Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[graphic][subsumed]

"For pleasure hath not ceased to wait
On these expected annual rounds;
Whether the rich man's sumptuous gate
Call forth the unelaborate sounds,
Or they are offer'd at the door
That guards the lowliest of the poor.
"How touching, when, at midnight, sweep
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark,
To hear-and sink again to sleep!
Or, at an earlier call, to mark,

By blazing fire, the still suspense
Of self-complacent innocence.

"The mutual nod,-the grave disguise

Of hearts with gladness brimming o'er; And some unbidden tears that rise

For names once heard, and heard no more; Tears brighten'd by the serenade

For infant in the cradle laid.

"Ah! not for emerald fields alone,

With ambient streams more pure and bright Than fabled Cytherea's zone

Glittering before the Thunderer's sight, Is to my heart of hearts endear'd The ground where we were born and rear'd! "Hail, ancient Manners! sure defense,

Where they survive, of wholesome laws; Remnants of love whose modest sense

Thus into narrow room withdraws; Hail, Usages of pristine mold,

And ye that guard them, Mountains old!

"Bear with me, Brother! quench the thought

That slights this passion, or condemns; If thee fond Fancy ever brought

From the proud margin of the Thames, And Lambeth's venerable towers,

To humbler streams and greener bowers.

"Yes, they can make, who fail to find, Short leisure even in busiest days; Moments, to cast a look behind,

And profit by those kindly rays
That through the clouds do sometimes steal,
And all the far-off past reveal.

"Hence, while the imperial City's din
Beats frequent on thy satiate ear,
A pleased attention I may win
To agitations less severe,
That neither overwhelm nor cloy,
But fill the hollow vale with joy!"

Here is a good old homely contrast to this splendid picture-from "Poor Robin's Almanac," 1700:

"Now that the time is come wherein

Our Saviour Christ was born,

The larders full of beef and pork,

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors]

And well our Christian sires of old
Loved, when the year its course had roll'd,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.

Domestic and religious rite
Gave honor to the holy night:
On Christmas-eve the bells were rung,
On Christmas-eve the mass was sung.
That only night in all the year
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donn'd her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dress'd with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry-men go
To gather in the mistletoe.
Then open'd wide the baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And Ceremony doff'd his pride;
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village-partner choose:
The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of "post and pair."
All hail'd, with uncontroll'd delight
And general voice, the happy night,
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.
The fire, with well-dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
The huge hall-table's oaken face,
Scrubb'd till it shone, the day to grace,
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire and lord.
Then was brought in the lusty brawn,
By old blue-coated serving man;
Then the grim boar's-head frown'd on
high,

Crested with bays and rosemary.

Well can the green-garb'd ranger tell How, when, and where the monster fell;

[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic]
[graphic][merged small]

A

MERICA as yet has produced nothing very noteworthy in the shape of satirical or humorous poetry, though we have had no lack of it, such as it is. For the last seventy or eighty years our bards have pertinaciously tried to be funny,-but have only succeeded in making the critics so, at their expense.

In the year 1772, or thereabouts, John Trumbull, one of our pioneer poetasters, published a satire entitled The Progress of Dullness, (it did not belie its title,) and another entitled M'Fingal. The first was written to advance the cause of Education, (we sincerely hope it effected its object;) and the last that of Liberty, which was then in a doubtful state. We have never heard of any sane person reading either of these poems, though the last, which is written after the manner of Hudibras, is not without some clever lines. In 1793, while residing at Chamberry, France, Joel Barlow, the once famous author of The Colombiad, wrote (we had almost said mixed) his Hasty Pudding, according to Dr. Griswold the most popular of his poems. In 1819, Halleck, as we have already noticed in his life, published Fanny; and since then-we fancy not

more than ten or twelve years ago-N. P. Willis, the most elegant of our prose satirists, made a failure with Lady Jane, an unfinished satire in the style of Don Juan.

But not

Besides these, our principal writers in this line, Lowell, Benjamin, and Saxe have written and published satirical poems of various degrees of excellence. till we come to Oliver Wendell Holmes do we find much humorous poetry really worthy of the name, or anything more than a local or temporary reputation. In Holmes we recognize, we think, a genuine and original humorist-one whose works are destined to live after him. At any rate, such is our hope; and if anything that we can write will help to bring about a consummation so devoutly to be wished, it will only be a labor of love to write it.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born on the twenty-ninth of August, in the year of our Lord 1809, at the town of Cambridge, in the State of Massachusetts. His father, who was a D. D., and we know not what besides in the way of capital letters, determined to give him a good education; so when he was large enough he was sent to the Phillips Exeter Academy, and in his

sixteenth year to Harvard University, from which he graduated with honor. Leaving college, he began to look around him for a profession, as was proper for a young gentleman beginning the world, and the first which suggested itself as likely to suit him was the law. He commenced the study of law, and pursued it diligently for a year; not finding it agree with him, (perhaps it was not as funny as he expected,) he relinquished it and devoted himself to medicine, in which his troubled spirit seems to have found rest.

At what period of his life he began to write verses we know not. The spirited poem Old Ironsides, written when it was proposed to break up the frigate Constitution as unfit for further service, is said to be the production of his sixteenth year. If so, he ranks high among the genuine juvenile prodigies. Be this as it may, he was an acknowledged contributor to The Collegian, a monthly magazine published by the undergraduates at Cambridge; and his articles therein attracted attention, and were copied in the other magazines and newspapers. Only a few, it is said, have been printed under his proper signature; and as his volume fails to distinguish them from his later poems, we can only conjecture which they are.

The study of medicine seems to be about as uncongenial to poetry as that of the law-time out of mind the bane of poets. Poring over volumes of anatomy and physiology, illustrated with explanatory plates, upon which are served up slices of the "human form divine;" heads cruelly split in two, to show the different structures of the brain; tangled skeins of blood-vessels, sanguineous Niles with no visible source; fragmentary arms and legs bared to the bones and muscles, and whatever else is therein contained; attending lectures in the stifled basements of suspicious-looking medical colleges, and taking voluminous notes of the same, (the lectures, not the colleges,) occasionally diversifying the latter occupation by dissecting somebody's distant relation, obtained no one knows how being, in fact, "a general deputy saw-bones," as Sam Weller would say, is not exactly the way to become or to remain a poet; unless, indeed, as in the case of Holmes, the poet is born, and not made—“ a joy forever." But even then, so thoroughly material are all the surroundings of an M. D., and so

be-littling most of his experiences, it is very apt to divert the current of his poetry from its original channels, and make the poet a mocker and unbeliever, or, at best, only "a good fellow," instead of a thoughtful and earnest man. May we not trace to this cause the comic and satirical cast of much of Holmes's poetry?

In his twenty-second year Holmes made his first appearance, in book form, in a volume entitled Illustrations of the Athenæum Gallery of Paintings. It was edited by himself and Epes Sargent, and composed of metrical pieces, most of them satirical. To more thoroughly perfect himself in his profession, he sailed for Europe in 1833. His residence abroad seems to have been chiefly in Paris, where he walked the hospitals, learned la belle language, and became acquainted with the most eminent French physicians. Of this tour there remain among his poems two records: Qui Vive and La Grisette, the latter the sweetest and saddest of his poems. Returning to Boston in 1835, he commenced the practice of medicine in that city, and in the autumn of that year delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. It was entitled Poetry, a Metrical Essay, and stands first in the collected edition of his

poems. Scattered through the volume are occasional pieces, read from this time forward at centennial celebrations and anniversary dinners; and one or two long satirical poems, such as poets are wont to spout before public bodies. We have not much faith in this sort of thing ourselves; but if any man ever succeeded in making it respectable, it is Holmes.

In 1838 the medical institution of Dartmouth College elected Holmes Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, which situation he held till his marriage in 1840. His attention to business was strict and thorough; and what with the unhealthy symptoms of the New-Englanders, and his really fine talents in his profession, he acquired a large and, what was just then still better, a paying practice. But he still clung to the Muses, and found time to write some of his best poems, among which were Terpsichore, read in 1843 at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and Urania, a Rhymed Lesson, pronounced in 1846 before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston. Still rising in his profession, in 1847 he suc

ceeded Dr. Warren as Professor of Anatomy in Havard University, and added to his medical reputation by the Boylston Prize Essays, Lectures on Popular Delusions in Medicine, and Theory and Practice, the work of himself and Dr. Bigelow; besides which he wrote several fine papers in The North-American Review, and delivered occasional addresses. In 1850 he read his Astraa, or the Balance of Illusions, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College; and almost every winter we hear of his lecturing in our principal cities, and convulsing his audiences with laughter.

Boston, we believe, is the nominal residence of Dr. Holmes, at least during the winter months; but in the summer he may be found at his country-seat in Berkshire, rusticating among his pigs and chickens, and the literati in the neighborhood. Herman Melville is one of his neighbors, or lives somewhere in his vicinity; as, till very recently, did G. P. R. James, the novelist.

The literary attainments of Holmes are many, and he is thorough and excellent in all; excellent, it is said, as a medical lecturer, and excellent, we know, as a poet. But it is neither as a poet nor lecturer that his genius exhibits its most distinctive traits, but rather as a satirist,—the almost neglected walk of satire being the field of his fairest triumphs, and, without doubt, the site of his future renown. As the satirical poets have not always had fair play shown them, and as satire itself is not commonly criticised, a few preliminary paragraphs may not be uninteresting. The origin of satire seems to be involved in considerable obscurity, and many conjectures have been formed thereon.

Schlegel, in his Lectures on the History of Literature, gives it a comparatively modern date; for he considers it an exclusively Roman species of composition, both in the spirit with which it is animated, and the subject of which it treats. Roman satire, which attained to eminence in the days of Horace and Juvenal, was entirely confined to the capital itself, the social habits and customs, amusements, spectacles and assemblies of its inhabitants. But perhaps its most favorite topic was the corruption of Roman manners, then dayly approaching the last stage of possible viciousness. The only perfect picture which poetry itself can set before us of com

mon life, is in the drama; individual traits or scenes, however masterly, can never satisfy us. The Roman satire, therefore, in the hands of such a writer as Horace, is merely a substitute for that comedy which the Roman people ought to have possessed. With regard to the Satires of Juvenal, their chief interest depends on the vehement expression of scorn and indignation excited by the contemplation of execrable vices; the spirit in which they are conceived may be morally sublime, but they can scarcely receive the name of poetical.

In many respects agreeing with Schlegel, (but of that hereafter,) we are disposed to doubt the correctness of his opinion that satire is of Roman origin. For our part we date it back to the early ages of antiquity, the very dawn of civilization: almost as soon as poets began to sing, they began to be satirists; provided, indeed, that there was anything to be satirized, of which there can be but little doubt-man, in the abstract, is such a mauvais sujet. The earliest poets of all, if we may credit tradition, sung of agricultural matters, and the wars of heroes and demi-gods. We have a fair specimen of their style in The Works and Days of Hesiod. After these came Thespis and his fellow-comedians, jolting from town to town in rude carts, and playing their queer satirical plays. "The comic poets," says the scholiast on Aristophanes, "rubbed their faces with the lees of wine, that they might not be known, and sung their poems on the highways;" and impudent, abusive poems they were too. And some of the later poets have followed their example in the wine part of the business, only that the wine has got into their heads, and the lees into their songs. After Thespis and his comedians came the mad wag Aristophanes, the greatest of the Greek comic poets, a satirist of the first water; to him we are said to owe the death of the divine Socrates. Then came the early Roman poets, Ennius and Pacuvius, and then Horace and Juvenal, the world's acknowledged masters of this species of writing. Hence we see the erroneousness of the idea that satire is of Roman origin. But what Schlegel probably meant was, that its present form was Roman, its spirit belonging alike to all nations and ages. Be this as it may, however, it is with its spirit alone that we have to do; and this, as Schlegel observes,

« AnteriorContinuar »