Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Still that soft and mellow cadence
Lingers like a sacred charm,
Resting on my waiting spirit
With a touch of heavenly calm.
Like a sweet-toned voice still calling
From our home that is to be,
While from out its unseen glory
Floats celestial harmony.

EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.

By WALLACE BRUCE.

Queen Elizabeth died March 24, 1602. James the Sixth, of Scotland, became James the First of the United Kingdoms. According to ancient prophecy the Scottish kings were to follow the Stone of Scone, which, it will be remembered, was removed to London by Edward the First. The prophecy was three hundred years in being fulfilled. The same strange Nemesis of fate, which, in the last generation, placed the grandson of Josephine upon the throne of France, handed the scepter of the haughty Elizabeth to the son of her unfortunate rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. But the good fortune of James only emphasizes the general misfortune of the Stuart family. His ancestral record was not a cheerful retrospect. James the First of Scotland was murdered. James the Second was killed by the bursting of a cannon. James the Third was privately slain. James the Fourth fell on the disastrous field of Flodden. James the Fifth died of a broken heart. Mary was beheaded. His father Darnley was murdered.

Could he have foreseen the history of the next three generations—the execution of his son, Charles the First; the debauched reign of his grandson, Charles the Third, after his return from exile; and the banishment of James the Second, he would have found the outlook even more sad than the retrospect. The lines of the Stuart family did not fall in pleasant places. Some writer has observed that they suffered for the crimes of the Tudors. It may be that England had piled up a century of wrong which demanded atonement, but, without prejudice, the proverb was emphatically true, “Sufficient unto each reign was the evil thereof.” It must also be remembered that all Europe was in a ferment. The celebrated Thirty Years’ War was raging in Germany. Religious enthusiasm was asserting its power in Britain. The English and Scotch people were jealous of their political rights. The reign of a Scottish-born king, after so many centuries of bitter hate, could not be entirely acceptable to the English race. Both sides accused the king of partiality. Needy lords and nobles poured down from the north, and London resembled our own National Capital at the inauguration of a new president. The king was supplicated in Court, in the street, on horseback, at every doorway; ay, the very plate that contained his food was adorned with urgent request from some impatient relative of fifteenth or twentieth cousinship. As the Court had removed from Edinburgh and Scotland it seemed that Edinburgh and Scotland had removed to the Court. The ancient prejudice between Scot and English broke out in street, palace and inn. These are the historic events which preface the “Fortunes of Nigel,” and the fray between the Scottish servant and the ’prentice boys of London, at the opening of the volume, strikes the keynote of universal discord.

It was a constitutional defect of James the First to be without money. As Nigel, the Scottish lord, happened to need the loan which his father had made to the king, he presented himself with the old fashioned assurance of a man justly demanding his rights, although at the hands of a monarch. The king was incensed, but the young lord fortunately falls in with George Heriot, the wealthy Scotch jeweler “to His Majesty,” whose princely bequests still adorn the city of Edinburgh; but, unmindful of good counsel, he gradually lapses from duty, becomes a murderer in what he considers a matter of honor, is compelled to find refuge in Alsatia or Whitefriars, a sort of privileged den of iniquity. The portrayal of his experience in this nest of outlaws is true to the London of 1620.

It is this blending of Scott’s dramatic and descriptive power which gives even to his minor works an enduring value. We have, as it were, a photograph of the great city as it appeared two hundred and sixty years ago. We see the Strand, a quiet street, unlike the noisy thoroughfare of to-day, lined on the river-side with palaces and pleasure grounds reaching to the Thames. We see Whitehall, with its rich gates designed by Holbein, and stately court planned by Inigo Jones. We walk in the park with the courtly Duke of Buckingham, talk face to face with the king in the palace, on the chase, in the parlor of the wealthy Londoner; and at the close of the volume we feel that Scott has justly summed up his character in this striking paragraph of the fifth chapter: “He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom; fond of his power, yet willing to resign the direction of that, and himself, to the most unworthy favorites; a big and bold asserter of his rights and words, yet one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds; a lover of negotiations, in which he was always outwitted; and one who feared war, where conquest might have been easy. He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labor, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated. Even his timidity of temper was not uniform; and there were moments of his life, and those critical, in which he showed the spirit of his ancestors. He was laborious in trifles, and a trifler where serious labor was required; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often profane in his language; just and beneficent by nature, he yet gave way to the iniquities and oppressions of others.”

“Rokeby,” a poem, comes next in historic order. The scene is laid at Rokeby, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, and the date is immediately subsequent to the great battle of Marston Moor, July 3, 1644. It was here that the bold cavaliers learned a lesson never to be forgotten, at the hand of Puritan and Roundhead. The poem abounds with notable and vigorous passages. It throws light on the stormy years of the great Civil War; but so many of Scott’s novels are related to this period that we must dismiss the poem with a single quotation—a tribute to the genius of Chaucer:

“O for that pencil, erst profuse
Of Chivalry’s emblazoned hues,
That traced of old in Woodstock bower
The pageant of the Leaf and Flower,
And bodied forth the tourney high,
Held for the hand of Emily!
Then might I paint the tumult broad,
That to the crowned abbey flowed;
Paint the dejected cavalier,
Doubtful, disarmed and sad of cheer;
And his proud foe, whose formal eye
Claimed conquest now and mastery;
And the brute crowd, whose envious zeal
Huzzas each turn of Fortune’s wheel.”

“The Legend of Montrose” takes us once more into the Highlands of Scotland, where the same deadly feuds divide the clans which we witnessed in reading the “Fair Maid of Perth.” The Northern Highlanders, under the leadership of Montrose, espouse the side of King Charles. The Western Highlanders, under Argyle, rally on the side of Parliament. The picture of these two leaders is admirably drawn, as well as the character of their bold followers, who seemed unconscious of hardship; who were not only willing “to make their couch in the snow, but considered it effeminate luxury to use a snow-ball for a pillow.”

The principal character of the book is Captain Dalgetty. A critic in the Edinburgh _Review_ complained that there was perhaps too much of Dalgetty; that he engrossed too great a proportion of the work. But in the very next line he says that “the author has nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit, who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without exhausting their humor, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Dalgetty.” Like many of the Scottish soldiers the captain had served under Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and never lost his enthusiasm for the Lion of the North, the bulwark of the Protestant faith. Dalgetty is a rare specimen of Scotch “canniness,” willing to hire out to the side that paid the most, but true to his contract when made. To him war was a sort of drama, and he merely engaged himself as one of the “star actors.” We dismiss the captain with reluctance, and we imagine the reader will likewise when he closes the volume.

In one of the last chapters Scott treats us to a specimen of the lofty eloquence and undying hate of an old highland chief in his last words to his grandson: “In the thicket of the wilderness, and in the mist of the mountain, keep thou unsoiled the freedom which I leave thee as a birthright. Barter it neither for the rich garment, nor for the stone roof, nor for the covered board, nor for the couch of down—on the rock or in the valley, in abundance or in famine—in the leafy summer, and in the days of the iron winter—son of the mist! be free as thy forefathers. Own no lord—receive no law—take no hire—give no stipend—build no hut—enclose no pasture—sow no grain; let the deer of the mountains be thy flocks and herds—if these fail thee, prey upon the goods of our oppressors—of the Saxon and of such Gael as are Saxon in their souls. Remember those who have done kindness to our race, and pay their services with thy blood, should the hour require it. Farewell, beloved! and mayst thou die like thy forefathers, ere infirmity, disease, or age shall break thy spirit.”

Robert Aytoun in his poem on the “Execution of Montrose,” which occurred a few years subsequent to our story, caught the true spirit of the Gael, in the Highlander’s address to Evan Cameron:

“’Twas I that led the Highland host
Through wild Lochaber’s snows,
What time the plaided clans came down
To battle with Montrose.
I’ve told thee how the Southrons fell
Beneath the broad claymore,
And how we smote the Campbell clan
By Inverlochy’s shore.
I’ve told thee how we swept Dundee,
And tamed the Lindsey’s pride;
But never have I told thee yet
How the great Marquis died.

A traitor sold him to his foes;—
O deed of deathless shame!
I charge thee, boy, if e’er thou meet
With one of Assynt’s name—
Be it upon the mountain side,
Or yet within the glen:
Stand he in martial gear alone,
Or backed by armed men—
Face him, as thou wouldst face the man
Who wronged thy sire’s renown;
Remember of what blood thou art,
And strike the caitiff down!”

Between the “Legend of Montrose” and “Woodstock” stands a scaffold: a window is opened in the Palace of Whitehall; a brave but fickle king, who never lost his dignity, and rarely kept a promise, walks forth attended by two executioners: he speaks but one word to his attendant, places his head upon the block, and by the bravery of his death half atones for the crimes and mistakes of his life. As to his private character historians, for the most part, regard Charles the First as a brave, virtuous and religious man; but he entertained “extravagant ideas of the royal power, unsuitable to the time in which he lived.” His attempt to establish a National Church, to force upon the Presbyterians of Scotland the Common Prayer, and introduce a Liturgy similar to that used in England produced its logical result. The Star Chamber with its arbitrary arrests and punishments, and his idea of kingly prerogative, were not suited to the temper of his people; and finally he alienated his best friends by disregarding his word and most solemn contracts. The House of Commons, led by bold and determined men, asserted the supreme doctrine of liberty, so grandly emphasized one hundred years later in our Declaration of Independence, that “The power of the king, like any other power in the Constitution, was limited by the laws; and was liable to be legally resisted when it trespassed beyond them.”

It must also be remembered, before we read the story of “Woodstock,” that the party which controlled the Parliament of England and finally brought the king to the scaffold, was divided into two factions: Presbyterians and Independents. Among the Independents were Sir Harry Vane, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. So much for the introduction to “Woodstock,” which opens with a picture showing the cavaliers crushed under the iron heel of Cromwell. The time of the tale is 1652; and the story begins with a rather discordant service in the church or chapel of St. John. The defaced walls and broken windows reveal the fanaticism or spite which too often attends the spirit of liberty. We are presented with a rude scuffle between a Presbyterian and Independent preacher in a pulpit formerly belonging to the Established Church, in which the Independent preacher wins the victory; and the chapter is symbolic of the great struggle, not only in the religious, but also in the political condition of Britain. The incident is a fitting preface to the book, in which Independent, Presbyterian and Royalist are shaken together as in a kaleidoscope.

The story humorously gives us the old-time belief that Woodstock was a haunted spot; and Scott refers in his preface to a book, printed in London in the year 1660, bearing the sombre title of “The Just Devil of Woodstock; or a true narrative of the several apparitions, the fights and punishments inflicted upon the rumpish commissioners sent thither to survey the manors and houses belonging to his Magestie.” The sad story of the fair Rosamond, murdered here by Queen Eleanor, was well calculated to make the ghostly apparitions more real; at least, the place was tragic enough to impress the superstitious of that generation. But the great value of this novel, apart from the picture of the times, consists in the portrayal of a living, breathing Cromwell; such a Cromwell as no history gives, but _the_ Cromwell who appears as the resultant of them all; a man of deep emotion, wary in council and unwavering in execution, a man without a single grace of oratory, who, by the force of character, assumed and kept the leadership of the House of Commons; in whose presence the bravest men stood lost in fear and wonder. Or, as Scott beautifully puts it: “So true it is, that as greater lights swallow up and extinguish the display of those which are less, so men of great, capacious, and overruling minds, bear aside and subdue, in their climax of passion, the more feeble wills and passions of others; as, when a river joins a brook, the fiercer torrent shoulders aside the smaller stream.”

There is one other sketch which claims our attention—that of the disguised wanderer, Charles the Second, revered by Royalist, and pursued by the ruling party as an outcast. “No person on earth,” Scott says, “could better understand the society in which he moved; exile had made him acquainted with life in all its shades and varieties—his spirits, if not uniform, were elastic—he had that species of Epicurean philosophy which, even in the most extreme difficulties and dangers, can in an interval of ease, however brief, avail itself of the enjoyments of the moment—he was, in short, in youth and misfortune, as afterward in his regal condition, a good-humored but hard-hearted voluptuary, wise, save where his passions intervened, beneficent, save where prodigality had deprived him of the means, or prejudice of the wish to confer benefits—his faults such as might have often drawn down hatred, but that they were mingled with so much urbanity, that the injured person felt it impossible to retain the full sense of his wrongs.”

During his wandering he was entertained for a time at the home of the old knight, Sir Henry Lee, proprietor of Woodstock. The attachment formed for the old knight and his family affords Scott material for one of those dramatic descriptions in which he always so much delighted.

It was the 29th of May. All England sang. “The king enjoys his own again.” “He made his progress from Rochester to London, with a reception on the part of his subjects so unanimously cordial, as made him say gaily, it must have been his own fault to stay so long away from a country where his arrival gave so much joy. On horseback, betwixt his two brothers, the dukes of York and Gloucester, the restored monarch trode slowly over roads strewn with flowers—by conduits running wine, under triumphal arches, and through streets hung with tapestry. There were citizens in various bands, some arrayed in coats of black velvet, with gold chains, some in military suits of cloth of gold, or cloth of silver, followed by all those craftsmen, who, having hooted the father from Whitehall, had now come to shout the son into possession of his ancestral palace. On his passage through Blackheath he passed that army, which, so long formidable to England herself, as well as to Europe, had been the means of restoring the monarchy which their own hands had destroyed. As the king passed the last files of this formidable host he came to an open part of the heath, where many persons of quality, with others of inferior rank, had stationed themselves to gratulate him as he passed toward the capital.

“There was one group, however, which attracted particular attention from those around, on account of the respect shown to the party by the soldiers who kept the ground, and who, whether Cavaliers or Roundheads, seemed to contest emulously which should contribute most to their accommodation; for both the elder and younger of the party had been distinguished in the Civil War.

“It was a family group, of which the principal figure was an old man seated in a chair, having a complacent smile on his face, and a tear swelling to his eye, as he saw the banners wave on in interminable succession, and heard the multitude shouting the long-silenced acclamation, ‘God save King Charles!’ His cheek was ashy pale, and his long beard bleached like the thistle down; his blue eye was cloudless, yet it was obvious that his vision was failing. His motions were feeble, and he spoke little, except when he answered the prattle of his grandchildren or asked a question of his daughter, who sat beside him, matured in matronly beauty. A gigantic dog, which bore the signs of being at the extremity of canine life, with eyes dim, and head slouched down, exhibiting only the ruin of his former appearance, formed a remarkable figure in the group.

“And now the distant clarions announced the royal presence. Onward came pursuivant and trumpet—onward came plumes and cloth of gold, and waving standards displayed, and swords gleaming to the sun; and, at length, heading a group of the noblest in England, supported by his royal brothers on either side, onward came King Charles. The monarch gazed an instant on the party, sprung from his horse, and walked instantly up to the old knight, amid thundering acclamations of the people, when they saw Charles with his own hand oppose the feeble attempts of the old man to rise to do him homage. Gently placing him on his seat—‘Bless,’ he said, ‘father—bless your son, who has returned in safety, as you blessed him when he departed in danger.’

“‘Excuse me for having made you wait, my lords,’ said the king as he mounted his horse. ‘Indeed, had it not been for these good folks, you might have waited for me long enough to little purpose. Move on, sirs.’ The array moved on accordingly; the sound of trumpet and drum again rose amid the acclamations; but the knight had relapsed into earthly paleness; his eyes were closed and opened not again. They ran to his assistance, but it was too late. The light that burned so low in the socket had leaped up and expired, in one exhilarating flash.”

GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEAVENS FOR APRIL.

By PROF. M. B. GOFF.

THE SUN.

The sun’s light “exceeds in intensity any that can be produced by artificial means, the electric light between charcoal points being the only one that does not look absolutely black against the unclouded sun.” “The heat thrown out from every square yard of the sun’s surface is greater than that which would be produced by burning six tons of coal on it each hour. Now, we may take the surface of the sun roughly at 2,284,000,000,000 square miles, and there are 3,097,600 square yards in each square mile.” A little calculation will show how many tons of coal must be burnt in an hour to represent the sun’s heat.

There comes also from the sun chemical force, which separates carbon from oxygen, and turns the gas, which, were it to accumulate, would kill all men and animals, into the life of plants, thus preserving the animal and building up the vegetable world. Whether it can keep up this amount of light and heat throughout the “endless ages,” we have no means of knowing. We have, however, no evidence even during centuries of any loss of either, so that we may safely say that there will be an abundance of both for all the time in which we are interested.

On the 25th of this month there will be a partial eclipse, beginning at 1:00 p. m., Washington mean time, in longitude 82° 3.5′ west, latitude 59° 12.3′ south. The greatest obscuration (about .75) will occur at 2:46.4 p. m. in longitude 4° 26.7′ east, latitude 70° 48.2′ south; will end at 4:32.4 p. m. in longitude 12° 20.6′ east, latitude 33° 6.7′ south. As it will be visible only in the extreme southern part of the western continent and in the south Atlantic Ocean, no importance is attached to its occurrence.

The most careless must have observed the increase in the amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere since the 21st of last December. On the first of the present month the sun rises at 5:43 a. m. and sets at 6:25 p. m.; on the 30th it rises at 4:59 a. m. and sets at 6:55 p. m., so that the increase in “day’s length,” as we are accustomed to call it, will be one hour and seven minutes. To set our time pieces, we must, when the sun is on the meridian, on the 1st, make them indicate 12:37 p. m.; on the 15th, 11:59.8 a. m.; on the 30th, 11:57 a. m. On the 1st day breaks at 4:04; on the 30th at 3:09. In latitude 41° 30′ north the sun will, on the 30th, reach an altitude of 63° 33′ above the horizon, the highest for the month.

THE MOON’S

Phases for the month occur in the following order and time (Washington mean time): First quarter on the 2d at 4:09 p. m.; full moon on the 10th at 6:36 a. m.; last quarter on the 18th at 10:46 a. m.; new moon on the 25th at 9:49 a. m. It is also on the meridian on the 1st, 15th and 30th, at 5:18 p. m., 3:38 a. m., 5:03 p. m. respectively. On the 2d it sets at 12:41 a. m.; on the 15th rises at 11:23 p. m.; and on the 29th sets at 11:28 p. m. It is farthest from the earth on the 13th at 1:30 p. m.; and nearest to the earth on the 26th at 3:42 a. m. In latitude 41° 30′ north, its least elevation above the horizon is on the 15th, and its greatest on the 28th; on the former date being 29° 48½′, and on the latter 67° 12½′. There will also be a total eclipse, beginning on the 10th at 4:44 a. m., and ending at 8:33 a. m. The beginning of the part called “total” continues from 5:52 to 7:25 a. m., or one hour and thirty-three minutes. Magnitude nearly 1.5. As the moon sets in the neighborhood of Washington at about 5:30 a. m., only the first part and none of the “totality” will be there visible. Our neighbor, the moon, has one peculiar trait, which we could wish belonged to all our friends. It never “turns its back on you.” Cold it may be, and is often so called, but in darkest hours, and under all circumstances, it presents its face to the earth. It may be only politeness or etiquette, that causes it thus to act; but the fact remains. It may move a trifle, so that we can sometimes see more of it than at others, but four-sevenths is the limit of its surface as seen by man. What may be on the other side has never been revealed. For aught we know, there may be

“Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight.”

But the probabilities are strongly on the other side. So far as we can discover, no atmosphere is there to catch and hold the rays from the burning sun, and hence it seems that all must be cold and bleak and barren. “Distance lends enchantment to the view,” and it were perhaps better that we should thus enjoy its mild light and gentle influence, than cultivate a closer acquaintance.

MERCURY.

The planet enjoying the distinction of being the nearest to the center of our system is too near the “dazzling brightness” to permit our finding out much about its physical constitution. We suppose, but do not know, that it revolves on its axis. We guess that it has satellites, but no one is certain that he ever saw one of them. We used to think it must be a very warm planet; but now we think it might perhaps be a moderately comfortable place for a mortal to reside. The fact is, what we do not know about it is much more than what we do know; and what we know about it for this month is nearly as follows: On the 1st, 15th, 25th and 30th it will rise after the sun, and will not be visible to the unaided eye; but on the same dates it will set at 6:32, 7:03, 8:37 and 8:35 p. m., respectively, and can therefore be easily seen after sunset from the 20th to the end of the month by anybody who will take the pains to look for it—that is, within the latitude in which most of our readers live. It reaches its most easterly limit (20° 32′) at 9:00 p. m. on the evening of the 25th, and approaches so much nearer to us during the month as to cause its diameter to appear nearly twice as large—that is, to increase from 5″ to 9″. On the 21st at 2:00 a. m. it will be 4° 20′ north of Neptune, and on the 26th at 5:55 p. m., 5° 47′ north of the moon.

VENUS,

The most friendly of our planets, who comes so close at times as to seem to be within “hailing distance” (only twenty-five millions of miles), is still our delight. She grows brighter and more beautiful as time moves on. Her motion for the month is direct and amounts to 34° 16′ 3″. Her diameter shows an increase of 5.4″. From our present acquaintance we learn that she sometimes shines so brightly as to be visible in daylight to the naked eye, and at night, in the absence of the moon, to cast a shadow. When viewed through a telescope, she presents phases like the moon; and in some respects she is very much like our earth. For example, her size is not more than 4 per cent. less, and her density and force of gravity must be nearly the same. Her days are supposed to be a little shorter than ours, and her years are known to be equal to 224⅔ of our days. On the 1st, 15th and 30th she will rise at 7:32, 7:25 and 7:26 a. m., and set at 10:04, 10:31 and 10:48 p. m., respectively. On the 2d, at 11:00 p. m., she will be nearest the sun; on the 25th, at 11:00 p. m., 4° 13′ north of Saturn; on the 28th, at 2:41 p. m., 7° 53′ north of the moon.

MARS.

Of this planet we have little to report. He continues his direct motion, which amounts to 9° 30′ 34″. As he and the earth are getting farther apart, his diameter (apparently) diminishes from 10″ to 8″. He rises on the 1st, 15th and 30th at 12:27 p. m., 11:54 a. m., and 11:24 a. m., and sets on the 2d, 16th, and May 1st at 3:09, 2:22, and 1:38 a. m., respectively. On the 4th, at 10:26 a. m., his position is 8° 10′ north of the moon, and on the 1st a little northeast of the nebula _Præsepe_ in _Cancer_.

JUPITER

Continues to be evening star, coming to the meridian on the 1st, 15th and 30th, at 7:04, 6:13 and 5:20 p. m., and setting on the 2d, 16th, and May 1st at 2:24, 1:32 and 12:38 a. m. His motion, which is direct, amounts during the month to 4° 27′ 33″. His diameter diminishes from 37.8″ to 34.6″, an indication that our distance from him is increasing. On the 3d, at 1:52 p. m., he is 6° north of the moon; and on the 14th, at 7:00 p. m., 90° west of the sun.

SATURN

Continues his position not far from the bright star _Aldebaran_, in the constellation Taurus, on the 1st being about 2° 53′ west and 3° 32′ north, while on the 30th he will be about 30′ east and 4° 7½′ north of this star. His motion is direct and amounts to 3° 24′. Diameter diminishes from 16.2″ on the 1st to 15.8″ on the 30th. Setting at 10:47, 9:59 and 9:09 p. m. on the 1st, 15th and 30th he will be evening star throughout the month. On the 12th, at 11:00 p. m., is 4° 13′ south of Venus, and on the 27th, at 1:56 p. m., 2° 19′ north of the moon.

URANUS,

Formerly and still sometimes called Herschel, from the name of its discoverer, Dr. Herschel, has made but about one and one-fifth revolutions about the sun, since its discovery in 1781, more than a century ago. It is now near the star _Beta Virginis_, and making a retrograde motion of about 56′ 30″ in 30 days. Its diameter is 3.8″. It rises at 4:53 p. m., 3:55 p. m. and 2:54 p. m. on the 1st, 15th and 30th, and sets at 5:09 a. m., 4:13 a. m. and 3:13 a. m. on the 2d, 16th, and May 1st. On the 6th, at 6:27 a. m., it is 3° 27′ north of the moon. Is evening star during the month.

NEPTUNE

Is evening star, setting at 9:24, 8:32 and 7:28 p. m. on the 1st, 15th and 30th, respectively. Its motion, 1° 2′ 37″, is direct. Diameter, 2.6″. On the 21st, at 2:00 a. m., 4° 20′ south of Mercury, and on the same day will set about fifteen minutes later than said planet. On the 26th, at 8:27 a. m., 44′ north of moon.

* * * * *

EARNESTNESS.—Without earnestness there is nothing to be done in life; yet even among the people whom we call men of culture, but little earnestness is often to be found; in labors and employments, in arts, nay, even in recreations, they plant themselves, if I may say so, in an attitude of self-defense; they live, as they read a heap of newspapers, only to be done with them. They remind one of that young Englishman at Rome, who told, with a contented air, one evening in some company, that “to-day he had despatched six churches and two galleries.” They wish to know and learn a multitude of things, and not seldom exactly those things with which they have the least concern; and they never see that hunger is not appeased by snapping at the air. When I become acquainted with a man my first inquiry is: With what does he occupy himself, and how, and with what degree of perseverance? The answer regulates the interest I take in that man for life.… I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them. How far his object may be great or little, may merit praise or censure, is a secondary consideration with me.—_Goethe._

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

THE LITERARY ISHMAEL.

By C. E. BISHOP.

Less is known while more is written and disputed about Edgar Allan Poe, than about any other character in American literature. In the narrative of his life there are gaps of months and years in which nothing can be told of his whereabouts or acts; and as if to atone for this lack he is at other times credited with feats of ubiquity. There are also stories of a quixotic mission to fight for Greek independence, _a la_ Byron; of his escapades in St. Petersburg; of enlistment in and desertion from the United States army; of phenomenally protracted debauches, during which he threw off the most wonderful productions of his pen—most of which stories, so far as can be shown now, were evolved from the inner consciousness of those writers who, upon his death, “woke to ecstacy, the living liars,” to blacken his name.

A general reason for this paucity of particulars may be found, perhaps, in Poe’s enforced seclusion from the public by the exigencies of poverty during much of his life, and the low rank of authors in the general estimation of the times; a special reason may be that Poe’s literary executor and biographer, Dr. Griswold, to whom in his lifetime he had entrusted all the material he ever furnished any one, suppressed the facts and substituted inventions, in order to assassinate the character of the dead poet. For twenty-six years Poe’s body rested in an unmarked grave, and his character was buried under a living heap of obloquy. When at last, in 1875, a few devoted women of Baltimore sought to redeem both tombs, nearly all the contemporary witnesses to his acts were dead. It was not until twenty-six years after the event that Dr. Moran, who had attended Poe’s last illness, broke silence and put to rest the story that he died in the midst of a drunken debauch in the streets of Baltimore. “There was no smell of liquor upon his person or breath, and no delirium or tremor,” says this tardy vindicator. It was 1878 (twenty-nine years late) when Mrs. Weiss, of Richmond, told the story of his last visit to that city, and contradicted Griswold’s story of his engagement with Mrs. Stalton, and his prolonged inebriety there. It was later still, when the posthumous letter of Mrs. Whitman, of Providence, was published, silencing the long-accepted tale of Poe’s engagement to her, and his disreputable conduct and intemperance the evening before they were to have been married. Many chivalrous pens now—alas! too late—essayed his defense; but his true history has not yet been written, and it probably never will be. Dr. Johnson’s summary of Butler’s life almost literally applies to Poe’s: “The date of his birth is doubtful, the mode and place of his education unknown, the events of his life are variously related, and all that can be told with certainty is that he was poor.”

“The persistent and palpably malignant efforts to damn him with some drops of faint praise and some oceans of strong abuse,”[A] have, indeed, produced a reactionary tendency toward panegyric, since the angels rolled the stone away from his tomb. The best any one can now do is to pity the man and admire his works, and weigh probabilities. A careful view as well of his time as of his character and environment is necessary. Premising that I am not so presumptuous as to expect to add much to the general fund of misinterpretation of his acts and misunderstanding of his character, a brief summary of the less controverted features of this history is submitted.

In “that stray child of Poetry and Passion” concentered hot Celtic and Southern blood, stimulated upon his father’s side by drink, upon his mother’s by the artificial surroundings of an actress’s life, and in both intensified by a runaway marriage, followed by a joint “barn-storming” life. Himself an inter-act, his nursery was the green room, his necessary nourishment narcotics. It is a sad thing to say, but probably one of the few fortunate circumstances of his life was that his parents died in his infancy—one of his many misfortunes was to have been adopted and raised by a wealthy family (Mr. Allan’s of Baltimore). He was born in 1809, or 1811, in either Boston, Baltimore or Richmond, through all of which he, living, “begged his bread,” _a la_ Homer. The Allans assiduously spoiled the child with unlimited money, indulgence and praise. It was easy, for he was rarely beautiful, affectionate, and precocious; he recited with marvelous childish effect, spun webs of imaginative stories, and composed rhymes. “He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came,” and when he was nine or ten years old his proud foster-father seriously contemplated issuing a volume of his baby-verse, but was dissuaded by the boy’s tutor, who said he had conceit enough already, and such additional celebrity would probably ruin his prospects.

Edgar was schooled in England, at the University of Virginia, and at West Point, but he must have picked up independently of schools and school masters the varied culture which shows in his versatile writings—especially his acquaintance with science, psychology and literature. At these schools he was distinguished alike for fast learning and fast living—his easy absorption of the branches he liked, his utter revulsion against those he did not like (mathematics, notably), for his literary and critical tastes, athletic exercises, and the lavishness with which he scattered his guardian’s money. These characteristics won him the jealousy of his plodding classmates, distinction at the university, expulsion from West Point, and quarrels with his foster-father. Over-indulgence by parents produced the usual result of disrespect and ingratitude in the youth; and the marriage of Mr. Allan to a second wife, and the birth of heirs to his estates brought about a final separation and a disinheritance of the adopted son, and so Edgar, at about his majority age, was thrown on his own resources. He chose literature as his profession, and doomed himself to poverty, anguish, professional jealousy (especially strong among authors), triumphs, defeats, ruin and insanity.

Poe’s real début in letters was in 1833, when (ætat 24) he won a prize of a hundred dollars offered by the proprietor of _The Saturday Visitor_, Baltimore, for the best story. Better than the money, the contest brought him the friendship of the judges, and about a year later the editorship of _The Southern Literary Messenger_, Richmond, at ten dollars a week. The intervening year is one of the blanks.

The Richmond editorship marks a turning point in Poe’s career. He made the fortune of the _Messenger_; married (’35) his cousin, Virginia Clem; and first began that line of work which is, in my opinion, its distinctive feature, as it certainly proved to be decisive of his destiny—to-wit: criticism. He published in some issues as much as thirty or forty pages of book reviews. They created a tempest; for, rare as is his imagery and wonderful as is his imagination, Poe’s distinguishing mental characteristic is analysis. He is more logician than poet, more metaphysician than romancer.

Poe subsequently (’37-’38) edited the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, and then _Graham’s Magazine_, both in Philadelphia, and in ’44 we find him in New York, employed on the _Mirror_, the journal of the poets N. P. Willis and George P. Morris. In Philadelphia he did the best work of his life in romance and criticism. Here, too, he made the acquaintance of his evil genius, Dr. Griswold. Poe believed that Griswold supplanted him from the editorship of _Graham’s_; G.’s subsequent enmity, while professing friendship, was of the unforgiving nature that often comes of the consciousness of having inflicted a secret wrong on another. The only other causes of disagreement between them alleged are that Poe criticised Griswold’s book in a lecture, and that Griswold attempted to buy a favorable criticism from Poe’s pen. But they were outwardly friendly, after a reconciliation, till Poe’s voice and pen were beyond the power of response. The work of detraction had preceded Poe to New York, for Mr. Willis writes of this engagement:

“With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness
to let it alone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led
by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his
duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time
went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious.
To our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a
criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too highly
with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and
courteously assented—far more yielding than most men, we thought,
on points so excusably sensitive. Through all this considerable
period we had seen but one presentment of the man—a quiet,
patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person, commanding the
utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deportment and
ability.”

In 1845 appeared the work on which Poe’s poetic fame most depends, that poem in which he wedded Despair to Harmony, “The Raven.” It marks the acme of his life, also; his star declined rapidly thereafter. His wife, who bore the hereditary taint of consumption, was in a decline; care and anxiety on that account, and his own ill health, took away his ability to write and he was without means of support. He was driven to ask loans from one or two friends, and by a fatality such as he sometimes made to drive his fictitious characters upon their worst expedients, he chose Dr. Griswold as one of them. “Can you not send me five dollars?” he pleaded with G.; “I am ill and Virginia is almost gone.” This and one or two other such letters Griswold published, in connection with his slanders on Poe’s character, to give his attack the cover of friendly sincerity. Something was published in New York papers regarding the distress of the Poes, and a lady friend (Mrs. Shew) visited them at Fordham. The worst was confirmed.

“There was no clothing on the bed—which was only straw—but a
snow-white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick
lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of
consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband’s
great coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The
wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat
and the cat were the sufferer’s only means of warmth, except as
her husband held her hands and her mother her feet.”

Mrs. Poe died January 30, 1847. Captain Mayne Reid, the novelist, who visited often at her house, thus describes her:

“No one who remembers that dark-eyed, dark-haired daughter of the South; her face so exquisitely lovely; her gentle, graceful demeanor; no one who has ever spent an hour in her society but will endorse what I have said of this lady, who was the most delicate realization of the poet’s ideal.”

Another said: “She had large, black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look. One felt that she was almost a disrobed spirit.”

After this Poe’s decline was rapid. He was ill for a long time, and never quite recovered his mental balance. In the autumn of this year he visited Mrs. Shew, his benefactress. She says that at this time, under the combined influence of her gentle urgency, a cup of tea and the sound of neighboring church bells, he wrote the first draft of “The Bells.” She adds:

“My brother took Poe to his own room, where he slept twelve
hours and could hardly recall the evening’s work. This showed
his mind was injured—nearly gone out for want of food and from
disappointment. He had not been drinking and had only been a
few hours from home. Evidently his vitality was low, and he was
nearly insane. I called in Dr. Francis (the old man was odd but
very skilful), who was one of our neighbors. His words were, ‘He
has heart disease and will die early in life.’ We did not waken
him, but let him sleep.”

Since I began writing this paper I have heard recited in a company of literary people an account of Poe’s staggering into a stranger’s house at midnight, calling for a pen and dashing off “The Bells;” then falling into a drunken stupor on the library table. It was evidently believed by the narrator, despite Mrs. Shew’s circumstantial and more rational account.

During these dark days, as indeed during all Poe’s adult life, Mrs. Clem was his guardian angel. The poet Willis touchingly draws this picture of devotion:

“It was a hard fate that she was watching over. Mr. Poe wrote
with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the
popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary
difficulty and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the
merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years,
the most touching sight to us in this whole city has been that
tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad,
going from office to office with a poem or an article on some
literary subject to sell—sometimes simply pleading in a broken
voice that ‘he was ill,’ whatever might be the reason for his
writing nothing—and never, amid all her tears and recitals of
distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that would
convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride
in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died a year and
a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his
ministering angel, living with him, caring for him, guarding him
against exposure, and when he was carried away by temptation,
amid grief and the loneliness of feeling unreplied to, and
awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and
suffering, begging for him still. If woman’s devotion, born with
a first love and fed with human passion, hallows its object, as
it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this—pure,
disinterested and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit—say
for him who inspired it.”

By this test, Poe’s was always a pure nature, for he inspired respect, pity and regard in every woman he came in contact with. It was a reflex sentiment, for Poe revered woman, and there is not in all his writings an impure suggestion or an indelicate word.

The rest of the history is one of occasional indulgence in intoxicants and rarely intermitting mental aberration. It is to him during these last months of his unhappy career that the least charity has been extended. He conducted a courtship of three ladies at once, making to each like frantic protestations of love, the same despairing appeals to each to become his savior from some dreadful impending fate. In June, ’49, he departed for Richmond, for what purpose is unknown. In Philadelphia he appeared the subject of a hallucination that he was pursued by conspirators, and had his mustache taken off for the sake of disguise. In Richmond he remained until the latter part of September, writing some and renewing old acquaintances. During these three or four months he was twice known to be overcome and in danger of his life from drink; he was credited with having been almost continuously “in a state of beastly intoxication” during the whole time. Mrs. Weiss thinks that this was one of the brightest and happiest seasons of his life; if so, it was light at its eventide. The return voyage is shrouded—that is the fit word—shrouded in mystery and controversy.

This seems to be true—that he was taken up unconscious in Baltimore at daybreak, taken to a hospital, and died there at midnight of the same day (October 7, 1849). It is also known that he left Richmond by boat on the evening of the 4th, he then being sober and cheerful. In proper course he must have arrived in Baltimore the night of the 5th or morning of the 6th; he was himself then, for he removed his trunk to a hotel. There was thus left less than twenty-four hours in which for him to travel to Havre de Grace and back, miss the New York connection, vote eleven times in the Baltimore city election, go through the “prolonged debauch,” fall into the delirium, and lapse into the comatose state in which he was found—as described in most of his biographies; and he immediately thereafter is found to have no smell of liquor about him, no tremor, and is conversing rationally when roused to consciousness.

The event was announced by Griswold in the _Tribune_ with this brutal bluntness:

“Edgar Allan Poe is dead. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. He had few or no friends.” But the _Southern Literary Messenger_ said: “Now that he is gone, the vast multitude of blockheads may breathe again.” Griswold simply elected himself mouthpiece of that host.

On Poe’s supersensitive organization stimulants told with fearful effect. Mrs. Clem said “A single cup of coffee would intoxicate him.” N. P. Willis explained the vagaries and sins of Poe by supposing him to be possessed of two antagonistic spirits, a devil and an angel, each having complete mastery of him by turns. But, says Willis, “With a single glass of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became uppermost and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane. He easily seemed personating only another phase of his natural character, and was accused accordingly of insulting arrogance and bad heartedness. It was a sad infirmity of physical constitution which puts it upon very nearly the ground of temporary and almost irresponsible insanity.”

That these lapses were infrequent, instead of almost continuous, we have plenty of testimony from those who were much with him as business associates and inmates of the same house. “I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well-bred and particularly refined,” is a certificate of one who was intimate in the family, which was confirmed by many witnesses of different periods and places. The poet Swinburne was probably right in declaring that Poe’s inebriety was “the _effect_ of a terrible evil, rather than its _cause_.” That evil lay not alone, perhaps not chiefly, in his inherited and educated predisposition to indulgence and his morbidness of mentality; but in the character and consequences of his chiefest literary work.

It is a hard enough lot, under the best circumstances and in the best times, to live by the pen. The characteristics as well of Poe’s genius as of his times made that lot a doom for him. The rewards of authorship were on an eleemosynary scale (Poe received only $10 for “The Raven,” and $10 a week as editor-in-chief of a magazine: the _North American Review_ then paid only $2 a page for matter); literary taste was unformed and, worst of all, the market was drugged and cheapened and the best public appreciation perverted by a silly school of writer who had arisen—similar to the “Della Crusca School” which a few years before had infested literature in England. Their lucubrations were both barren of ideas and bad in style. It was the lollipop stage of our literature. Now Poe possessed in high degree two parts which, when addressed to criticism, would most offend these callow writers, to-wit: The musical sense of language, and marvelous analytical powers. The most obvious quality of his poetic style is its rhythm. The musical ear led him to adopt refrains and euphonious syllables, like “Never more,” “Lenore,” “bells,” and to dwell on their cadence; it made a bad composition distract him as a discord does a sensitive musician. For him divine harmonies lay in the relation of words to each other, as if they had been notes.