Chapter VII: An Unexpected Proposal (8)

Fanny starts to-morrow for France, Switzerland, and Germany――a long journey; we remain at present, so as in some measure to fill up the void a little. Why are you not here to witness our reunion? Oh! how strong is the love of one’s country. I am _inebriated_ with my native air; we sing our old ballads; we turn over with Adrien the history of the past. Ask of our good God that this may last a long time, dear Kate! _Erin mavourneen! Erin go bragh!_

SEPTEMBER 6, 1868.

Mistress Annah is come, dear sister. I wept with all my heart on embracing her. Dear old mistress Annah! how wrinkled and thin she has become; always upright and stiff as an Englishwoman, and her memory enriched with Italian stories which will charm baby’s childhood. Margaret has chosen for the beautiful innocent the name of _Emmanuel_――a blessed name, which well bespeaks the happiness of our friend. Lord William made royal largesses to the poor in the name of the new-born heir. Twelve orphans will be provided for at the expense of _Emmanuel_. Mistress Annah is longing to see and hear you. Margaret promises her this happiness for next spring. You may be sure that no fatigue will be imposed on the dear old lady. The pension given her by Lord William made her independent; but our _belle Anglaise_ feared the isolation of old age for her devoted heart, and it will be a happiness to both to watch the growth of baby. A messenger has just arrived. _Te Deum_, dear Kate!――a little daughter is born to Lizzy. Everybody is delighted; they have sent for us; I am going with René.

7th _September_.――In an hour the baptism, so that Isa may be present; then she says farewell to her family, and we take her away. The angel fallen from heaven is to be called Isa. Marcella, Adrien, and Gertrude have joined us. Joy and grief meet at this moment. You will be astonished at the sudden departure of our Isa; but Lizzy wishes it thus, hoping that the poor mother will let herself be interested by the festivities and the visitors.

The last number of the magazine has caused me a sensation. In it is an account of the beautiful scene on the Pincio, in October, 1864, “at the hour when the sun, sinking towards the sea of Ostia, lights with a golden gleam the cross which surmounts the dome of St. Peter.” Do you remember, dear Kate, the Pope appearing in the midst of the crowd, which bent before him with so much reverence, and the long shouts of _Viva Pio Nono_ which saluted his departure? O Rome, Rome, my other country, the eternal country of those who believe, hope, and love――Rome of St. Peter and of Pius IX.――I salute thy image and thy memory!

Dear sister, Lizzy requests your prayers. She is well, radiant, and full of gratitude to God. Her good husband is in transports, and the little one so pretty under her gauzy curtains. She has not cried yet, so we think she will resemble Isa, her godmother. Do you not like this prognostic?

Let us both pray, dear Kate! Adrien has again read us the two _fair contemporary pages_ about Ireland――Mgr. Dupanloup at St. Roch, and Mgr. Mermillod at St. Clotilde. O these words!――“The first powers of our time, the two most illustrious and rich, are a Prince despoiled and a people in rags――Pius IX., who extends to you his royal hand, and Ireland, who asks you for bread!”

[118] There is in this life but one possession worthy of
envy――Liberty.

[119] Good or worthy father (old).

[120] Each mortal has his own; this protecting angel,
This invisible friend, keeps watch around his heart;
Inspires and guides, uplifts him if he fall,
Receives him at the cradle, stays by him to the tomb,
And, bearing up to heaven his soul within his arms,
Presents it, trembling, to the Lord of all.

[121] O thrice happy, thrice blessed day! come to fill all
our hearts with infinite happiness.

[122] A slight refreshment taken by French children between
the morning and evening meal.

[123] This nest, this soft mystery, is a mother’s love.
Children, touch it not!

[124] Being unable to create anything, you must destroy
nothing. Children, touch it not!

[125] Few are the days in life which offer charms enough
To make us weep when evening brings their close.

[126] Hither the world’s last echoes come to die:
Land, shipwrecked mariners; the port is here.

[127] “Yes, ’tis one of those abodes where our heart feels
itself enlivened by something of heaven which floats around
it――one of those abodes which as a child I loved and of
which I used to dream, whose beauty, serene, inexhaustible,
penetrating, sheds upon the soul a serious and sublime
forgetfulness of all that is evil on earth or in man.”

[128] Marie Jenna, _Elévations Poétiques et Religieuses_.

[129] MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD.

’Twas in a wood, in the shadow of the oaks,
We children three, all proud of our seven years,
Unknowing yet of trouble or of care,
With our resounding voices filled the air.

Singing we wandered seeking the eglantine,
Wild strawberries, and nests of singing birds,
Gambolling wildly on the fine, soft moss,
Till night o’ertook us in our careless play.

Trembling with fear, within the forest dark
We wept in silence, fearing we should die;
And when around us thicker shadows fell,
Never, we thought, should we see joy again.

Heavens! what terror. Everything was still.
On the green, mossy turf at times there fell
A withered branch, to us a fall immense;
For oh! what fear and torment were we in.

But hark! a distant cry, our mother’s call,
And loving voices reached our listening ears,
While through the wood we saw the gleam of lights――
Oh! to us all what sweet relief and joy.

What tender kisses, and what welcome smiles,
Now quickly tranquillized our foolish fears!
After our sobs, we laughed for very joy,
E’en while our sisters trembled at our tale.

Lord, grant that ever, in our anxious hours
And stormy days, an angel guardian,
A tender mother’s hand, may dry our tears,
And guide our steps along the path of life.

[130] O Time! suspend thy flight, and ye, propitious Hours,
Suspend your course;
Suffer us to enjoy the swift delights
Of these our fairest days.

APHASIA IN RELATION TO LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT.

The relation of language to thought as a theme of discussion has busied the pens of philosophical writers from very early times, and the later aspects of the controversy do not promise a speedy agreement of views. Whatever new light, therefore, recent discoveries in science may shed on this much-vexed question ought to be welcomed as helping to increase of knowledge concerning a matter which cannot escape the serious consideration of the teachers of philology. At present Messrs. Max Müller and Whitney most strongly incline to opposite views; and before coming to the subject of aphasia as affecting the question, it may be well to take a cursory view of the field of controversy.

The old or scholastic belief is that language was in the first instance divinely communicated, and this opinion its upholders strove to maintain by a variety of reasons. Authority and tradition were chief among these, though they did not by any means neglect philological and ethnological considerations. In France the Vicomte de Bonald undertook the support of this view on the same line as that now held by Max Müller――viz., that it is impossible to have a purely intellectual conception without a corresponding word or series of words to represent it; whence, according to him, it follows that the word must have accompanied the thought, and, man being unable to originate the one without the other, both must have been originally communicated. Max Müller says: “As a matter of fact, we never meet with articulate sounds, except as wedded to determinate ideas: nor do we ever, I believe, meet with determinate ideas, except as bodied forth in articulate sounds.” He strongly insists on the correctness of this view, and argues it at length. Professor Whitney takes direct issue with him, and maintains that there is the widest separation between language and thought. According to him, language can be said to be of divine origin only in so far as man was created with the capacity for its formation just as he was created capable of making clothes for himself, and of wearing them. Such being the state of the question, we will proceed to consider that abnormal condition of the nervous system which has been denominated aphasia, and afterwards indicate our opinion as to which view the facts established by it go to sustain.

Aphasia, defined by Dr. Hammond as a diseased condition of the brain, was not understood till quite recently. It is an affection of that organ by which the idea of language or of its expression is impaired. It is not mere paralysis of the vocal chords, nor of the muscles of articulation, nor the result of hysteria――which conditions are denominated aphonia, or voicelessness――but depends on a lesion or injury wrought in that portion of the brain which presides over the memory of words and their co-ordination in speech. The loss of the memory of words is styled amnesic aphasia, the other ataxic aphasia――two Greek derivatives which explain very clearly the two separate conditions. A single typical case will exhibit the usual manner of the approach of this trouble, its development and termination. An English banker, a resident of Paris, recently went out in his carriage well as usual, and on his return, as he was stepping to the sidewalk, fell heavily forward, but did not lose consciousness. His whole right side was paralyzed, and, on attempting to speak, he could not articulate a word; he barely succeeded in uttering a few unintelligible sounds. During twelve days the paralysis continued, but after that gradually subsided, till in the course of a few months he was able to move about. Strange to say, however, the power of speech did not return, and for eight months he could no more than articulate a few words incoherently. Nothing in the case of this gentleman openly indicated an impairment of the intellect; for he could neither read nor write in consequence of his paralyzed condition. There was undoubted loss of the memory of words, since his vocabulary was limited to two or three; and there was likewise ataxic aphasia, since his words were jumbled unmeaningly together. The recorded cases of this disease are very numerous, many of them differing in their individual features, but all exhibiting a greater or less degree of both forms mentioned. The case just cited will suffice to enable the reader to understand the interest felt by psychologists and physiologists alike to ascertain whether, by the discovery of a uniform and constantly-recurring lesion in a certain portion of the brain, the seat of language in that organ might be determined. Dr. Gall, with the view of completing his system of phrenology, referred speech-function to that part of the brain lying on the supra-orbital plate behind the eye. Spurzheim, Combe, and others of the phrenological school held the same view. But this was a mere conjecture on their part, and it was not till minute anatomy had already localized several other important functions that a fair promise was held out that the brain-organ of speech might be likewise located. Experiments without number were made by Bouillaud, Cruveilhier, Velpeau, Andral, Broca, and Dax in France; Hughlings, Jackson, Sanders, Moxon, Ogle, Bateman, and Bastian in England; Von Benedict and Braunwart in Germany; Flint, Wilbur, Seguin, Fisher, and Hammond in America――all tending to confirm the localization of the function, though not agreeing as to the exact spot. The mode of procedure usually consisted in making a post-mortem examination of those who during life had suffered from aphasia; and though it was an extremely difficult matter to bring all the cases under a uniform standard, enough was discovered to assign the function in question to the left anterior lobe of the brain. We do not pretend to regard the question as settled; for no less authorities than Hammond in our own country, and Prof. Ferrier in England, seem to consider both hemispheres of the brain as equally concerned. Still, it is significant that out of 545 cases examined by different authorities, 514 favor the left anterior lobe of the brain, while but 31 are opposed to such a conclusion. Assuming, then, as amply demonstrated that some portion of the anterior convolutions of the brain is the seat of the faculty of speech, the question arises, Can that part of the brain which is concerned in the process of ideation continue to perform its functions――_i.e._, originate true ideas of which the mind is conscious――without the memory of the words which usually represent those ideas or the power to co-ordinate them? It is evident that, no matter how the question may be met, we possess in the discoveries to which aphasia has led a most important contribution to the controversy concerning the relation of language to thought; for if it can be shown that the mental faculties are unimpaired during the existence of the aphasic condition, the conclusion would go to favor Prof. Whitney’s view that thought is independent of speech; whereas if it can be shown that during the same condition the mental powers are very much debilitated or frequently suspended, we find an unexpected support given to Max Müller’s opinion that without language there can be no thought. We would state in advance that the portion of the cerebral substance which is concerned in the production of thought――or, as neurologists have it, is the centre of ideation――entirely differs from that which is the reputed seat of the faculty of speech; so that the question may read: Does the centre of ideation continue to operate while the speech-centres are in a diseased condition? Aphasic individuals usually retain all the appearances of intelligence: their eyes are full of expression; their manner of dealing with surrounding objects is quite the same as if they were in possession of all their faculties; when asked to point out material objects, they unhesitatingly do so――in a word, to the extent that objects are their own language their intellect remains unimpaired. But they exhibit a remarkable deficiency in the power of co-ordination, since this is a pure relation not symbolized by anything material. Material objects possess in their outlines and sensible qualities enough to discriminate and individualize them; and hence, through perception, they reach the centres of ideation, and are as readily understood by the aphasic as though their names were fully known. This is made manifest in their writing when, as occurs only in a few cases, the aphasic retain the power of using the pen. Thus we read in Trousseau of the case of an aphasic named Henri Guénier, who could not write the word “yes,” though capable of uttering it in an automatic way without seeming in the least to understand its meaning. Yet he could write his own name, though nothing else, evidently for the reason that the τὸ ἐγώ was the object of most frequent recurrence to his mind, and that which consequently he could most readily apprehend through its sensible characteristics, and could thereby connect with his own name; whereas “yes,” as the symbol of affirmation, found no counterpart in the sensible order. The same author relates the case of a man who, so far as he could make himself intelligible, boasted of retaining his intellective and memorative powers unimpaired, and yet, on being put to the test, he could not construct the shortest sentence coherently. When a spoon was held before him, and he was asked what it was, he gave no answer; when asked if it was a fork he made a sign of denial, but when asked if it were a spoon he at once replied in the affirmative. It must be remembered that in all these cases the power of utterance, so far as it is a muscular process, remained unimpaired, but there was true amnesic aphasia――_i.e._, the recollection of the words was lost.

There are some cases of partial aphasia which possess an interest quite peculiar, since its victims frequently regain the entire power of speech, and are able to relate the results of their experience. A celebrated professor in France spent a vacation-day reading Lamartine’s literary conversations, when towards evening he was attacked with partial aphasia. Fearing lest he was threatened with paralysis, he moved his arms and walked up and down the room, in doing which he experienced no difficulty; but when he resumed his reading, he found it scarcely possible to understand a sentence. The individual words were intelligible enough, but he could not follow out the sequence of the thoughts. Of course during the attack he could not utter a word, though able partially to comprehend what was said to him, as he afterwards declared. Here indeed is a most instructive instance of impaired intellect, occurring as it did in a man whose brain was usually in a very active state, and whose mind was highly cultivated. Does it not strongly confirm the belief that, even while the organic instrument of thought was unimpaired, its functions were temporarily suspended?

Another case is that of a man of good literary attainments, who pretended that he could still understand what he read, but who could not discover the mistake when the book was presented to him reversed. There can be no doubt, then, that aphasia unerringly points to a most intimate dependence between language and thought, and that, as Max Müller says, without language there can be no thought.

But why is it that in regard to objects possessing sensible qualities aphasic individuals exhibit no impairment of intellectual power? We will answer, Because with regard to such objects these are their own language, and the functions of the perceptive and ideational centres are as active in their regard as though the faculty of speech were intact. A tree is known by its branches and leaves to the deaf mute as well as it is by its name to those possessing all their faculties. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates an object of thought is its language. For, after all, is not language conventional and arbitrary, the outer symbol of a subjective phenomenon? The symbol may be of any sort whatsoever, but the thought cannot be known without a symbol of some sort. Now, the qualities of sensible objects, in so far as they serve to circumscribe the objects and to discriminate them from all others, become their language. This is rendered more evident when we reflect that Locke’s theory, according to which sensible objects are but an aggregate of sensible qualities, is generally rejected, and the opinion admitted that under these qualities there resides a true substance impervious to the senses and known to us only as inference from the former. Therefore the sensible qualities are the symbol of the substance identified with it; of course in so far these are but the substance modified in such or such a manner. This is why aphasics find no trouble in forming ideas of material things, though they may forget their names. But why is aphasia ataxic――that is, incapable of co-ordinating words? Because co-ordination expresses the relation between the objects co-ordinated, and relation is not represented, and cannot be represented, by anything in the sensible order. They belong to the purely intellectual order, and the only symbol that existed by which they were known being lost, there remains no longer any means of circumscribing and differentiating them. Paul and Peter may be well known to the aphasic――Paul as such, and Peter as such――because the sensible qualities of both render them recognizable; and not only that, but the different qualities pertaining to both enable him clearly to distinguish the one from the other. But if he is told that Peter is taller than Paul, he understands nothing. And why? Because the proposition implies the relation of comparison, in which there is nothing sensible. Indeed, he perceives Peter to be tall and Paul to be diminutive, but he does not perform the intellectual process called judgment, which is interpreted in the proposition, Peter is taller than Paul. In like manner, when there is question of purely intellectual conceptions which can be symbolized by nothing sensible except names, the aphasic are incapable of reaching them. Virtue, power, and malice are meaningless sounds in their ears, and equally unintelligible is what these words represent. The reason is because the symbols by which these ideas were conveyed to the mind are lost, and there is nothing left by which virtue can be known or discriminated from power and malice. Whatever circumscribes and differentiates a thought is its language, and this can be done only by a symbol. Now, if we consult our own consciousness, we will find that it is impossible for us to conceive of what is purely intellectual――_i.e._, possessing no sensible traits――if we lose sight of the word which represents it. Affirmation and negation are of this sort, and it is entirely impossible to disconnect the idea of either from some word or series of words. The idea, indeed, is not the spoken word, but is painted by it as it were on the canvas of the mind, and hence was called by Aristotle the word of the mind. All this is attested in the case of aphasics. The language-mechanism of the brain is disarranged; there is forgetfulness of words, accompanied by inability to arrange them in proper order so as to be remembered; the ideational centre remains intact, but is inoperative with regard to such thoughts as have their sole symbol in words.

It is true that some aphasic individuals retain for a time certain impressions which belong to the purely intellectual order; but this can be accounted for only by supposing that the brain centres of ideation are endowed with certain registering powers capable of retaining impressions for a short while after their active operation is suspended. But when the disease is of long continuance those impressions gradually fade, and the patient is reduced to the condition of an untaught deaf mute. He has lost the formulæ of thought, and therefore cannot think. Trousseau says: “A great thinker, as well as a great mathematician, cannot devote himself to transcendental speculations unless he uses formulæ and a thousand material accessories which aid his mind, relieve his memory, and impart greater strength to thought by giving it greater precision.” But where the sole “material accessory,” as Trousseau calls it, is absent, how can a person think? We use the word in a higher sense; for children incapable of speech, and animals, exercise a certain amount of thought in respect to surrounding objects; but thinking, in the sense of reasoning, abstracting, and comparing, outlies their capacity, just as it does that of aphasic individuals. “Without language,” says Schelling, “it is impossible to conceive philosophical, nay, even any human, consciousness; and hence the foundations of language could not have been laid consciously. Nevertheless, the more we analyze language, the more clearly we see that it surpasses in depth the most conscious workings of the mind.” And Hegel says: “It is in names that we think.” This exactly explains what occurs in the case of aphasics. The principles of science, the sequence of ideas, the links of an argument, are not understood by them; for they are, as children and animals, capable merely of receiving the impressions which material objects make on their sensory organs. It is true that a few aphasics have been known to be expert chess-players; and though this is as hard to account for as the apparent feats of reasoning accomplished by animals of the lower order, still we would no more rank expertness at such a game among the higher attributes of reason than we would the sagacity of a dog or of an elephant.

This point is well touched upon by Trousseau, who says: “I believe that the same thing obtains in metaphysics as in geometry. In the latter case a man may vaguely conceive space and infinity without any precision or measure; but if he wishes to think of the properties of space, and more particularly of the special properties of the figures which bound space――as, say, conic sections――it is impossible that his mind does not immediately see the curves proper to a parabola, a hyperbola, and an ellipse. In metaphysics, on the other hand, I believe that a man cannot think of the special properties of beauty, justice, and truth, for instance, without immediately giving a material form, as it were, to his thoughts, by using concrete examples, and without associating words together――words which represent concrete ideas, and which then stand in the same relation to particular metaphysical ideas as figures do to determinate geometric ideas.”

The same may be said of universal ideas. These are, subjectively viewed, mere concepts of the mind; objectively they have a foundation in the object. Now, that object is present to the aphasic, and he recognizes it by its sensible properties; but when there is question of viewing one or two properties as possessed in common by a number of objects, he finds himself unequal to the task. In a word, he cannot generalize, and this is one of the highest acts of reason.

We would insist upon the distinction between words representing purely material objects and those which interpret to us supersensible thoughts; for not a few physiologists have fallen into error by not observing this distinction. Thus Prof. Ferrier, of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, says: “In aphasia, consequent as it usually is on disease of the left hemisphere, the memory of words is not lost, nor is the person incapable of appreciating the meaning of words uttered in his hearing.” From this it is evident that the learned professor neglected to note the distinction alluded to; and because an aphasic did not fail to appreciate the meaning of certain words representing material things, therefore he concluded in a general way that he did not fail to appreciate the meaning of words. Indeed, we have nowhere noted the distinction, and it is curious that, in all the cases recorded of the clinical history of this disease, physicians have invariably propounded to their patients as test-words such words as fork, spoon, pen, boots, and all such as pertain to the material order of things. Prof. Whitney certainly did not take note of these facts when he asserted the entire independence between language and thought. He regards man as capable of conceiving new thoughts apart from all representative symbols, and then finding for them a vocal expression. This, as we have seen, is in direct antagonism with the data of aphasia. The chief flaw in Prof. Whitney’s reasoning is that he starts from false premises when he limits language to mere spoken or articulate sounds. He seems to ignore the question when he says: “In all our investigations of language we find nothing which should lead us to surmise that an intellectual apprehension could ever, by an internal process, become transmuted into an articulated sound or complex of sounds.” The implied premise in this sentence is erroneous, since it is entirely possible that it be associated with some other symbol, borrowed from a material source, which is its language, its expression, and makes it something entirely distinct from the intellectual apprehension. Indeed, here lies the secret of metaphorical language, and of its extensive use among those tribes of men whose philosophical vocabulary is limited.

LIGHT AND SHADOW.

In golden pomp at morn and eve
The purple mountains rise,
With banners bright of waving green
Gay flaunting to the skies;
But upward toiling, panting, slow,
Patient the fleetest step must go.

A winding pathway through the vale
Entices weary feet;
The shining waters sing of peace,
The morning breeze is sweet;
But nook or covert there is none
To shelter from the noonday sun.

The fainting trav’ller turns aside
To seek the woodland shade――
Beyond the thicket, stretching cool,
Invites the mossy glade――
But thorny is the tangled way,
And devious paths his steps betray.

The fleeciest cloud that graceful floats
In summer skies of light,
Within a veil of tender mist
Conceals the tempest’s might;
And winds that stir with softest breath
Are freighted with the seeds of death.

The loveliest blossom that unfolds
Its beauty to the day
Must yield its treasured fragrance up,
Then droop and fade away;
And greenwood birds that sweetest sing
Are soonest gone on flitting wing.

The undertone of earth’s delights
In sorrow’s pensive sigh
Is mingled with the echoing breeze
Ere joy’s glad accents die――
Of all the strains that saddest float
Are requiems blent with triumph’s note.

CHICAGO, October 14.

JEAN INGELOW’S POEMS.[131]

Jean Ingelow is now over fifty years of age. For some time past she has devoted herself chiefly to graceful prose, in which her pure and playful imagination seems to have found sufficient vent. She can never be removed from the company of the poets, however, notwithstanding her apparent purpose of withdrawal, so far as we may surmise a possible design by her neglect of versification.

That she has demonstrated her possession of genuine poetic feeling cannot be denied. The volume before us is sufficient proof of this. Whenever she has permitted herself to be simple, lucid, and natural, her verses’ not only please――they charm. She is one of the minor poets sincerely beloved――not in so great a degree as Adelaide Procter, or Christina Rossetti, because she is not equally successful in expressing the universal sentiments of the heart, and because she wanders from the unambitious poetry of natural feeling into the tricky and artificial, whither the multitude will not voluntarily follow. She is not always in one mood, as Adelaide Procter is; and her joy, when sincere, and not fictitious and artful, is sometimes exceedingly attractive and――what is its truest test――becomes infectious, pervading the reader’s mind and carrying the emotions away into its own atmosphere.

We never smile at Adelaide Procter’s joy. Her smiles are sadder than her tears. She smiles like a dying saint, whose pallid features proclaim that the effort is inspired by something higher and more mysterious than the pleasure of the world. It is as Shakspere says: “Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, as if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit, that could be moved to smile at anything.”

Jean Ingelow possesses enough perception of real humor to throw, here and there, winsome flashes of merriment over very sombre pictures, especially in _genre_ scenes like that depicted in “The Supper at the Mill.” Indeed, it may be safe to say that if she unloosed the flimsy chains of artificiality in which she has bound her muse, that very affected maid would prove frolicsome and mischievous; but her mistress prefers a decorousness of behavior which, by this time, must have dulled her own sense of the ludicrous, while supplying additional keenness in that direction to her critics, and furnishing new and irresistible models for hilarious parody, as we shall see.

It is impossible to read through a volume of her poems without coming to this conclusion: that she has a poetic stock-in-trade. Let us make an inventory of it. First, there are the birds; secondly, certain flowers and grasses; thirdly, a set of stereotypes composed of peculiar comminglings of sea, sky, ships, and stars. This poetic stock is, as it were, all duly classified and labelled, and the whole is arranged with scientific calculation as to drafts, at intervals, upon the several departments. Matthew Arnold,[132] modestly defending his own attempts toward translating Homer into English hexameter, hopes to make it clear that he at least follows “a right method,” and that, if he fail, it is “from weakness of execution, not from original vice of design.” Jean Ingelow is guilty, we think, of “original vice of design.” “Weakness of execution” is infallibly certain to follow. In selecting her poetic stock――which is, in itself, vice of design――she deepens the folly by being persistently fantastical. It is not enough to choose birds, grasses, and particular flowers――these are an integral part of all descriptive poetry; but, in order to make them her especial poetic stock, she calls them by a curious and grotesque nomenclature, whose terms were undoubtedly devised with an ultimate view toward picturesque artificial composition. Her birds are not the sweet-syllabled singers of classic song; she eschews the nightingale and lark for jackdaws, wagtails, grouse, coot, rail, cushat, and mews. Her grasses and flowers are less grotesque and better adapted to sentimentalism in style: marigolds, foxglove, heather, daffodils――very fond is she of daffodils――orchis, bluebells, golden-broom, vetches, anemone, clover――her muse is very often in clover――ling, marybuds, cowslips, and cuckoo-pint. The bee appears with industrious frequency; his colors and his business are alike serviceable in a kind of composition both picturesque and fantastic, He is as full of available verbal suggestion as of honey. The ships are invariably bowing to each other, to the land, or to the port. The figure is a good one, and true, but its recurrence soon renders it tiresome and exposes the dryness of the poet’s fancy. And after all Shakspere has been beforehand with her. In the _Merchant of Venice_ Antonio is told that his mind is tossing on the ocean, where his argosies with portly sail, like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,

“Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
_That curt’sy to them_, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.”

The sea――which has supplied all the poets, from Homer down, with noble and beautiful images, lofty, grand, awful, terrible, or simply lovely,――the sea to Jean Ingelow is as a sleek servant who comes in to fill up a gap in the discourse or provide a necessary digression in the narrative. “A Sea Song” contains nothing of the sea except “salt sea foam” repeated. Her sea, stars, sun, and moon are all domestic. They perform no higher functions than the pipes of parsley or “the green ribbon” that “pranks the down.” Her sun either “stoops” or is “level”; her moon “droops”; the sea is usually “level,” and when disturbed, never awakens any sense of the sublime. Nothing more than her apparent imbecility in poetic treatment of the sea is wanting to dispose of the hope that Jean Ingelow can ever become a better poet than she appeared to be in her first volume.

Mrs. Browning, in one of her earlier efforts, “The Seraphim,” makes Ador and Zerah speak of “the glass sea-shore.” But we do not remember noting a recurrence of the expression throughout her tens of thousands of lines. Mrs. Browning seems to have been conscious that she was unequal to an adequate depicting of marine grandeur, and she rarely attempts it, except in an instant’s lofty sweep remindful of Homer――as if she caught a single breath of his inspiration, and pressed it into her verse. She had more imagination than Jean Ingelow; Jean has the readier fancy. Mrs. Browning’s conceptions of the awe and beauty of the sea were far above her power of description, whose efforts are often turgid and swell into bombast; so she does not attempt, except in modest discretion, to write of the sea at all. Miss Ingelow, on the contrary, discovers the ocean only at her feet, or through the limited vision of a pretty opera-glass. Thus it becomes a mere commonplace in her stanzas; she is frivolous where Mrs. Browning would have been turgid had she not been cautious.

The sea, indeed, has wrecked most of the poets who did not hug the shore. Only the few greatest of the number have been able, like Jason, to tempt its unknown breadth, and fewer still return from Colchis without a Medea to torment them. The sea will always be the final touchstone of poetic genius. Of recent poets, Tennyson has been most ambitious and most successful; but his best ocean views may be seen from along the shores of the _Æneid_. The little ’scapes which are strictly his own are artificial and under-done; his pigment is only the residuum of lapis-lazuli――ultramarine ashes.

Jean Ingelow’s “vice of design” is very sadly shown, too, in her vocabulary. She wanders about in dusty, unused dictionaries, searching out odd, obsolete, obscure, and ambiguous words. Because a term is confessedly obsolete is no sound reason why it should not be revived; but there is no justification for inserting it in a text where it must play the unbecoming part of a conspicuous intruder who can make no satisfactory excuse for his presence in uncongenial company. Where the silenced lexicons do not afford the desired material, she is not loath to make new combinations, and we are harassed by “bewrayed,” “amerce,” “ancientry,” “thrid,” “scorpe,” “eygre,” “chine,” “brattling,” etc. The best illustration of the artificiality and affectation of her style is found in one of her most pleasing and most popular poems, and it would be deservedly much more popular were these blemishes of etymology and simperings of rhetoric removed. We quote stanzas enough of “Divided” to exhibit her individuality both of thought and diction:

“An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them, wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

* * * * *

“Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Groweth the cleft with her golden ring,
’Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.

* * * * *

“Hey the green ribbon! We kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses, dewy and sheen;
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.

“Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faëry bells,――
Faëry wedding bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.”

The “beck” grows into a widening stream and divides them.

“A shady freshness, chafers whirring,
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.

* * * * *

“Stately prows are rising and bowing
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing
The tiny green ribbon that shows so fair.”

In the last two verses Miss Ingelow, unconsciously forgetting her previous straining after literal effects, writes these true thoughts, which are the most finely poetical in the entire poem:

“And yet I know past all doubting, truly――
A knowledge greater than grief can dim,
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly,
Yea better, e’en better than I loved him.

“And as I walk by the vast, calm river,
The awful river so dread to see.
I say, ‘Thy breadth and thy depth for ever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.’”

Only artificial poems can be well parodied, and the parody holds the mirror up to the artifices, so that even the author must make confession. The cleverest burlesques which have reached the public of late, reproducing in an exaggerated form the faults of the modern affected school of poetry, are those of C. S. Calverley.[133] The merit of his rhymed farces――which is precisely what he makes of his models――is nowhere more happily illustrated than in the following, which needs no introduction. It is entitled “Lovers, and a Reflection”:

“In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean;
Meaning, however, is no great matter),
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;

“Through God’s own heather we wonned together,
I and my Willie (O love, my love!);
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats wavered alow, above;

“Boats were curtsying, rising, bowing
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!

“Through the rare red heather we danced together
(O love, my Willie!), and smelt for flowers;
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather――
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:――

“By rises that flushed with their purple favors,
Thro’ becks that brattled o’er grasses sheen,
We walked or waded, we two young shavers,
Thanking our stars we were both so green.

“We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie――
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock eyes;

* * * * *

“And Willie ’gan sing (O, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white winged sea)――
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of ‘ancientry’;

* * * * *

“Oh! if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together this genial weather,
And carted, or carried, on wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out――ay me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there’d be!”

Miss Ingelow’s most pretentious poem, next to “Divided,” is the “Letter L.” It has all her characteristic faults, intensified by a curious jog-trot metre:

“We sat on grassy slopes that meet
With sudden dip the level strand;
The trees hung overhead――our feet
Were on the sand.

* * * * *

“And let alighting jackdaws fleet
Adown it open-winged, and pass
Till they could touch with outstretched feet
The warmèd grass.”

And so on. Calverley has a little versification entitled “Changed.” Mark how ingeniously adroit he is in getting the jog-trot:

“I know not why my soul is racked
Why I ne’er smile as was my wont;
I only know that, as a fact,
I don’t.

“I used to roam o’er glen and glade,
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.

* * * * *

“I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
’Tis that I can’t remember how
They go.”

Calverley’s exhilarating volume, by the way, is not all parody; many of its numbers are original expressions of as pure fun, capitally expressed, as mirth ever conceived or art wove into verse.

Jean Ingelow is not altogether artificial. Occasionally she writes a terse truth:

“One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock
Shall move the seat of God”;

or falls into a simple, unaffected strain:

“Far better in its place the lowliest bird
Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song,
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word
And sing His glory wrong.”

Hers is that oft-quoted couplet:

“Is there never a chink in the world above
Where they listen for words from below?”

“The Carpenter,” relating the touching story of his wife’s death to “The Scholar,” says with happy directness:

“’Tis sometimes natural to be glad;
And no man can be always sad,
Unless he wills to have it so.”

“The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire” is widely popularized by lyceum readers, who find its energy well fitted for semi-dramatic recitation; and certain divisions of the “Songs of Seven,” notably “Love” and “Giving in Marriage,” possess lyrical richness.

The thought of Jean Ingelow’s poems is always clean-of-heart; she eschews――generally――psychological tendencies, and, although far from lucid, her longer flights of speculation are merely curious, obscure, and fanciful rather than vicious or misleading. Indeed, according to her measure of grace, she is abjectly devout, worshipping with Eastern blindness a Deity of whose attributes she conceives only one――Love; and, in the humble resignation of a sightless child, she casts herself into the arms of her notion of what that Love is, and rests there, content to seek no knowledge outside herself. But even within these sacred limits her disposition to artificiality in expression unconsciously enters, to mar, with incongruous ornament, the limpid thought:

“For, O my God! thy creatures are so frail,
Thy bountiful creation is so fair,
That, drawn before us, like the Temple veil,
It hides the Holy Place from thought and care,
Giving man’s eyes instead its sweeping fold.
Rich as with cherub wings and apples wrought of gold.

“Purple and blue and scarlet――shimmering bells
And rare pomegranates on its broidered rim,
Glorious with chain and fretwork that the smell
Of incense shakes to music dreamy and dim,
Till on a day comes loss, that God makes gain,
And death and darkness rend the veil in twain.”

Literal criticism of Jean Ingelow is, however, abashed and almost silenced by the essence of her verse, which, in its chastity and beauty, is above the touch of cavil. She is one of our few contemporaneous poets who can look upon the face of her own work without a blush. Apparently past the zenith of her productive talent, she may look gratefully back upon her modest and constant rise, and say:

“Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast.”

She need not avert her gaze from any line, and plead that the public forgets it was hers and a woman’s. Wanting the genius of poetry, her inspiration has been only that of intense poetic feeling wrought out by the canons of verse; but, although only one of many in this respect, the work itself is far above the average of its class.

“Many fervent souls
Strike rhyme on rhyme who would strike steel on steel,
If steel had offered, in a restless heat
Of doing something. Many tender souls
Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,
As children cowslips――the more pains they take,
The work more withers …
… Alas! near all the birds
Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take
The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.”

While the popular magazines and the newspapers are daily lowering the standard of taste, and degrading and corrupting the sources of literary enjoyment as well as of personal honor and actual virtue, the regret is irresistible that a pleasing versifier like Jean Ingelow should not contribute more to a total of general reading into which what is known as “popular poetry” so largely enters.

[131] _Jean Ingelow’s Poems._ Boston: Roberts Brothers.

[132] _Essays in Criticism_, p. 334.

[133] _Fly-Leaves._ By C. S. C.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

TERRA INCOGNITA; OR, THE CONVENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. By John
Nicholas Murphy. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)

An unknown land indeed is this that Mr. Murphy traverses――unknown, it is to be feared, not only to his “Protestant fellow-subjects of Great Britain and Ireland, for whose information it has been written” and to whom it is dedicated by the author, but also to too many of his Catholic fellow subjects, as well as to Catholics generally. The book is, in brief, a history of the growth and spread of the religious Orders in Great Britain and Ireland, the greater portion of it being devoted to their work and increase since a removal of the penal statutes enabled them to return in safety to the United Kingdom. The interest of the narrative is simply absorbing. The work accomplished by the Orders in face of a multitude of difficulties and dangers seems little short of the miraculous. They crept back singly or in little groups from France and Belgium, whence the first French Revolution drove them out. Thither they had flown for refuge when the greater revolution of the sixteenth century banished them and their faith from what had been a land of saints. Units gathered units, brothers brothers, sisters sisters, Congregations other Congregations, Orders affiliated Orders, and within less than a century we behold the consecrated yet desecrated soil of England and Ireland dotted with religious houses, asylums, schools, colleges, where the old faith is taught and practised. Those who are in search of the heroic, the sensational, the pathetic, the marvellous, should read this book. Their appetite will be satisfied with a healthy food. It is the old story over and over again of what can be accomplished by those who are really inflamed with a love of God and their neighbor. No one can rise from the story of St. Vincent de Paul or Nano Nagle without a moistening of the eye and a better feeling in his heart.

Mr. Murphy’s book was published some years ago, and the extracts from secular and Protestant journals in Great Britain and Ireland show how truly he met a popular want at a time when men like Mr. Newdegate were bent on satisfying their own morbid curiosity and insane hatred of Catholicity by forcing themselves on the peaceful communities of Catholic ladies. If we have any Newdegates among us, they would do well to take up Mr. Murphy’s volume, and see for themselves how these “dark and cloistered women” spend their lives. The present volume is a new and improved edition. As the author tells us in the preface, “The statistics of convents have been largely amplified and brought down to the present day. Several chapters have been re-written, and eleven new chapters have been introduced.”

THE CATHOLIC’S LATIN INSTRUCTOR IN THE PRINCIPAL CHURCH OFFICES AND
DEVOTIONS. For the use of choirs, convents, and mission schools,
and for self-teaching. By the Rev. E. Caswall, of the Oratory.
London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication
Society.)

Father Caswall has done the Catholic laity a great service by this _Instructor_. As he truly observes in his preface, “A knowledge of Latin is not needed for Catholic worship.… Nevertheless, to those whose education admits of it an acquaintance with those portions of the Latin Liturgy which are in most frequent public use must ever be a legitimate and worthy object of interest.” Accordingly, he has put himself to the very considerable trouble of preparing a manual, which, although an experiment, will be found, we have no doubt, all that is needed for enabling the laity of either sex, who have an English education, to make themselves familiar with the language of the church’s liturgy. It deals with grammar as little as possible, he says, yet there will be found in Part II. more grammar than his words may lead us to suppose. Moreover, there are ample directions given, at every turn, for the right use of the book.

The work is primarily designed, as the title-page indicates, for choirs and mission-schools. With regard to choirs, it is superfluous to observe how much better and more pleasing to God is an intelligent than a non-intelligent singing of the Latin. With regard to schools, especially those where elementary instruction in secular Latin is given, “Catholics will enjoy,” says our author, “in the _living_ character of the language as used in the church offices, a great and singular advantage.” And further, “What better _food for the mind_ can we offer to our children,” he asks, “than the simple translation from Latin into English――after a method easy alike to girls or boys――of what they constantly hear and often join in singing in church?” Then, as to the adult laity, there is “a large class of persons who, while provided with missals and prayer-books abounding in Latin text and side-by-side translations, yet, from want of a very little practical insight, fail to derive from these manuals the advantage intended. Others there are, devout persons of either sex, who might greatly profit by the occasional use of Latin prayers, but are restrained (and ladies especially) by an idea that in order to this they must first have a complete knowledge of Latin. Such a bugbear――for it is little else――will, let us hope, quickly yield to a steady practice of the present exercises.”

The work consists of two Parts: “Part I. containing Benediction, the choir portions of Mass, the Serving at Mass, and various Latin prayers in ordinary use; Part II. comprising additional portions of the Mass, Requiem Mass, Litany of the Saints, Vespers, Compline, and other offices and devotions, with a short Grammar and Vocabulary.”

The only stricture we have to make regards the pronunciation of _A_. The author says: “_A_, when fully sounded, is to be pronounced as _a_ in _far_. Examples: Pater, _Par_ter; laudamus, laud_ar_mus; ora, or_ar_.” This is a very strange mistake. Had he heard, as we have, “Glori_ar_ _r_in in excelsis,” “Benedict_ar_ _r_es,” “super omni_ar_ _r_est,” etc., he would never have directed that “_a_ should be pronounced as _a_ in _far_.” We are aware that the English _r_ is fainter than the Irish or American. Still, should not _h_ be substituted for _r_ in the above? P_ah_ter, laud_ah_mus, or_ah_ are the exact sounds.

With this very small exception, then, we can only speak of Father Caswall’s manual with unqualified praise, and hope it may obtain the wide circulation it deserves.

ECCLESIASTICAL DISCOURSES DELIVERED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. By Bishop
Ullathorne. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic
Publication Society.)