Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862», sayfa 12

LIGHT LITERATURE

Though the smallest boulder is heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between them range the weighty masses, superior to the petty ponderability of the one, and unequal to the firmamental float of the other. Accordingly, setting out from the mote-and-pebble extreme, you find, that, up to a certain point, increasing values of thought are commonly indicated by increasing gravity, by more and more of state-paper weightiness; but beyond this the rule is reversed, and lightness becomes the sign and measure of excellence. Bishop Butler and Richard Hooker—especially the latter, the first book of whose “Ecclesiastical Polity” is a truly noble piece of writing—stand, perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the “Areopagitica” of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse. Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing. The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with “Lear,” with “Prometheus Bound,” with any supreme work, only as cobwebs and thistle-down, that are easily borne by the breeze, may compare with sparrows and thrushes, that can fly and withal sing.

There is a call for “light reading,” and I for one applaud the demand. A lightening influence is the best that books or men can bestow upon us. Information is good, but invigoration is a thousand times better. Cheer, cheer and vigor for the world’s heart! It is because man’s hope is so low, and his imaginations so poor, that he is earthly and evil. Wings for these unfledged hearts! Transformation for these grubs! Give us animation, inspiration, joy, faith! Give us enlivening, lightsome airs, to which our souls shall, on a sudden, begin to dance, keeping step with the angels! What else is worth having? Each one of these sordid sons of men—is he not a new-born Apollo, who waits only for the ambrosia from Olympus, to spring forth in divineness of beauty and strength?

Nevertheless, I know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light. Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois. It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding. It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment of his crime, to make choice between lying in prison for a term of years and reading the history of Guicciardini, he chose the latter, but, after a brief trial, petitioned for leave to reverse his election. I never attempted Guicciardini; but I did once attempt Pope’s “Dunciad.” And was it really the doom of a generation of readers to find delight in this book? One must suppose so. There are those in our day whose hard fate it is to read and to like James’s and Bulwer’s novels. But greatly mistaken is the scholar who, for relief from severe studies, goes to an empty or insincere book. It is like saying money, after large and worthy expenditures, by purchasing at a low price that which is worth nothing,—buying “gold” watches at a mock-auction room.

Indeed, no book, however witty, lively, saltatory, can have the volant effects we covet, if it want substance and seriousness. Substance, however, is to be widely distinguished from ponderability. Oxygen is not so ponderous as lead or granite, but it is far more substantial than either, and, as every one knows, infinitely more serviceable to life. The distinction is equally valid when applied to books and to men. The “airy nothings” of imagination prove to be the most enduring somethings of the world’s literature; and the last lightness of heart may go with the purest truth of soul and the most precious virtue of intelligence. All expressions carry the perpetual savors of their origin; and as brooks that dance and frolic with the sunbeams and murmur to the birds, light-hearted forever, will yet bear sands of gold, if they flow from auriferous hills, so any bubble and purl of laughter, proceeding from a wise and wealthy soul, will bear a noble significance. In point of fact, some of the merriest books in the world are among the most richly freighted. And as airy and mirthful books may be substantial and serious, so it is an effect very similar to that of noble and significant mirth that is produced upon us by the grandest pieces of serious writing. Thus, he who rightly reads the “Phaedon” or “Phaedrus” of Plato smiles through all the depths of his brain, though no pronounced smile show on his face; and he who rightly reads the book of Cervantes, though the laughters plunge, as it were, in cascades from his lips, is earnest at heart, and full of sound and tender meditations.

If now, setting aside all books, whether pretending to gayety or gravity, that are simply empty and ineffectual, we inquire for the prime distinction between books light in a worthy and unworthy sense, it will appear to be the distinction between inspiration and alcohol,—between effects divinely real and effects illusory and momentary. The drunkard dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while he is really lying in the gutter. There are those, and numbers of those, who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way. Indeed, to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and “heavy-handed revel” of our Saxon ancestors. In both cases it is a spurious exaltation of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.

This celestial lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsène Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be attained. Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless. Was ever style more delightful, of its kind, than Dryden’s? Was ever style more heavy and monotonous than that of Swedenborg in his theological works? But I have read Dryden, not indeed without pleasure in his masterly exquisite ease and sureness of statement and his occasional touches of admirable good sense, yet with no slightest liberation of spirit, with no degree, greater or less, of that magical and marvellous evocation, of inward resource, whose blessed surprise now and then in life makes for us angelic moments, and feelingly persuades us that our earth also is a star and in the sky. On the other hand, I once read Swedenborg’s “Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom” with such enticement, such afflatus, such quickening and heightening of soul, as I cannot describe without seeming excessive. Until half through the book, I turned every page with the feeling that before another page I might see the chasm between the real and phenomenal worlds fairly bridged over. Of course, it disappointed me in the end; but what of that? To have kindled and for a time sustained the expectation which should render possible such disappointment was a benefit that a whole Bodleian Library might fail to confer. These benefits come to us not from the writer as such, but from the man behind the writer. He who dwells aloft amid the deathless orient imaginations of the human race, easily inhabiting their atmosphere as his native element,—about him, and him only, are the halos and dawns of immortal youth; and his speech, though with many babyish or barbarous fancies, many melancholies and vices of the blood compounded, carries nevertheless some refrain of divine hilarity, that beguiles men of their sordidness, their sullenness, and low cares, they know not how nor why.

PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON

We set out at a little past eleven, and made our first stage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter east-wind.

Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its hilly portions,) and I have never passed through it without wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where I then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting; as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw, along the way-side, the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their uglinesses of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of ironmongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Sheffield and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human, art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronté’s novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church-tower, were visible: but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an English landscape.

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight line; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country; and, furthermore, every object within view of them had some subtile reference to their curves and undulations: but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing—within the scope of a railway traveller’s eye; and if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations, (it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire moor,) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my attention by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or nervous affection; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman’s presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion,—her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful,—have stamped this poor lady’s face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty,—or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham,—smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto’s own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill.

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sherwood Forest,—not consisting, however, of thousand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood’s days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam’s property lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire; and shortly after six o’clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in.

At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen’s Head, which the driver recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough; though, like the hotels of most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior court-yard being through an arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of passages, and an up-and-down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bed-room while the rest of his generation were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English inn.

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side; the whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy structure, through the dark vista of which you look into the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many antique peculiarities; though, unquestionably, English domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features, in the course of the last century. In this respect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln: Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury,—which last is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the street.

Between seven and eight o’clock (it being still broad daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral. Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed,—so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architecture dates back. This is called the Jewess’s House, having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago.

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Certainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiastical duty to climb this hill; for it is a real penance, and was probably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach. We, likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences of the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. The west front rose behind. We passed through one of the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient structures that surround it, all of which, in former days, were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though others are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it be Salisbury Close, however, (which is incomparably rich as regards the old residences that belong to it,) I remember no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any other cathedral. But, in, truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, coziest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, to combine all this with the service of the temple!

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone, which appears either to have been largely restored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in England. In many parts, the recent restorations are quite evident; but other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched for centuries: for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls: most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads! In spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving: at least, it was so once; and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor; and this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the result is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest details.

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathedral; but as there would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we declined for the present. So we merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own,—a creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is connected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to express my inner sense of this and other cathedrals.

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters; and then Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight o’clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I ever heard from any bell,—slow, and solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad daylight in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer; but the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the steep street,—our younger companion running before us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected him to break his head against some projecting wall.

In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural description, there is but one set of phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in England, and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features: an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement; rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height; great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass; an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is further choked up by a massive organ,—in spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, variegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Within the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop’s throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecration,) nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extending round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tombstones, the more antique of which have had their inscriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date.

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, wife of John of Gaunt; also, here was the shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell’s time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of great families, quite at their wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exquisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and grape-vines, and miracles of stone-work twined about arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor’s hands,—the leaves being represented with all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which always grin at you from the projections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in something ineffably absurd.

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre; nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working out their conceptions to the extremest point. But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody’s soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo.

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick building, with a locked door. Our guide,—I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect,—our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not been meddled with, further than by removing the superincumbent earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin.

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries before. The arch is about four hundred yards from the Cathedral; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the original depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years ago; and though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the sides.

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral; but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of the castle-wall are clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, but the larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the Conqueror’s castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering-plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden.