Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the gentleman in question, quoted something from the volume. Lamb tried this a second time; the gentleman looked still more surprised, and seemed evidently bursting with suppressed indignation. At last, as a climax to the fun, Lamb cooly quoted the wellknown opening lines of "Paradise Lost," as written by himself. This was too much for the versemonger-he immediately rose to his legs, and with an impressive solemnity of manner thus addressed the claimant to so many poetical honors—" Sir, I have tamely submitted all this evening to hear you claim the merit that may belong to any little poems of my own; this I have borne in silence, but, Sir, I never will sit quietly by and see the Immortal Milton robbed of Paradise Lost.""

When Lamb's farce of Mr. H. was acted, he gave a curious instance of one of his singular traits. It must be at once conceded that there were small evidences of humor in the piece, and the construction was undramatic; still there was much to show it was written by a man infinitely superior to all the farce writers in the kingdom. Towards the end of the performance, when it was evident to all that the piece was unmistakably damned, the attention of some of Lamb's friends was drawn to a very loud and violent hissing, which like a stormy petrel, seemed to ride on the whirlwind, and to direct the storm, or as Talfourd said, it was the most prominent fact of the evening, "by merit raised to that bad eminence." What was their astonishment to find that this vigorous expression of dissent came from Lamb himself, who, when questioned as to his motive, after the fall of the curtain, stammered out in his peculiar pop-gun manner, "I was so damnably afraid they would take me to be the Author!"

THOMAS CARLYLE.

One of the firmest believed axioms of the present age is, that Liberty is the child of Education, and that an enlightened nation must, of necessity, be free; but, in giving the palm to what is termed education, they have bestowed the crown of laurel on the result, and not upon the cause. The victory has been the lauded, the teacher-warriors too often neglected or forgotten. It is the poet, the orator, and the philosopher, who create the patriot. Education does not presuppose freedom; it is only a discipline which lends force and precision to the ideas taught: many a highly educated people have been oppressed, and are still so. The Germans are better educated than the EnglishEngland is infinitely freer than Germany. It is possible to educate and drill a nation into slavery. Myriads of learned monks have been the slavish instruments of spiritual and temporal despotism. It is, clearly, the teachers who sow the seeds of freedom.

The authors of one generation are the spiritual parents of the next, which invariably reaps the full harvest of his thoughts and aspirations. Production and re-production co-everlastingly go on: the blasphemy of to-day is the religion of to-morrow. The thought for which some great-souled martyr died is, in time, the established faith of the million, who murder others for doubting the words which they destroyed the preachers for once uttering. "The Dream of

the Student" is an accomplished fact; a great writer sends his silent but eternal voice into the world; at first it glides unseen, but it gathers force as it glides, till it descends an overwhelming avalanche on the strongholds of tyranny. The great poets produce a revolution, the revolution they cause produces another band of heroic hearts who sing the songs of freedom and cheer the masses on to greater and more enduring triumphs. It was said of old, let who will frame the laws of a land, give to me the making of the songs; the first trains, the other fires-one forms the citizens, the other the hero and the patriot; the first teaches prudence, the other unselfish virtue; the first regulates, the other creates; in a word, the poet is the patriot, the critic, the legislator; we do not undervalue legislation, we only wish to impress that it is distinct from the poet and the philosopher's work. The one is valor, the other discipline; one concentrates and tutors the soul into self; the other expands and carries it beyond.

It is easy to trace the progress of freedom by the steps of literature; the tone of this day's teaching will be visible on the morrow. Seneca uttered a truth weighty beyond the usual course of his thoughts when he said, "To-day is the scholar of yesterday." Let us not, therefore, forget this cheering fact; it might almost resolve itself into an algebraic form, that if the masses who were educated by their parents and clergy of the last generation, have achieved the vast revolutions which so loudly speak the advance of man, what may we not predicate from the children of the present age, when every author of note is a republican or radical? There is not a man of genius now but who belongs to that class. In England we may instance, in proof of our assertion, Carlyle, Dickens, Talfourd, Southwood Smith, Tennyson, Browning, Horne, Heraud, Thackeray, &c. In America they also write under the banner of liberalism. The writings of the authors of to-day are the "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" on the walls of every palace, and the tyrant trembles as did

Belshazzar of old, as he reads the inevitable sentence. What was the exception thirty years ago, is now the rule; then a liberal author was hunted down as a wild beast, the scorn and dread of the aristocratic, the moneyed, and even of the middle classes. Every ministry thought it a bounden duty to prosecute, imprison, or transport. Now all is changed, and the result in twenty years hence will be the overthrow of every despotism in the world. Who can hesitate to admit that the author is the grand civilizer, the patriot, the true hero, the mental athlete; his voice is the trumpet march to victory; his song invites all to the struggle, and cheers them in the conflict, and his verse preserves and sanctifies them if they fall. He is the pillar of fire by night, the column of mist by day. He leads human nature to the promised land, and refreshes the fainting multitudes, during their wearisome progress, with waters in the wilderness. Every living heart, like the rock, owns the magic of his wand, and responds to its touch. Nature appears to the poets of our day, as she did in ancient times to the prophets.

We have thought it necessary to introduce Mr. Carlyle with these remarks, for he is pre-eminently one of the great teachers of the age; he is less of the mere author than any of his contemporaries; his object is to aid the development of his fellow-creatures, to urge them to cast aside the slavery of cant, and to "stand forth men, and not suits of clothes, with patent digesters placed inside them." It is somewhat to be regretted that his manner is deficient in that simplicity which renders the doctrines clear to the masses, but a little study soon enables the disciple to master the cypher of his style. It has sometimes occurred to us that the author of "Sartor Resartus" has somewhat over Germanised his mind as well as his manner; we all know how a writer is tempted to transfer the style of his favorite author into his own, more especially when being, in another language, the trace of imitation is destroyed or neutralized, and to this "hero worship" of Jean Paul Richter, per

haps, is attributable the peculiarities of Mr. Carlyle's prose. Whilethis perversity, no doubt, interferes with his popularity in one direction, we have a strong suspicion it adds to it in another, for the charm of singularity is potent, and we have heard men of considerable eminence declare that Carlyle would lose half his attraction if he wrote in the common method; doubtless the worth of a thing is proportionable to the toil we have to achieve its possession, and there is a sort of half compliment implied to the reader where there is a difficulty or an obscurity in its expression. The probability is, judging from the simplicity and clearness of the greatest author of ancient and modern times, that an involved style is an evident confession of inability to complete the mental creation.

Some have not scrupled to avow boldly their belief, that in proportion as the thought is confused and imperfect, the expression is obscure and tortuous; there can be no doubt that a vast difference exists between the originality of a great writer, and the mannerism of a pretender; certainly it is natural to suppose that an author, who has truths for the million, would put them into dress best contemplated to achieve that object. On the other hand, it must be conceded it not unfrequently occurs that when a poet and original thinker appears, he brings with the bold thought a new phraseology, which is part and parcel of himself.

Thomas Carlyle was born in Annandale, and is the son of a respectable farmer, who was an elder in the Secession Church. In his youth he went to Edinburgh, where he became intimate with the celebrated Edward Irving, for whom he cherished, to the last hour of his life, the greatest regard and admiration.

When Irving died in his darkened sunset, how general was the censure and scorn of the low-minded mob! Carlyle came out like a man, a real fiery-hearted man, and in Fraser's Magazine pronounced an oration over the grave of his departed friend. No flinching in this noble tribute to a great intellect and a fine heart who had gone

« AnteriorContinuar »