A FRENCHMAN'S OPINIONS OF AMERICAN FEMALE POETS.

We find in the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes, for May 15, an article, which we translate for The International, on "The Female Poets of America,"[B] by M. E. Montegut. This writer's opinions respecting the influence of Protestantism on the cultivation of poetry may amuse those who remember who have been the greatest poets. It is a part of the cant of criticism to point to mediæval art as a fruit of the Roman Catholic ascendency—as if the Roman Catholics had done more than the Protestants for high art since the Reformation. But M. Montegut is a man of wit, and his criticism, though we confess that it loses some of its point in our version, will entertain the hundred of our countrywomen who make verses.

It is an opinion very generally entertained that the Americans are almost exclusively occupied with material affairs, with commerce, and the varied forms of mechanical industry. The volume of Mr. Griswold will contribute to dispel any such idea, for in its four hundred pages, nearly of the size of quartos, there are quoted ninety of the most celebrated female poets of North America: ninety female poets! and all, with few exceptions, contemporary. Why, all Europe could not count a greater number. If therefore, we bear in mind that this voluminous poetic flore contains only the names of women, and that Mr. Rufus Griswold has consecrated two volumes of similar dimensions, one to the Poets of the masculine gender, and the other to the Prose-Writers of both genders, it is difficult to believe in the literary sterility of the United States. But why is it, that among these three or four hundred writers, only three or four are known beyond the Atlantic? It is, that a literature is not altogether composed of harmonious reveries, of elegant imitations, of agreeable fancies; that poetry does not consist in a melodious rhythm only, nor even in a tasteful choice of words, nor in a perfect knowledge of language. Poetry, as well as all the possible expressions of thought and genius, arises from the very depths of the soul. It is the exterior expression of the national life, the recital,—from the lips of an individual animated and transported with the popular spirit—of the mysteries of his country's existence, and the desires, aspirations and convictions of his countrymen. The poet is the interpreter of the moral character of his country to other nations, and his works are the highest embodiment of the manners and habits of life in his country and his time. The poetry which does not fulfil these conditions is not poetry. Any man writing verse, who does not feel himself agitated in a more lively and distinct manner with the desires which torment his contemporaries as a vague fever, who does not know that his whole mission is to express, in an artistic and harmonious form, the clamors and the incorrect utterance of these desires, is not and cannot be a poet.

If such be the moral necessities which give birth to poetry, how is it that America has not an original literature? How is it that she has no great artists, and that there are but three or four writers—Cooper, Channing, Emerson—who well express her spirit and tendencies? None of the great moral qualities necessary to a poet are wanting to Americans. They have a national pride, approaching even to sensitiveness; they have firm and free religious faiths; life is energetic and manifests itself abundantly every where. How is it, we ask, that we meet no man of genius to tell us of the miracles of triumph over nature and barbarism; of those hardy industrial enterprises, and those wonderful displays of human activity around them; to sing the adventurous heroes of commerce and mechanism, and that singular marriage in domestic life of sedentary virtues with a changing, nomadic disposition—the love of the fireside, which remains undisturbed in the midst of perpetual displacement, as of old the tents of the patriarchs were pitched in the evening and stricken in the morning? Is it that there is no poetry in these subjects? Here, indeed, is a curious phenomenon, and one of the least-studied laws of literary history.

But ought we to regard Americans unfortunate because they have no literature of their own? In some points of view it is a reason for envying them. When true poetry appears among a people, it is not always a prophetic sign of future greatness; it is oftener a reflection of greatness passed away. It announces not new destinies, but recounts a history of the vanished and vanishing. Whenever the voice of a great poet is heard, we are sure that the customs, the institutions, and the religions he sings, are near their decline. Thus, Shakspeare, the most faithful mirror of the middle and feudal ages, came with reform and the sixteenth century; and Calderon, with the decay of Spanish Catholicism. That opinions and manners should partake of poesy, it is necessary that they begin to fade away into the realm of the fabulous past; it is necessary, in order that the ideal should appear, that these cease to exist. It was formerly said, and not without reason, "Happy the people who have no literature!" and in our time we are tempted to say: Happy the people who have no great poets! it is a proof that they enjoy the plentitude of life, that they have nothing to regret, that they are still in all their primal innocency, and the native energy of their being.

It is curious, also, to observe, how men animated by an heroic faith, seldom see that that faith and the deeds which it inspires, belong to the poetic and ideal. The first Puritans, who embarked, without resources, in a frail vessel, to seek in America the enjoyment of a free religion, now appear to us truly poetical. Walter Scott has drawn a thousand original characters of cavaliers and round-heads. Do you know what was the literature of those men full of the spirit of the Bible? Do you know what was the character of the first poetic publications in the United States? We open Mr. Griswold's volume, and the first name is that of Anne Bradstreet, who proceeded thither with her father, an ardent nonconformist. Here is the title under which her poems were printed, in the year 1640, at Boston: "Several Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a compleat Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz. the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian; and the beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other Pleasant and Serious Poems: By a Gentlewoman of New England." This Mrs. Bradstreet, called by the Americans, at this epoch, the "tenth muse"—probably a very good Protestant—made invocations to Phœbus, and imitated —— Dubartas! Certainly, the emigrant Americans, who were indeed the most zealous of all Protestants, did not suspect the mournful poetry which Protestantism contains—a poetry which we perceive to-day. It is even a part of the American life of our times. But this absence of real poetry is far from being a bad sign; it is, on the contrary, a proof of strength and energy.

Great works are not what we require of Americans; we would rather endeavor to discover in them the traces of the moral spirit of their country, its philosophical and historic signs, rather than poetic fables skilfully constructed and eloquently told. For example, these female poets of North America, suggest an interesting question for Europeans to examine. Have all those Misses and Mistresses who write poems, dramas and sonnets, any features of resemblance with our female authors? Has America, which is represented so coarse in manners, inherited the vices of European society, and become so degenerate as to give birth to that monstrous nondescript, named among us a bas-bleu? We have endeavored, diligently, to discover, in this large volume, traces of resemblance between our women of letters and the female poets of America, but we have discovered none. These daughters and wives of American citizens, of merchants, bankers, magistrates and doctors in theology, do not write as our female authors, from vain ambition, or love, or scandal, or (what among us is by no means uncommon) to repent of the scandal that they have occasioned. They write as among us young girls draw or sing. Poesy is for them an ornamental art, and nothing more. Besides, this great number of female poets in America, is explained by the much more liberal education received by the women of English blood and of the Protestant religion. We can find better specimens of poetry, certainly, but nothing equalling them in the discretion and reserve that reign in all their verses. We have sought, diligently, to discover the sentiments which American women are most pleased in translating into written poetry: one only is expressed, freely and energetically—maternal love. The other sentiments and virtues are carefully veiled, as subjects upon which it would be improper to dwell. Such verses are full of scruples and delicacies, and to us, it is their principal charm. Love, so difficult for the female heart to acknowledge in words; passionate confidences, so easily turned into sarcasms, and almost repulsive when uttered by the mouth of a woman, find no place in the inspirations of the American poetess. There are no strongly expressed individual passions. Vague and objectless longings—the cold lights of mere fancy, are the characteristics of those writers. Sometimes we discover a regret, or a mournful remembrance, but so obscure as to be nearly lost in a vastly diffused hope of some good which is not realized. We have endeavored to discover if the sentiment of conjugal love were there, but we are disappointed. To us, Europeans, who are overwhelmed with romances, in which this chaste sentiment is analyzed and written of in a manner to produce absolute nausea, it is not, perhaps, known how much discretion there is in this passionless exterior, and how commendable it is that so holy a sentiment should not pass the sacred inclosures of the female heart; that it should not wound the delicacies of its own natural reserve and silence. The talents of these writers are exercised upon permitted subjects, and not, as too often among our own female poets, upon subjects at once easy and unlawful.

This modesty and reserve throughout the work become necessarily monotonous—but it is of no great consequence to us. We would not have written if it had not been to acknowledge specimens of real literary excellence. But we have in the work itself what is of considerable value as reflecting in some degree the American character. We can use these elegies, reveries and monodies as a means of discovering the nature of the virtues thus brought out from obscurity, though in coloring too pale and uniform. The life of these women possesses nothing adventurous, passionate, or eccentric. It is composed of three facts: birth, marriage, and death. As to the intervals between these three solemn events, the biographer says little, and we suppose they are filled with exemplary virtues and the accomplishment of duties which human and divine law imposes upon the woman. Three of these, however, are distinguished from the others by their position in society, or by their talents, and constitute the only singularities of the work.

We have just remarked, that these poésies are all written by the daughters of rich merchants, lawyers, and doctors of divinity; two, however, are of low condition—a negress, Philis Wheatley Peters; and a domestic, Maria James. The negress belonged to the close of the eighteenth century, and was born at a time to justify the pamphlets of Franklin on slavery, and the demands of philanthropy. This "daughter of the murky Senegal," as one of her critics called her, has been, thanks to the circumstances of her color, birth, and condition, a sort of historic character. Sold at ten years of age, in a public mart of slaves, she was purchased by Mrs. Wheatley, a lady who educated her, and who afterwards permitted her to be called by her own name. This negress, so little known now, has had her day in history; she visited London, where she was an object of general esteem. Washington corresponded with her, and the Abbé Grégoire, our revolutionary regicide, announced her a great poet, in his Essay upon the Intellectual and Moral Faculties of the Negro. The opponents of slavery applauded her verses with enthusiasm, and the upholders of slavery denounced and slandered her. She has been, for a moment, in the eyes of the universe, the noblest type of her race—this humble black slave has been, in the civilized world, the representative of all her brethren. Her existence has been one of the incidents of universal history, and this unknown person has had her share, however small, in the revolutions of the world.

Maria James was a poor servant, the child of an emigrant from Wales. An unlettered poet, she drew her only instruction from the Bible, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Miss Hannah More, a kind of Madame de Genlis of puritanism; and yet it was this poor girl who wrote the most perfect lyric, the neatest, and in a literary view, the best composed, that we find in the collection; the lyrical pieces, by the way, are not generally well written. The thoughts are indefinite, the images confounded, and in some way run in upon each other. The principal sentiment is seldom neatly distinguished. These lyrics are as the buzzing of bees, or rather as honey scarcely formed, of which each drop contains the perfume of the flower whence it was extracted. Here is a piece by Maria James, which we do not give as her best, but which overflows with a profound religious feeling, and turns the heart of the reader, for a moment, to the haven of eternal repose:

THE PILGRIMS: TO A LADY.

But of all these poetesses, the most remarkable, certainly to us, is Maria Brooks, who died in 1845, the author of a curious poem entitled Zophiel, which Southey admired, and which Charles Lamb declared to be too extraordinary to have been conceived in the mind of a woman. Unfortunately, in Mr. Griswold's volume, we have only an incomplete analysis, with some brief fragments, of this poem. Notwithstanding its incompleteness, however, there is enough to show a powerful life and a wonderful imagination. There is in the poem a surprising union of Thomas Moore and Shelley. Imagine the bowers of Lalla Rookh, through which is sweeping the northern tempest of Shelley, bending the trees and scattering the roses. The odes To Cuba, to the Shade of her Child, and all her other lyrics, have, in a word, a very remarkable movement, and are full of mysterious inquietudes and inexplicable burnings. We cannot have an idea of the sweetness, and at the same time the impetuosity which mingle in her verses, without thinking of the impossible combination of the eagle and the dove—a dove with the stroke of an eagle's wing, and which would yet, in spite of its power, retain the timid nature of the dove, be frightened at its own strength, and tremble in looking upward to the sun. Her compositions are full of daring ideas imperfectly expressed, as if she were afraid of the boldness of her heart. Often, however, her thoughts fall into the alambiqué, the abstract and metaphysical. Her love to her child inspired the best lines she ever composed. The sports of the little one, whom she should see no more, associated with the remembrance of forests, plains, and cataracts, give to that love the grandeur and infinitude of American Nature. Of all the female poets of the new world, Maria Brooks seems to possess most the sibylline inspirations of the celebrated women of contemporaneous Europe. Yet she has none of that Byronean spirit that reigns so much among them; and if we would indicate the European poetry school to which she should be attached, we would cite, rather than that of Byron, the names of Southey, her admirer, of Coleridge, and of John Wilson, the author of the City of the Plague.

Maria Brooks is the only brilliant exception that we have met in the collection of Mr. Griswold. All her poetic companions draw their inspirations, not from their individual life, but their education, and as this education is the same for all, it is not astonishing that their works are uniform and monotonous. Yet, we do not complain, as we have already intimated, for we are thus enabled to see some of the features of American character more easily than if an original genius inspired each of the poetesses. The religious sentiment, for example, is every where uttered in these verses, but indeed it is the same that we find in the writings of American essayists—a sort of Christian theism which is becoming more the character of Protestantism in America. The spirit of Christ breathes indeed in these pages, but the person itself is seldom seen: Christ is always the teacher and saviour of the world, but the crucified Redeemer is well nigh forgotten. The Son of God is manifested as he appeared to his disciples; transfigured upon Tabor, they see him in the radiant light conversing with the prophets of the ancient law. Do you prostrate humanity in the place of the disciples and the astonished crowd at the foot of the mountain, then you have an idea of the life of the religious faiths more and more adopted in America. But the torments of the Divine agony—the cross of Golgotha, and all the tragedy in the Saviour's history upon earth, which the nations of the middle ages and the ancient Christians held in precious remembrance, are almost forgotten. We mention the fact as being one which the religious and philosophic of our times may reflect upon with profit. It is the symptom of an imminent crisis in Protestantism, and sooner or later, will not fail of attracting discussion. This theistic sentiment, which is the foundation of the writings of Channing and Theodore Parker, makes itself felt continually in the verses of this collection which by manner or subject relate to religion.

The descriptions of nature, oddly enough, never strike, as one would expect, by their novelty. Far away we see pleasantly the names of palms, cotton-trees, cocoa trees, and the botanic names of flowers unknown to us, but it is no matter whether we exchange all these trees and exotic plants for poplars, oaks, and birches, or the modern plants of our Europe. We feel very little, in any poetry, the particular sentiment of an original nature. In the midst of the woods and forests of the new world, one can readily believe himself among those of France or England; he will remark only a more lively picture of verdure and waters. Have you ever seen the landscapes of Theodore Rousseau? The grass is greener and the yellow leaves are yellower than in the paintings of any other artist. But the presence of nature is not there. Such is the effect upon us of the descriptions given by these female poets. Here, in support of our assertion, is a picture by Mrs. Frances Green.

These verses are pretty, perhaps very pretty. They give nature a charming appearance,—too much like the "everlasting spring" of Ovid. Do you not seem to lie in the shade of a European forest? Here are the same trees, the same flowers, the same animals. But the trees are more abundant of leaves, the grass is thicker, the sun is brighter, the waters warmer. But there is no profoundly original painting, no broad description by a few great outlines.

The sentiment of the beautiful and ideal is expressed in this collection of poetry, in an uncolored, abstract, and metaphysical manner. We are not sure that all these women love and understand the beautiful arts, and particularly the plastic arts; the only one whose influence they feel deeply, and which they seem to prefer, is music. And this preference among the moderns for music is a curious fact. The superiority given to it above painting and sculpture may be accounted for in some degree by the fact that music accords more with woman's instincts. Music is truly the art of the nineteenth century par excellence; it is the art which expresses best incredible aspirations; it is an art democratic in its essence. Appreciated by all living beings, even the unintelligent tribes, to be felt, music demands neither science nor long study—it makes every one happy, and tells to each the story of his love.

To produce sculptors, poets, and painters, it is necessary that a country should boast of many centuries, of a history, of a long succession of traditions, of established customs; but modern nations, particularly Americans, outstrip time, act with precipitation, and have no leisure to wait the traditions of history. Hence this extraordinary love of music, the least costly of the arts. They love music as one loves the conversations of the evening, and refreshing sleep after a hard day's labor. The art of music then is, if we dare say so, the art of nations who have no time for meditation and reflection—the art of ardent and feverish nations; for, to be understood, it requires only that a man should have a soul, with warm desires and hopes. We find in this collection two sonnets in honor of Beethoven and Mozart, in which the genius of the two masters is perfectly appreciated and felt. They are from Margaret Fuller, since Countess d'Ossoli, who was drowned by shipwreck on her return to her native country.

BEETHOVEN.

MOZART.

Of these two sonnets, we prefer that of Mozart, as expressing better, in our opinion, the character of the music of the great master—as more discriminating than that of Beethoven—a perfect description besides of the author of Fidelio. The sonnets appear curious to us as sparklings of æsthetic poetry beyond the seas.

The sentiments of American pride and of national susceptibility vibrate here and there in all this poetry, but not very often. The remembrance of the early emigrants, the description of America when inhabited by savage hordes, and the comparison of this barbaric state with the industrial wonders of the nineteenth century, are themes somewhat rare, but which are nevertheless not forgotten. We have also noticed two or three pieces which brought a smile upon our lips—where the shades of old Indian sachems appear to bless modern civilization, and seem ready to thank the Great Spirit for having exterminated their race, despoiled and chased from their own native woods and prairies. There are besides a few pieces borrowed from historic subjects, and a few dedicated to individuals; some pages in honor of Washington and Napoleon, and this is all. The rest is composed of mere musings, fancies, and elegies, expressing no precise and distinct sentiment.

But what matters the relative weakness of this poetry? Let us rise to higher spheres than that purely literary. The moral character and the virtues which this collection of poetry suggests are superior to the poetry itself. Who can tell, indeed, the good which may be done by these musical reveries and innocent caprices? They have been composed in the bosom of tranquility, by the fireside, among parents, children, relatives, and friends. These were the public to which they addressed themselves, who admired them, and drew from them their contributions to the good and beautiful. Probably many chaste tendernesses are recognized by the banks of these little limpid fountains of poesy; many hearts have rejoiced in these tender harmonies; many a man, weary with the labors of the day, has felt the sweet words of his daughter or his wife thrill his soul; he has beheld the bright gleams of ideal realities, and laid himself down and dreamed of images of higher beauty. In that hard, practical country, many poetic germs have thus taken root, many coarse natures have become more refined. What matters it, then, whether these specimens of poetry be original or not?—they have been useful. We offer our thanks to the female poets of America, for the seeds of piety, virtue, and nobility sown in their country. Without noise, without humanitary pretensions, they have fulfilled their mission of religion and refinement.

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