an author in the time of Johnson and Savage than the decent life of an author in our own day. He was a Southerner by birth, acquired a liberal education, and what the French call 'expansive' tastes, was adopted by a rich relative, quarreled with him, married 'for love,' and lived by editing magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York; by delivering lectures (the never-failing last resort of the American literary adventurer); by the occasional subscriptions of compassionate acquaintances or admiring friends—any way he could—for eighteen or nineteen years: lost his wife, involved himself in endless difficulties, and finally died in what should have been the prime of his life, about six months ago. His enemies attributed his untimely death to intemperance; his writings would rather lead to the belief that he was an habitual taker of opium. If it make a man a poet to be

Poe was certainly a poet. Virulently and ceaselessly abused by his enemies (who included a large portion of the press), he was worshiped to infatuation by his friends. The severity of his editorial criticisms, and the erratic course of his life, fully account for the former circumstance; the latter is probably to be attributed, in part at least, to pity for his mishaps.

"If Longfellow's poetry is best designated as quaint, Poe's may most properly be characterized as fantastic. The best of it reminds one of Tennyson, not by any direct imitation of particular passages, but by its general air and tone. But he was very far from possessing Tennyson's fine ear for melody. His skill in versification, sometimes striking enough, was evidently artificial; he overstudied metrical expression and overrated its value so as sometimes to write, what were little better than nonsense-verses, for the rhythm. He had an incurable propensity for refrains, and when he had once caught a harmonious cadence, appeared to think it could not be too often repeated. Poe's name is usually mentioned in connection with The Raven, a poem which he published about five years ago. It had an immense run, and gave rise to innumerable parodies—those tests of notoriety if not of merit. And certainly it is not without a peculiar and fantastic excellence in the execution, while the conception is highly striking and poetic. This much notice seems due to a poem which created such a sensation in the author's country. To us it seems by no means the best of Poe's productions; we much prefer, for instance, this touching allegory, which was originally embodied in one of his wildest tales, The Haunted Palace. In the very same volume with this are some verses that Poe wrote when a boy, and some that a boy might be ashamed of writing. Indeed the secret of rejection seems to be little known to Transatlantic bards. The rigidness of self-criticism which led Tennyson to ignore and annihilate, so far as in him lay, full one half of his earlier productions, would hardly be understood by them. This is particularly unlucky in the case of Poe, whose rhymes sometimes run fairly away with him, till no purpose or meaning is traceable amid a jingle of uncommon and fine-sounding words....

"Though Poe was a Southerner, his poetry has nothing in it suggestive of his peculiar locality. It is somewhat remarkable that the slave-holding, which has tried almost all other means of excusing or justifying itself before the world, did not think of 'keeping a poet,' and engaging the destitute author from its own territory to sing the praises of 'the patriarchal institution.' And it would have been a fair provocation that the Abolitionists had their poet already. Indeed several of the northern poets have touched upon this subject; Longfellow, in particular, has published a series of spirited and touching anti-slavery poems; but the man who has made it his specialité is JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, a Quaker, literary editor of the National Era, an Abolition and ultra-Radical paper, which, in manful despite of Judge Lynch, is published at Washington, between the slave-pens and the capitol. His verses are certainly obnoxious to the jurisdiction of that notorious popular potentate, being unquestionably 'inflammatory, incendiary, and insurrectionary,' as the Southern formula goes, in a very high degree. He makes passionate appeals to the Puritan spirit of New England, and calls on her sons to utter their voice,

"and protest against the shocking anomaly of slavery in a free country. At times, when deploring the death of some fellow laborer in the cause, he falls into a somewhat subdued strain, though even then there is more of spirit and fire in his verses than one naturally expects from a follower of George Fox; but on such occasions he displays a more careful and harmonious versification than is his wont. There is no scarcity of these elegies in his little volume, the Abolitionists, even when they escape the attentions of the high legal functionary already alluded to, not being apparently a long-lived class.