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Carlyle (search for this): chapter 2
as the English - qualities,simplicity and truth,--so do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organizatiole, as to that of Jean Paul. Such an author may therefore be very useful to a student who can withstand him, which poor Carlyle could not. There was a time, it is said, when English and American literature seemed to be expiring of conventionalism. Carlyle was the Jenner who inoculated and saved us all by this virus from Germany, and then died of his own disease. It is an exciting thing to remember the time when all literature was in the inflammatory stage of this superinduced disorder; but does any one now read Carlyle's French Revolution without a sense of pain? Every year now shows that the whole trick of style with which it was written was false from beginning to end. For surely no style can be permanently attractive that is not s
Bonaparte (search for this): chapter 2
will not soon diminish. For all that, there are already visible, in the American temperament, two points of great promise in respect to art in general, and literary art above all. First, there is in this temperament a certain pliability and impressibility, as compared with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race; it shows a finer grain and a nicer touch. If this is not yet brought to bear on literature, it is only because the time has not come. It is visible everywhere else. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest ambition for France, to convert all trades into arts, is being rapidly fulfilled all around us. There is a constant tendency to supersede brute muscle by the fibres of the brain, and thus to assimilate the rudest toil to what Bacon calls sedentary and within-door arts, that require rather the finger than the arm. It is clear that this same impulse, in higher and higher applications, must culminate in the artistic creation of beauty. And to fortify this fine instin
French Revolution (search for this): chapter 2
uthor may therefore be very useful to a student who can withstand him, which poor Carlyle could not. There was a time, it is said, when English and American literature seemed to be expiring of conventionalism. Carlyle was the Jenner who inoculated and saved us all by this virus from Germany, and then died of his own disease. It is an exciting thing to remember the time when all literature was in the inflammatory stage of this superinduced disorder; but does any one now read Carlyle's French Revolution without a sense of pain? Every year now shows that the whole trick of style with which it was written was false from beginning to end. For surely no style can be permanently attractive that is not simple. Simplicity must be the first element of literary art. This assertion will no doubt run counter to the common belief. Most persons have an impression of something called style in writing,--as they have an impression of something called architecture in building,--that is external a
Wordsworth (search for this): chapter 2
criticisms on nearly every author of that epoch who has achieved lasting fame. What cannot there be read, however, is the sterner history of those who were simply neglected. Look, for instance, at the career of Charles Lamb, who now seems to us a writer who must have disarmed opposition, and have been a favorite from the first. Lamb's Rosamond gray was published in 1798, and for two years was not even reviewed. His poems appeared during the same year. In 1815 he introduced Talfourd to Wordsworth as his own only admirer. In 1819 the series of Essays of Elia was begun, and Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt that year: When I think of such a mind as Lamb's, when I see how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame? These Essays were published in a volume in 1823; and Willis records that when he was in Europe, ten years later, and just before Lamb's death, it was difficult to light upon a
Sainte (search for this): chapter 2
uence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and, in short, throughout literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all history and literature, and carrying into all that incomparable style, so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes, not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of steel? In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They rely for success upon perfection of style
Mozart (search for this): chapter 2
be more than a journeyman at his trade. Yet the labor of preparation is not, after all, more important than that of final revision. The feature of literary art which is always least appreciated by the public, and even by young authors, is the amount of toil it costs. But all the standards, all the precedents of every art, show that the greatest gifts do not supersede the necessity of work. The most astonishing development of native genius in any-direction, so far as I know, is that of Mozart in music; yet it is he who has left the remark, that, if few equalled him in his vocation, few had studied it with such persevering labor and such unremitting zeal. There is still preserved at Ferrara the piece of paper on which Ariosto wrote in sixteen different ways one of his most famous stanzas. The novel which Hawthorne left unfinished — and whose opening chapters when published proved so admirable — had been begun by him, as it appeared, in five different ways. Yet how many young c
Nathaniel Hawthorne (search for this): chapter 2
words, like Thoreau; to chase dreams for a lifetime, like Hawthorne; to labor tranquilly and see a nation imbued with one's tent ways one of his most famous stanzas. The novel which Hawthorne left unfinished — and whose opening chapters when publisharment that fits all the uses of the body, are Irving and Hawthorne. This has no reference to the quality of their thoughtim, with his organization, as accomplishing more. But in Hawthorne we see astonishing power, always easily expressed, and cul; and I can conceive of no other defect in the style of Hawthorne. Perhaps the conclusion of the whole matter may seem t This brings us to a contemporary instance. Willis and Hawthorne wrote early, side by side, in The token, about 1827, fortthe editor of the work, states in his autobiography, that Hawthorne's contributions did not attract the slightest attention. t to which the mind must constantly recur, in thinking of Hawthorne,--How could any combination of physical and mental vigor
Milton (search for this): chapter 2
ich the moral nature is strongest will be its own guide at last. And it is a comfort thus to end in the faith that, as the foundation of all true greatness is in the conscience, so we are safe if we can but carry into science and art the same earnestness of spirit which has fought through the great civil war and slain slavery. As the Puritan has triumphed in this stern contest, so must the. Puritan triumph in the more graceful emulations that are to come; but it must be the Puritanism of Milton, not of Cromwell only. The invigorating air of great moral principles must breathe through all our literature; it is the expanding spirit of the seventeenth century by which we must conquer now. It is worth all that has been sacrificed in New England to vindicate this one fact, the supremacy of the moral nature. All culture, all art, without this, must be but rootless flowers, such as flaunt round a nation's decay. All the long, stern reign of Plymouth Rock and Salem Meeting-House was
Jean Paul (search for this): chapter 2
le house-breaking, and bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about them; whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, what is there left? Germany furnishes at present no models of prose style; and all her past models, except perhaps Goethe and Heine, seem to be already losing their charm. Yet for knowledge we go to Germany, more than ever, and there is a certain exuberant wealth that can even impart fascination to a bad style, as to that of Jean Paul. Such an author may therefore be very useful to a student who can withstand him, which poor Carlyle could not. There was a time, it is said, when English and American literature seemed to be expiring of conventionalism. Carlyle was the Jenner who inoculated and saved us all by this virus from Germany, and then died of his own disease. It is an exciting thing to remember the time when all literature was in the inflammatory stage of this superinduced disorder; but does any one now read Ca
Oedipus Tyrannus (search for this): chapter 2
rammar and spelling-book. In a republic, must the objective case be governed by a verb? We shall yet learn that it is not new literary forms we need, but only fresh inspiration, combined with cultivated taste. The standard of good art is always much the same; modifications are trifling. Otherwise we could not enjoy any foreign literature. A fine phrase in Aeschylus or Dante affects us as if we had read it in Emerson. A structural completeness in a work of art seems the same in the Oedipus Tyrannus as in The scarlet letter. Art has therefore its law; and eccentricity, though often promising as a mere trait of youth, is only a disfigurement to maturer years. It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards and reserve himself for something better. A young writer must commonly plough in his first crop, as the farmer does, to enrich the soil. Is it luxuriant, astonishing, the wonder of the neighborhood; so much the better,-
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