IN LIBERTY AND GREATNESS N CONSIDERATION of your desire for useful information, my dearest Terentianus, I shall not hesitate to add an elucidation of that remaining question which was recently proposed by a certain philosopher. "I wonder," said he, "and not I alone, but doubtless many others also, how it happens that in the age we live in there are many men eminently endowed with talents for persuasion and public speaking, remarkable for shrewdness and readiness, and, above all, expert in the arts which give grace and sweetness to language; but that there are now none at all, or very few, who are distinguished for loftiness and grandeur of style. So great and universal is the dearth of genuine eloquence that prevails in this age. Must we believe at last that there is truth in that oft-repeated observation, that democracy is the kindly nurse of sublime genius, with whose strength alone truly powerful orators flourish, and disappear as it declines? For liberty, say they, is able to supply nutriment to the lofty conceptions of great minds and feed their aspirations, and, at the same time, to foster the flame of mutual emulation and stimulate ambition for pre-eminence-nay, further, that the mental excellences of orators are whetted continually by reason of the rewards proposed in free states; that they are made, as it were, to give out fire by collision, and naturally exhibit the light of liberty in their oratorical efforts. But we of the present day," continued he, «< seem to be trained from our childhood to absolute slavery, having been all but swathed in its customs and institutes, and never allowed to taste of that most copious fountain of all that is admirable and attractive in eloquence-I mean liberty - and hence it is that we turn out to be nothing but pompous flatterers." This, he said, was the cause why we see that all other attainments may be found in menials, but never yet a slave become an orator. His spirit being effectually broken, the timorous vassal will still be uppermost; the habit of subjection continually overawes and beats down his genius. For, according to Homer ("Odyssey," I. 322): "Jove fixed it certain that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away." "As then," said he, "(if what I have heard deserves credit), the cages in which what are called pigmies are kept, not only prevent the growth of those who are inclosed in them, but contract their dimensions by reason of the confinement in which their whole bodies are placed; so slavery of every kind, even the mildest, one might declare to be the cage and common prison of the mind." Now here I rejoined: It is easy and characteristic of human nature to find fault with the existing state of things, whatever it be; but I would have you consider whether, in some degree, this corruption of genius is not owing to the profound peace which reigns throughout the world, but much more to the wellknown war which our lusts are waging within us universally; and, moreover, to those mental foes that have invaded the present age, and waste and ravage all before them. For avarice (that disease of which the whole world is sick beyond a cure), aided by voluptuousness, holds us in abject thraldrom; or, rather, if I may so express it, drowns us body and mind. For the love of money is the canker of the soul's greatness, and the love of pleasure corrodes every generous sentiment. I have, indeed, thought much upon it; but, after all, judge it impossible for them that set their hearts upon, or, to speak more truly, that deify unbounded riches, to preserve their souls from the infection of all those vices which are firmly allied to them. For riches that know no bounds and restraint bring with them profuseness, their close-leagued and, as they call it, dogging attendant; and while wealth unbars the gates of cities, and opens the doors of houses, profuseness gets in at the same time, and takes up a joint residence. And when they have remained awhile in our principles and conduct, they build their nests there (in the language of philosophy), and speedily proceeding to propagate their species, they hatch arrogance, pride, and luxury-no spurious brood, but their genuine offspring. If these children of wealth be fostered and suffered to reach maturity, they quickly engender in our souls those inexorable tyrants,- insolence, injustice, and impudence. When men are thus fallen, what I have mentioned must needs result from their depravity. They can no longer lift up their eyes to anything above themselves, nor feel any concern for reputation; but the corruption of every principle must needs be gradually accomplished by such a series of vices; and the nobler faculties of the soul decay and wither, and lose all the fire of emulation, when men neglect the cultivation of their immortal parts, and suffer the mortal and worthless to engross all their care and admiration. For he that nas received a bribe to pervert judgment is incapable of forming an unbiased and sound decision in matters pertaining to equity and honor. For it must needs be that one corrupted by gifts should be influenced by self-interest in judging of what is just and honorable. And when the whole tenor of our several lives is guided only by corruption, by a desire for the death of others, and schemes to creep into their wills; when we are ready to barter our lives for paltry gains, led captive, one and all, by the thirst for lucre- can we expect, in such a general corruption, so contagious a depravity, that there should be found one unbiased and unperverted judge that can discriminate what is truly great, or will stand the test of time, uninfluenced in his decisions by the lust of gain? But if this is the case, perhaps it is better for such as we are to be held in subjection than to be free; for, be sure, if such rapacious desires were suffered to prey upon others without restraint, like wild beasts let out of confinement, they would set the world on fire with the mischiefs they would occasion. Upon the whole, then, I have shown that the bane of true genius in the present day is that dissolution of morals which, with few exceptions, prevails universally among men, who, in all they do or undertake, seek only applause and self-gratification, without a thought of that public utility which cannot be too zealously pursued, or too highly valued. Concluding essay, Chapter xliv. complete. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891) HE "Biglow Papers" of 1846-48 immortalized Lowell. Those who admire most his later work in the upper walks of literary criticism have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of the public at large- which in every such case is the court of last resort - that Lowell did not surpass himself for a lifetime in them. He was transported out of himself by the events of the decade of the Mexican War, and his hot indignation at the manner in which that weak republic was overrun drove him to humor in simple despair of doing the subject justice by serious denunciation. When he makes Mr. Biglow quote the patriotic editor of the time, we can see the white heat of Lowell's indignation under the pretense of humor in such lines as these: "I du believe wutever trash 'll keep the people in blindness,Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash Right inter brotherly kindness, Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ball Thet peace, to make it stick at all, Must be druv in with bagnets.» This whole essay, "The Pious Editor's Creed," both in its prose and in its still more effective doggerel verse, remains unsurpassed in its field, and one generation after another which hears the cant and witnesses the crimes by which greed supports rapacity, will thank Lowell that when the press and the pulpit were alike committed to the species of "civilization" which goes out "with a Bible in one hand and a revolver in the other," he had the courage and the spirit of human sympathy which transcended all restrictions of provincialism and spoke for the universal rights of mankind. Of the second series of "Biglow Papers" which he wrote when the whole country was paying the penalty for the Mexican conquest, it is unnecessary to speak. He lived to regret, as every other American of his moral plane must regret, that the prophetic indignation he felt in '48 became a part of the subconsciousness of that higher general intellect which is as enduring as the race and as inflexible in its retributions as the great principles which VII-167 control the movement of the tides and direct the course of the hurricane. Had he lived a century later, Lowell might have become a very great poet. But his sympathies with the world-struggles of his time tempted him always to use his poetical faculty as a weapon, where otherwise it might have been used as a lamp. "The Vision of Sir Launfal" is an admirable poem, but it is as far surpassed in force by the best of his political poems as his "Biglow Papers" surpass in reality the critical essays of his later years. It would be invidious and unjustifiable to say that one who had written so much and such meritorious verse is at his best in his prose, but it is certainly true that Lowell never sacrificed the critical instinct to the poetic; and of the critical faculties prose is not only the natural, but the only natural vehicle of expression. Lowell was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22d, 1819. Graduating at Harvard College in 1838, he published three years later "A Year's Life," and followed it up in 1844 with a second book of verse. Others followed in 1848, and at intervals until 1876. "The Vision of Sir Launfal" in 1845, "A Fable for Critics" in 1848, and the "Biglow Papers" in 1846-48, had given him full assurance of an enduring reputation, and when Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard, Lowell became his successor. From 1857 to 1862 he edited the Atlantic Monthly, and from 1863 to 1872 the North American Review. From 1877 to 1885 he remained abroad as minister to Spain and to Great Britain. After his return he delivered a course of lectures on the "English Dramatists" at the Lowell Institute. Besides lecturing and speaking on subjects of popular interest, he continued to take the most active interest in politics until his death, August 12th, 1891. With George William Curtis and William Cullen Bryant, he gives the best illustration we have had in the United States of the power of the "Scholar in Politics." From the time he wrote the "Biglow Papers" until his death, he carried at the point of his single pen at least as much power as the greatest newspaper in the country. He made as many mistakes in using it as most men make in learning to realize their capacities and responsibilities; but it is his chief glory, as it must be of every efficient man, that he did not allow the dread of mistakes or the shame of failure to prevent him from doing his best to the top of his bent. He was essentially a New Englander, When continental America produces a and a great New Englander. man representing to itself Lowell's relation to New England, we shall certainly have a man indeed. W. V. B. |