EVENINGS WITH SOME FEMALE POETS. SECOND EVENING. Scene: In the midst of our books. Table with papers, decanter, glasses, and smoking machines. Present: JOHANNES; BELLOWS. JOHANNES.-Well, I have not been disappointed by glancing over that book. I expected to find nothing in it, and I have found very little, and that little was not new to me. Imitation seems to be the great burial-ground of our female poets, and I might add, of our male poets too, with few exceptions. Our ladies, more than those of any country on the blooming countenance of the jocund earth, have the faculty of making verses, and respectable verses too, at times; but the high art of poetry, in the general hurry of stitching lace and face, love, dove and glove together, is entirely forgotten, or if not forgotten, only recollected to be discountenanced and sneered at. A perfect defiance seems to be cast at Thought. Ideality, the faculty of imagining, creating or making, is only used in making clean paper ridiculous, and fancy is only paramount in the evidence that those ladies write fancying they are poets. It would be a great blessing for readers if the five sixths of our ladies who now deluge the magazines and journals with verses, to the infinite destruction of nice white paper, would adopt Moore's lines as their creed, and ponder well on the third line: "Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still: You may say that the very fact of their continually writing shows what a great imagination they must have; and I will agree with you that it takes a long stretch of that faculty in themselves to believe what they write is poetry. Yes, I will say, in that respect they do not lack imagination. I should decidedly say that the faculty in them was of the order called India-rubber. Apropos of this, I have made a discovery: there are three or four orders of this faculty, concerning which I am going to correspond with my physiognomical and philosophical friend Redfield, to direct his attention to them, that he may arrange them with the scientific references which their great characteristics demand. First, I have the Papier Maché order of Ideality, which has the effect of keeping the brain in that sort of softness indicated by the title maché, which fits it essentially for receiving impressions and for rolling itself into the moulds of other minds, and coming out with an appearance, not altogether original as may be expected, not altogether displeasing, which is not to be wondered at, for the shape is not its own; not altogether imperfect, which may be anticipated, for it wears otherbodies' spectacles; not altogether perfect, for it cannot see through those spectacles as the otherbodies from whom they are stolen can; nor altogether contemptible, for all those several reasons. This Papier Maché order of the faculty is that which actuates and facilitates a benevolence on the part of the possessor, which, though it may seem to said possessor very philanthropic, appears to me rather cheap and selfish, inasmuch as it costs nothing and tends to self-glorification: this benevolence is that which the rearers of others' offspring term adoption. And it is not at all to be wondered at if the adopted some day seek their rightful parent. Another order of the faculty is the Gutta Percha one; which also, in a state of softness, is in effect much the same as the for mer, save that its pliancy is greater, and its piquancy not so great. When this faculty by circumstances becomes heated, its adhesiveness to every thing irrespective of ownership is very remarkable, and its stubbornness on cooling down so determined, that it is almost impossible to prove that it clings to what did not naturally belong to it. Its adoption is of a very redoubtable character, and seems to carry with it an illustration to their daring. It is one blessing that they carry their surest destroyer with them: like the phoenix, which, as the Easterns believe, sets fire to the wood which consumes himself. You see they virtually flap themselves to utter annihilation-blow themselves out; and, thank Heaven, have not the consolation of the phoenix, that of rising juvenescent from their graves. Sometimes, unfortunately, a witch of Endor in the shape of an editor holds up their living ghosts to the public, tricking them out to more advantage than they ever could possibly attain if left to themselves. BELLOWS. Then they carry out the similitude of the bird more completely they die to live. a certain theological dogma, that out of its grip "there is no redemption." A third order is one which I would classify as the Monkey, and which fully explains its pecu-flaps his wings with such velocity that he liar reference, that of imitation, at the same time that it admirably characterizes the antics by which this imitation is made visible, and which is the sole consolation to the reader of such; the ludicrous cunning that o'erreaches itself, amusing from its sheer shallowness, where a serious attempt at mimicry of another's thoughts would only command our contempt. A fourth I would name as the India-rubber order, and which, as I hinted, explains its characteristic. The exercise of this order of the faculty has direct reference more to the state of the possessor's mind than to the matter which the said possessor pens, though the latter is the JOHANNES.-By the hand of my body, to beacon by which a reader detects the exist- borrow an oath from Mr. Hardcastle, you're ence of such in the mind of the writer. In improving, boy. Yet, in the end, you will the case of our female poets it is drawn on find that they are but mere mortals, and to an amazing length, and stretched to an live to die. It is a fact that the sun, about almost inconceivable tension. It is the most the warmth of which there is so much self-pacifying of the orders of the faculty of said, is cool, remarkably cool, as some of Ideality, and when in full action tends to your Broadway-parading juveniles would much danger in making its possessor be- say. This is an ascertained fact; and so of lieve he or she is gifted with the divine your lady writers, they make a good deal afflatus. In some writers it is painfully evi- of noise, but if there were a few experiments dent to an immense degree, and is only played off on their productions we should tolerable on account of the amount of au- find them pulseless and frigid. Reichenbach dacity it brings to its aid; and we all know the German philosopher, in his very interestas well as Danton that "audacity" is a most ing work on his researches into the dynacommendable appendage in this age of for- mics of magnetism, heat, light, and elecwardness and go-aheaditiveness. Vanity is tricity, says that "experience shows that all nearly allied to this order, and would be stars with reflected light appear warm to more so, if the shallowness by which it is the sensitive, while all others with proper made evident was not so rudely visible. light are cool." Just like most of our poets, The abuse of the order is seen when the male and female; and if the light which possessor, not satisfied with stretching it to they stole from Byron, Moore, Tennyson, even a more than usual length, tugs at it Keats, Mrs. Hemans, some of the elder unnaturally till it snaps and ruins the hopes dramatists, and those of the time of Goldand aims of the too insatiate adventurer. smith, Murphy, and Sheridan, was returned to the "places from whence it came," we would find that very little of themselves would be left, and that little would be left out of all consideration; for, like the M. Valdemar that Poe wrote about, they would sink into miserable dust. It is the mesmeric influence of other minds that holds their frail carcasses together. BELLOWS.-But, Doctor, don't you think that few would be so incautious as to trifle with such a faculty when they know they have naught to retreat on? JOHANNES.-Vanity is unconscious of a climax, Morton; and the very use of the faculty in the manner I mention, and to such purposes, deludes itself. Their stretch of imagination is wonderful, and from constantly fancying they are poets, they become utterly regardless of their true position, and like the gnat around the lamp, they never desist until they immolate themselves to BELLOWS. They are not all so, I hope, Doctor? JOHANNES.-They-all of whom I speak -are so; but there are a few whom I would not, nor could consider in the same position. BELLOWS.-Well, positively, that is the first sentence you have uttered to-night, Doctor, which allows me to breathe. I had almost made my mind up that you were a gone man as regards the poets-especially the female ones. Now since you have a favorable opinion of a few, I have some hopes, and long to hear who they may be. Who are the ladies who have been so fortunate as to win the critical sympathies of so ferocious a commentator? JOHANNES.—I will tell you. First-ha! I perceive my speech has not had the same effect on the liquor as it had on your breath; you have drawn on that considerable. BELLOWS.-Well, you know yourself said that it takes ardent spirits to discuss the female poets. JOHANNES.-No apology, boy. Here, fill my cup, thou witty Ganymede. Now fill your own, and just hand me that meerschaum. (Lights it-puff, puff.) Now I will tell you. Well, as poets, I have the greatest regard for Alice Carey and "Edith May" of all the women writers in the country. I believe they have more of the mens divinior in its truth than any of their competitors. I spoke to you of the former and some of her merits before. Both of those writers are highly imaginative. The first perhaps has the more originality, the latter the more graceful expressiveness of the two. The first loses in effect by not having a sufficiency of language in her best pieces ("Lyra" excepted) to make her ideas plain to a casual reader; the second gives a more favorable idea of her imagination by the bounding expressiveness with which she conveys her thoughts. Miss Carey seems to have a dreamy imagination, giving every thing that misty force and present concentration which is so remarkable in dreams; while Miss May appears like one of our modern revolutionists, full of the spirit of energy and vigor. Miss Carey is abstracted, lingers much round the sorrowful, and broods over it in the temples of her imagination. Miss May is a propagandist of her thoughts, and as such makes them catching at a glance. You have read Gulliver's Travels, Morton? BELLOWS.-Oh, yes. He that lived with the Brobdig-what-d'ye-call-'em-people, in a box like Tom Thumb? Capital, eh? JOHANNES.-Confound you and Tom Thumb! You've read the book? (Morton nods.) Well, I should liken Alice Carey to Gulliver bound by the Lilliputians in the shape of the English language; Edith May" to Gulliver escaping from the same by the aid of ditto. The Carey is an eagie in a cage; the May is an eagle on the wing. You can look longer on and study the one; you see the other passing, and are delighted. I have directed your attention to some of Miss Carey's poems on our last evening, and shall now show you why I think so well of "Edith May." You must not imagine, because she is bold and vigorous, that she has not depth of sentiment beside. She has; for at the same time that she dashes along with a brilliant exterior like the revolutionists I compared her to, she has like them a purpose. Here is a fine chant :— rence, Knelt to the shrine of her starry intelligence; Over her calm face a radiance immortal Think not to question that presence resplendent, Down from the gray clouds the March winds are swooping, Out of the low soil pale phantoms are trooping; Sorrow, that writes, with the pen of an angel, Crowns himself king with their tropical splendor Death, creeping near while she knelt in devotion, Froze on her features their mournful emotion. It is really a noble hymn. The picture in the second stanza is beautifully imagined, and the music of the rhythm, which flows in like judicious light on a grand painting, is only marred by the rhyming of cavil and evil, which, though it has naught to do with the especial music of the verse, inasmuch as rhythm and rhyme are two very different things, breaks and ripples the perfect gracefulness, like a solitary rock in an otherwise undisturbed and smooth river. In regard of art, too, one or two corrections might be made which would serve the music of the poem. The second line of the fourth stanza, for instance, « Out of the low soil pale phantoms are trooping," "Low soil To read the is rough in its construction. Out of the low soil | pale phan | toms are | troop-ing: I Her appreciation of the beauties of nature which will not read to the preceding line, which is composed of three consecutive dactyls and an ending trochee. All this disorder is created by the injudicious selection of the three words "low soil pale," which cannot by any means be made a dactyl, and which is the metrical foot necessary to their place. I might say, if I was an Irishman, that the foot is exactly two ells too long. The letter comes in too quick; if its apin the line was like "angels' visits," pearance et cetera, the music would be better, and my remarks unneeded. I would not take this trouble, boy, to show you her faults, save that I think Miss May is worthy of a serious study, and far above a mere puffing exclamation of approval. Good ore is always worth refining. Some of "Edith May's' blank verse is remarkably beautiful-full in felicities of diction, and rich in conceits of fancy and imaginative passages. "October Twilight" affords some extracts of beauty. BELLOWS (yawning).-Y-e-s, I always thought so; in fact, I know by myself. I love to converse with nature; it is so delicious to lounge at Hoboken and fancy one's self in the groves of Arca-of Arcadia; to feel one's self a poet. I feel like writing a pastoral then-I really do; I feel as though I was some heathen god; and, curse them lutes! if I could only play one I should feel capable of something great. I really think I should abandon myself to the woods altogether if I could manage to pipe some meDid I ever read you my lodious reed. poem on an evening at Staten Island, commencing "O Staten, loveliest of isles On which the sunlight ever smiles! And all who ever lost a home! Hang it my memory's getting weak from BELLOWS.-Doctor, I contend that JOHANNES. An empty head ought to be silent. Morton, be quiet! You can no more write a poem, or even a tolerable verse, than I could stand on my head on a liberty pole. BELLOWS.-You take a great liberty with my pole, Doctor: really, now, you won't listen JOHANNES.-Now don't be a fool, boy. Fill your pitcher, like a sensible man, and listen to me; fill your pitcher. BELLOWS (filling and singing)."Give me but this; I ask no more: My charming girl, my friend and pitcher." JOHANNES.-Stay; that pitcher puts me in mind of a capital little Servian poem which "Talvi" gives in her "History of Slavic Literature." It is very good, and runs thus. A woman speaks, or rather sings: "Come, companion, let us hurry, "gude wife's" proceeding rests on the ques- comes Humming those waifs of song June's choral days Scares swart November-from yon northern hills Make thee a couch; thou sittest listless there, Evening comes This last passage would be much improved -"Mark how the wind, like one The authoress is evidently a student of Ten- "The dusk sits like a bird Up in the tree-tops, and swart, elvish shadows Now the whole question of the right of the Dart from the wooded pathways." |