Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 - Various - Страница 4

We are not one of those who believe that the manifestation of any native, vigorous faculty of the mind is dependent upon circumstances. It is true that education, in its largest sense, modifies development; but it cannot, to any serious extent, add to, or take from, the power to be developed. In the lack of encouragement and contemporary appreciation, certain of the finer faculties may not give forth their full and perfect fragrance; but the rose is always seen to be a rose, though never a bud come to flower. The "mute, inglorious Milton" is a pleasant poetic fiction. Against the "hands that the rod of empire might have swayed" we have nothing to object, knowing to what sort of hands the said rod has so often been intrusted.

John Howard Payne once read to us—and it was something of an infliction—a long manuscript on "The Neglected Geniuses of America,"—a work which only death, we suspect, prevented him from giving to the world. There was not one name in the list which had ever before reached our ears. Nicholas Blauvelt and William Phillips and a number of other utterly forgotten rhymesters were described and eulogized at length, the quoted specimens of their poetry proving all the while their admirable right to the oblivion which Mr. Payne deprecated. They were men of culture, some of them wealthy, and we could detect no lack of opportunity in the story of their lives. Had they been mechanics, they would have planed boards and laid bricks from youth to age. The Ayrshire ploughman and the Bedford tinker were made of other stuff. Our inference then was, and still is, that unacknowledged (or at least unmanifested) genius is no genius at all, and that the lack of sympathy which many young authors so bitterly lament is a necessary test of their fitness for their assumed vocation.

Gerald Massey is one of the most recent instances of the certainty with which a poetic faculty by no means of the highest order will enforce its own development, under seemingly fatal discouragements. The author of "Saul" is a better illustration of the same fact; for, although, in our ignorance of the circumstances of his early life, we are unable to affirm what particular difficulties he had to encounter, we know how long he was obliged to wait for the first word of recognition, and to what heights he aspired in the course of many long and solitary years.

The existence of "Saul" was first made known to the world by an article in the "North British Review," in the year 1858, when the author had already attained his forty-second year. The fact that the work was published in Montreal called some attention to it on this side of the Atlantic, and a few critical notices appeared in our literary periodicals. It is still, however, comparatively unknown; and those into whose hands it may have fallen are, doubtless, ignorant of the author's name and history. An outline of the latter, so far as we have been able to ascertain its features, will help the reader to a more intelligent judgment, when we come to discuss the author's claim to a place in literature.

Charles Heavysege was born in Liverpool, England, in the year 1816. We know nothing in regard to his parents, except that they were poor, yet able to send their son to an ordinary school. His passion for reading, especially such the poetry as fell into his hands, showed itself while he was yet a child. Milton seems to have been the first author who made a profound impression upon his mind; but it is also reported that the schoolmaster once indignantly snatched Gray's "Elegy" from his hand, because he so frequently selected that poem for his reading-lesson. Somewhat later, he saw "Macbeth" performed, and was immediately seized with the ambition to become an actor,—a profession for which few persons could be less qualified. The impression produced by this tragedy, combined with the strict religious training which he appears to have received, undoubtedly fixed the character and manner of his subsequent literary efforts.

There are but few other facts of his life which we can state with certainty. His chances of education were evidently very scanty, for he must have left school while yet a boy, in order to learn his trade,—that of a machinist. He had thenceforth little time and less opportunity for literary culture. His reading was desultory, and the poetic faculty, expending itself on whatever subjects came to hand, produced great quantities of manuscripts, which were destroyed almost as soon as written. The idea of publishing them does not seem to have presented itself to his mind. Either his life must have been devoid of every form of intellectual sympathy, or there was some external impediment formidable enough to keep down that ambition which always co-exists with the creative power.

In the year 1843 he married, and in 1853 emigrated to Canada, and settled in Montreal. Even here his literary labor was at first performed in secrecy; he was nearly forty years old before a line from his pen appeared in type. He found employment in a machine-shop, and it was only very gradually—probably after much doubt and hesitation—that he came to the determination to subject his private creations to the ordeal of print. His first venture was a poem in blank verse, the title of which we have been unable to ascertain. A few copies were printed anonymously and distributed among personal friends. It was a premature birth, which never knew a moment's life, and the father of it would now be the last person to attempt a resuscitation.

Soon afterwards appeared—also anonymously—a little pamphlet, containing fifty "so-called" sonnets. They are, in reality, fragmentary poems of fourteen lines each, bound to no metre or order of rhyme. In spite of occasional crudities of expression, the ideas are always poetic and elevated, and there are many vigorous couplets and quatrains. They do not, however, furnish any evidence of sustained power, and the reader, who should peruse them as the only productions of the author, would be far from inferring the latter's possession of that lofty epical utterance which he exhibits in "Saul" and "Jephthah's Daughter."

We cannot learn that this second attempt to obtain a hearing was successful, so far as any public notice of the pamphlet is concerned; but it seems, at least, to have procured for Mr. Heavysege the first private recognition of his poetic abilities which he had ever received, and thereby given him courage for a more ambitious venture. "Saul," as an epical subject, must have haunted his mind for years. The greater portion of it, indeed, had been written before he had become familiar with the idea of publication; and even after the completion of the work, we can imagine the sacrifices which must have delayed its appearance in print. For a hard-working mechanic, in straitened circumstances, courage of another kind was required. It is no slight expense to produce an octavo volume of three hundred and thirty pages; there must have been much anxious self-consultation, a great call for patience, fortitude, and hope, with who may know what doubts and despondencies, before, in 1857 "Saul" was given to the world.

Nothing could have been more depressing than its reception, if, indeed, the term "reception" can be applied to complete indifference. A country like Canada, possessing no nationality, and looking across the Atlantic, not only for its political rule, but also (until very recently, at least) for its opinions, tastes, and habits, is especially unfavorable to the growth of an independent literature. Although there are many men of learning and culture among the residents of Montreal, they do not form a class to whom a native author could look for encouragement or appreciation sufficient to stamp him as successful. The reading public there accept the decrees of England and the United States, and they did not detect the merits of "Saul," until the discovery had first been made in those countries.

Several months had elapsed since the publication of the volume; it seemed to be already forgotten, when the notice to which we have referred appeared in the "North British Review." The author had sent a copy to Mr. Hawthorne, then residing in Liverpool, and that gentleman, being on friendly terms with some of the writers for the "North British," procured the insertion of an appreciative review of the poem. Up to that time, we believe, no favorable notice of the work had appeared in Canada. The little circulation it obtained was chiefly among the American residents. A few copies found their way across the border, and some of our authors (among whom we may mention Mr. Emerson and Mr. Longfellow) were the first to recognize the genius of the poet. With this double indorsement, his fellow-townsmen hastened to make amends for their neglect. They could not be expected to give any very enthusiastic welcome, nor was their patronage extensive enough to confer more than moderate success; but the remaining copies of the first small edition were sold, and a second edition—which has not yet been exhausted—issued in 1859.

In February, 1860, we happened to visit Montreal. At that time we had never read the poem, and the bare fact of its existence had almost faded from memory, when it was recalled by an American resident who was acquainted with Mr. Heavysege, and whose account of his patience, his quiet energy, and serene faith in his poetic calling strongly interested us. It was but a few hours before our departure; there was a furious snow-storm; yet the gentleman ordered a sleigh, and we drove at once to a large machine-shop, in the outskirts of the city. Here, amid the noise of hammers, saws, and rasps, in a great grimy hall smelling of oil and iron-dust, we found the poet at his work-bench. A small, slender man, with a thin, sensitive face, bright blonde hair, and eyes of that peculiar blue which burns warm, instead of cold, under excitement,—in the few minutes of our interview the picture was fixed, and remains so. His manner was quiet, natural, and unassuming: he received us with the simple good-breeding which a gentleman always possesses, whether we find him on a throne or beside an anvil. Not a man to assert his claim loudly, or to notice injustice or neglect by a single spoken word; but one to take quietly success or failure, in the serenity of a mood habitually untouched by either extreme.

In that one brief first and last interview, we discovered, at least, the simple, earnest sincerity of the man's nature,—a quality too rare, even among authors. When we took our seat in the train for Rouse's Point, we opened the volume of "Saul." The first part was finished as we approached St. Albans; the second at Vergennes; and twilight was falling as we closed the book between Bennington and Troy. Whatever crudities of expression, inaccuracies of rhythm, faults of arrangement, and violations of dramatic law met us from time to time, the earnest purpose of the writer carried us over them all. The book has a fine flavor of the Elizabethan age,—a sustained epic rather than dramatic character, an affluence of quaint, original images; yet the construction was frequently that of a school-boy. In opulence and maturity of ideas, and poverty of artistic skill, the work stands almost alone in literature. What little we have learned of the history of the author suggests an explanation of this peculiarity. Never was so much genuine power so long silent.

"Saul" is yet so little known, that a descriptive outline of the poem will be a twice-told tale to very few readers of the "Atlantic." The author strictly follows the history of the renowned Hebrew king, as it is related in I Samuel, commencing with the tenth chapter, but divides the subject into three dramas, after the manner of Schiller's "Wallenstein." The first part embraces the history of Saul, from his anointing by Samuel at Ramah to David's exorcism of the evil spirit, (xvi. 23,) and contains five acts. The second part opens with David as a guest in the palace at Gibeah. The defeat of the Philistines at Elah, Saul's jealousy of David, and the latter's marriage with Michal form the staple of the four acts of this part. The third part consists of six acts of unusual length, (some of them have thirteen scenes,) and is devoted to the pursuits and escapes of David, the Witch of Endor, and the final battle, wherein the king and his three sons are slain. No liberties have been taken with the order of the Scripture narrative, although a few subordinate characters have here and there been introduced to complete the action. The author seems either to lack the inventive faculty, or to have feared modifying the sacred record for the purposes of Art. In fact, no considerable modification was necessary. The simple narrative fulfils almost all the requirements of dramatic writing, in its succession of striking situations, and its cumulative interest. From beginning to end, however, Mr. Heavysege makes no attempt to produce a dramatic effect. It is true that he has availed himself of the phrase "an evil spirit from the Lord," to introduce a demoniac element, but, singularly enough, the demons seem to appear and to act unwillingly, and manifest great relief when they are allowed to retire from the stage.