LENDER’S BOOKS.—NO. II.
Reading edition
By my right hand, Graham! by my right hand, which for —— odd years hath traveled and travailed over much foolscap, (and under much fool’s-cap quoth the fiend,) I am more and more convinced of the truth of the words of the preacher, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” I have just laid aside “Mardi,” (the gift of my warm-hearted friend, L. G. C., of the Knickerbocker,) it lies atop of old Du Bartas and some withered budlets of forget-me-not, and in like manner I sit with a few fragmentaries of old literature at bottom for my primiter, some tender remembrances for my secondary, and for the alluvial stratum of my pericranicks (as gentle Charles hath it) these fripperies by the Author of Typee. Confound the book! there are such beautiful Aurora-flashes of light in it that you can almost forgive the puerilities—it is a great net-work of affectation, with some genuine gold shining through the interstices.
Let us turn over the leaves a little—hear ye now—
“And what to me thus pining for some one to page me a quotation from Burton on Blue-Devils.” V. I. p. 15.
What is paging a quotation?
“Anoint the ropes and they will travel deftly through the subtle windings of the blocks.” p. 33.
Why not say—“apply some oleaginous substance to the ambulatory cords, and prevent the inarticulate dissonance caused by the inharmonious attrition of the flaxen fibres against the ligneous particles?”
But this passage I especially commend:
“Good old Arcturion! Maternal craft, that rocked me so often in thy heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep. (‘Maternal craft—maternal old oaken-hearted craft—maternal old oaken-cradle hearted craft’ is good!) So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islands, whose heathen babble echoing through thy Christian hull must have grated harshly on every carline.” p. 38.
“Many there are who can fall,” says Martinus Scriblerius, “but few can arrive at the felicity of falling gracefully.”
How beautifully he embellishes the most commonplace ideas:
“Among savages, severe personal injuries are, for the most part, accounted but trifles. When a European would be taking to his couch in despair the savage would disdain to recline.” p. 96.
“At Ravavai I had stepped ashore some few months previous; and now was embarked on a cruise for the whale, whose brain enlightens the world!” p. 1.
Jarl steals a keg of tobacco—
“From the Arcturion he had brought along with him a small half-keg, at bottom impacted with a solitary layer of sable Negrohead, fossil-marked, like the primary stratum of the geologists.” (Ahem! primary stratum fossil-marked!) p. 68.
He surmiseth that Samoa likes to get swipesy—
“Nor did I doubt but that the Upoluan, like all Polynesians, much loved getting high of head; and in that state would be more intractable than a Black Forest boar.”
Sometimes he breaks into hexameter:
“In the verdant glen of Ardair, far in the silent interior of Amma,
Shut in by hoar old cliffs, Yillah the maiden abode.”
This reminds one of Evangeline—
“In the Acadian land, on the shores of the basin of Minos,
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pré
Lay in the fruitful valley.”
Let us hexametrize another passage, and we will have done with these fopperies:
“’Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado
On lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alli-
Gator dies in his mail, and the sword-fish never surrenders.
To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epam-Inondas.” p. 46.
I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that “there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of diving as well as flying,” and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge on purpose, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper.
Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped—and passed away—
“How fair was then the flower—the tree!
How silver-sweet the fountain’s fall!
The soulless had a soul to me!
My life its own life lent to all!
“The universe of things seemed swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering fancy found a dwelling
In every shape, thought, deed and sound.
Germed in the mystic buds, reposing,
A whole creation slumbered mute;
Alas! when from the buds unclosing,
How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!”
Alas! alas! young life, and young hopes are not perennials; even in the lofty conservatories and crystal hot-houses of wealth and station they flush into a sickly existence, and then perish like the meanest flower by the wayside. Did it ever strike you how much we are alike in this particular? Every one looking back upon his past life as the shipwrecked merchant looks upon the broad sea that hath swallowed up irretrievable treasures. Do you believe that if one had the power of investing his new created babes with a course of life, that he would say, “Do as I have done—pass through my joys and my afflictions, and in the experience of my experience you will be happy!” Do you believe that any one—even the wisest, the purest, the best could say this? By my faith, I do not! And the great focal-glass of a common destiny brings down prismatic, many-hued humanity to a point hue, as a convex lens gathers and concentrates prism-bundles of light and heat from the broad disk of the sun. Human suffering is the chord universal that swells from the vibration of numberless strings.
“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy;
This vast and universal theatre
Contains more woful pageants than the scene
Whereon we play—”
But, “Mardi” and forget-me-nots have spoiled three good sheets of foolscap, and I fear that I am too much i’ the sentimental vein; let me therefore conclude with quoting a sweet little piece of philosophy, and lay aside these lender’s books for a period.
“A swallow in the spring
Came to our granary, and ’neath the eaves
Essayed to make a nest, and then did bring
Wet earth, and straw, and leaves.
“Day after day she toiled,
With patient heart; but ere her work was crowned
Some sad mishap the tiny fabric spoiled,
And dashed it to the ground.
“She found the ruin wrought,
But, not cast down, forth from the place she flew,
And, with her mate, fresh earth and grasses brought,
And built her nest anew.
“But scarcely had she placed
The last soft feather on its ample floor,
When wicked hand, or chance, again laid waste,
And wrought the ruin o’er.
“But still her heart she kept,
And toiled again; and last night, hearing calls,
I looked, and lo! three little swallows slept
Within the earth-made walls.
“What truth is here, O man!
Hath hope been smitten in its early dawn!
Have clouds o’ercast thy purpose, trust or plan?
Have FAITH and struggle on!”
Here endeth the second fifth.—Richard Haywarde.