Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

that look for use and thrift in talent, and half despised by those whose coarse feelings and dull heads can love and honor nothing that is not bold and self-vindicatory.

The Biographical notice which prefaces the Poems, is exceedingly well written, and, delicate work as it is, done with excellent judgment. It speaks without reserve of the failings of its theme, but leaves, withal, an affecting impression upon the mind, favorable to the memory of the poet, and, what is more, instructive in the highest degree as a lesson to like temperaments. Who, with the world before him, and the inward shrinking from its conflict that a sensitive mind feels almost like a despair, can fail to understand the nature developed in the following comments?—

"The critic will readily discover many blemishes in the ensuing collection. The poems and sketches were mostly written to meet the exigencies of an immediate and pressing demand, consequently little time was afforded for revision even to one well disposed to revise; but their author was a poet from impulse, his whole conversation and all his thoughts were fanciful; his mind was like a delicate Æolian harp, which involuntarily pours forth its music to every breeze that sweeps over it, unrestrained by any rule of melody. It is doubtful whether such a man could ever have submitted to the patient and cautious task of correction. Mr. Miller's repugnance even at looking upon a manuscript a second time is well remembered. 'I know,' said he upon one occasion, 'that it abounds with errors, but it is a faithful transcript of my thoughts at a moment very dear to me-I cannot alter it, and you must not.' Feeling that the author is identified by these very errors, and respecting his injunction, I have foreborne to amend what could not be amended and remain the entire work of James Willam Miller; a very trifling change from the original will be discovered in some instances, but the volume is now presented to the friends of its writer as a precious legacy from a beloved companion, and to the public as the offspring of a luxuriant and elevated though unchastened genius.

"A sketch of Mr. Miller's life would be but a sketch of irresolution itself, except in his affection and principle. In these he was all firmness; but the predominant foible of his character, and one which attended almost every action of his chequered existence was indecision; of this no one was more fully aware than he; at a very early age writing to a friend, he says 'Do you ask of myself? Here I am, a walking shadow. I have no settled plans for the future, and, notwithstanding my philosophical indifference, I am oppressed with a ceaseless weight of anxiety, irresolution, I know not what to call it-so as to render me totally unfit for the least enjoyment.' Mr. Miller was twenty-seven years of age at his death, and during that short period he had been engaged in as many as eight different pursuits, none of which was prosecuted with sufficient perseverance to command success. He was emphatically a man of genius, and unhappily of that great number whose inclination and taste are forced to yield to the irresistible call of necessity. Speaking of himself he saysI have so long been my own master, (take that phrase in its most limited sense, for I cannot boast even of that,) and have so long been free from

any connection with men* in matters of pecuniary interest, that I dread again to mingle in worldly concerns. Most persons are agreeable, and oftentimes appear generous and noble; but when you clash with their interests, they universally disclose selfish and narrow hearts. For this reason I would keep as free as possible from all collision with them, and continue to admire their good qualities, without having my contempt excited by their bad ones. If I must come out and scramble with the crowd for a living, I think I should prefer some employment which would give me a comfortable salary for assiduous and faithful services. I would not shrink from any labor, however severe, that did not forcibly disclose the contemptible propensities of a large portion of mankind. I do not wish for seclusion, although I love it; I do not think it best for me; I would mingle with the world, but have no connection with it; I would be among men but not of them. This is not because I imagine myself superior to others; on the contrary, I am every day made more sensible of my inferiority in all that is useful to myself or others; and it is for this reason I would not enter upon a stage where I am not capable of acting well my part.'

"It will be perceived that the time which Mr. Miller should have given to the cultivation of his fine natural abilities, and the hours which should have been devoted to study and reflection, were all called for in the labor for subsistence. Here was a situation wherein a firm spirit would have triumphed, and substituted economy and system for means and opportunity; but unfortunately the mind of Mr. Miller, though remarkable for its strength and tenacity in literary labor, was quite incapable of bending to the dull and sober pursuits of life; and without the power wholly to subdue his desire for intellectual indulgence and yield to the call of prudence, by adopting a lucrative occupation, and destitute of the method successfully to combine one with the other, exertion in both proved fruitless and harassing.”

We are inclined to think that the character is never so severely tried as at the entrance upon the business of life. There is nothing in the progress of a young man's education which at all prepares him for what he meets, face to face, the moment he sets his foot upon the threshold. Even supposing him to have been diligent and firm, he has fitted himself only for a Utopia-a world wherein talent is ever successful, and industry promptly rewarded, and honor the real as well as the apparent spring of action. He believes in himself and in the world, and he is destined to be deceived in both. To be true to himself is the task of an angel, and to make the world true to him is a dreamer's folly. A profession in the distance looks like a fair temple, on an ascent difficult but plain-far off, but accessible by constancy and direct effort. He does not dream of the phantoms that bar the way—Malice, and Envy,

* At this time he was studying Law at Middleboro' (or rather attempting to study,) secluding himself from society, and wandering about in the woods, forming plans destined never to be completed, and indulging dreams never to be realized.

and Detraction, and Misappreciation, and Fraud-spirits that blind the eye, and palsy the limbs, and bewilder the brainthat make the hope uncertain, and the heart sick, and throw between the panting aspirant and his aim, clouds of such dark misgiving, that the still prompting of a Good Angel alone could assure even his belief in its existence. And yet to be timid, to doubt oneself, to shrink from all this, though it be but to try other avenues and other powers, is to incur the stigma of indecision, to make friends doubt and despair of us, to give our enemies a triumph, and in the event lose all.

[ocr errors]

To the strongest and most iron-nerved this is a trial of fire. To him who has no other learning in his heart, no propensity more refined, no lurking taste for gentler and purer exercises of thought to win him aside from the coarse pursuits of ambition, even to him it is a Sisyphan task; but to a man like the subject of these comments, with every voice that is imperative in the ear, Duty, and Necessity, and Ambition, calling on him to press on, and every whisper that is eloquent in the heart beseeching him to turn aside to the sweet wells of poetry, and the elegant walks of fancy and self-culture-for him to stifle the whisper within, and listen, with a heart dying within him, to the coarse promptings without-is a self-sacrifice, a silent and unapplauded heroism which none but they who have been thus tried can measure or understand. Oh, it is not a light thing to forget the seductions of taste, and the quiet and heart-winning passions of the scholar. The love of books, we do not hesitate to say, will steal deeper into the heart than the love of woman or of fame. It is not always in our scholar-days, so to speak, that we feel it most. It is a passion which rarely ripens till manhood. The severe taste, the keen relish, the discriminating ear, the far-reaching association, the full and perfect comprehension of every fibre of the soul of genius, are gifts that ripen not early, and, like the Median apple, that diffuses its fragrance only in the cold, it is only when withered from their uses by necessity, that we feel their full beauty and value. What were the petty annoyances of life, the slander, the ungenerousness, the falsehood of our fellow men-what were even the heavy trials, nay, the bereavements of death, to him who had garnered his heart up in his books-who could enter his secluded library and forget-utterly forget, as he will-the very existence of the poor temporists about him? In the ages that are gone, demigods have lived-men who stepped aside from the degrading pursuits of their inferiors, and lifted up their naked souls to the light of truth, and in their temperate and full years, rose

with an accelerated and uninterrupted ascent to the order, we scarce fear to say, of angels. These men, philosophers and poets, Locke and Milton among them, have left us their converse in books ;-not all-not much of what they were to themselves and the few who were with them-but enough to be keys and talismans, by which they who have the inward assimilation can unlock more than they can understand, but enough to lift them immeasurably above the common grievances of life. Is it too much to say, that with such a world, in which the scholar can insphere himself—a world without Envy or Malice, or any bad passion-tranquil, and calm, and heavenly as the soul's own best desires-a world in which our Good Angel might spread his wings and leave us committed to the Spirit of Truth-is it too much to say, that such a world is worth the sacrifice of this-that fame, blotted as it is when we win it, and money, foul as its rust is upon the fingers, and the love of woman, mingled as it is with caprice and worldliness and weakness, are things well lost for it? And is it unworthy in the scholar, then, to check himself and falter on the threshold of life, and doubt whether his books are not better than goods so difficult and perishable, and the cultivation of his own soul than the pleasing of base minds and the winning of the soiled palms of ambition? But Poverty breathes in his ear, and father, and mother, and sister, and the troops of friends who depend on him, and wish him, in their worldly wisdom, well-all cry down his pleading wishes; and tender-hearted as the human love of books has made him, he yields, and, without a heart for his work, wavers, and tries often, and wavers again, and is discouraged, and dies-and the world calls him weak and undecided!

We are aware that this may seem an extravagant picture to many. We know how few there are in this, and how few there have been in every age, to whom knowledge is anything but a necessity, and study anything but a toil. But we know also that there are minds, (some glorious ones in our own circle,) who feel to their hearts' core the golden pleasantness of books, and who could say with Cicero, solatium præbent, though money and friends were taken from them. Such will understand us. And we may say here, what will also be understood in this connection, that we fear we too often stray from the reviewer's track into the side paths, where we have been wont most to loiter. Our best apology is in the words of the Shepherd, speaking of another craft-" What a poet maist dearly and devoutly loves, about that wull the feck of his poetry be written ;" and if we are

condemned for it by those whose education was gained by rule, we must console ourselves in the chosen fellowship of the few, who, like us, having made Nature a first love, now turn to her bright image in books, with an affection more ardent, because not trite or sated.

We will extract here some remaining passages in the Biography :

:

"Few minds have a keener perception of the grand and the beautiful than Mr. Miller's possessed. The feeling seemed to be intuitive, and exhibited itself eloquently in his conversation and in his writings. For him there was poetry in the rustling of every leaf, in the flitting of every purple cloud, in the quivering of every blade of grass. His spirit appeared to revel and expand amid the solitary richness of a forest walk, or a stroll upon the sea-shore, and, most of all, amid the turbulence or the gentleness of his voyages over the great ocean. Take an instance from his last journal :—In the heaviest of the gale, the yawl, which was lashed to the stern, was struck by a sea, as the ship settled down into a huge wave, and broken from its lashings, and so we lost it. It fell upright, and we saw it for some time, at intervals, borne upon the summits of the liquid hills, then sinking down, down into the abyss, as the waters melted away beneath it, only to rise again, humble and calm and secureI could not help wishing to be in it. It seemed like some lowly but proud Contentment that rode unshaken and undisturbed upon the boisterous waves of life; like one whose trust was stronger than the elements, and whose security was above the storms of the sea. There are two pictures which, if it ever be in my power, I will have painted. One is of a sunset in a gale of wind-' The sun setting up his shrouds and backstays,' as the sailors say which means, being interpreted, the sun on a wild day near its setting, screened from view by a mass of dark clouds, yet pouring down its rays from behind them or through interstices upon the bounds of the sea, so that the rays have somewhat the look of golden cords, arising from the ocean and converging to an unseen point. The marine phrase is the most expressive description I can give of the scene. It would make a most animated and beautiful picture. There should be no ship, no other thing except the sea and sky. All should be solitary, and grand, and eternal.

'Dark heaving, boundless, endless and sublime,'

says Byron of the ocean; and of this ocean should be my picture, which should be hung up where I might sit and gaze upon it, until I could hear the roar of the waters, and forget that I was not bounding and tossing upon them. My other picture should be of 'The Boat Adrift. Yet I do not know that I should like this, because it would have a spring in it to touch and awaken memory. I would never have a picture of any scene or object that I had ever definitely seen before, lest it should have power to conjure melancholy remembrances, which are connected with every spot of earth I have ever trodden upon without exception. I must not turn to any thing real, if I would enjoy one moment's happiness. Yet the boat-in its calm and beautiful security, riding so tranquilly on the roused tempest of the ocean-that would be a noble and inspiriting picture.'

"For him too there was poetry in every delicate and high-wrought emotion of the human heart; in its lofty aspirations, in its passionate love,

« AnteriorContinuar »