Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L. E. L./Peculiarities of L. E. L.’s Works
Peculiarities of L. E. L.'s Works.
Before passing on to a direct examination of L. E. L.'s writings, there are two or three objections which are so frequently stated against their peculiarities, that we cannot refrain from attempting, at least, to refute their validity.
The first of these objections applies to the manner or rather style of her poetry. "It is too flowery and frivolous, consisting in a heap of words prettily strung together with very little meaning, and entitled to no higher rank than is implied in the sarcastic phrase of 'Young Ladies' Verses.'" To some minds the rainbow may seem no more than bright colours; they think not of its causes, its purpose, nor why its magnificent archway bridges the earth and sky with a glory caught from the fountain of life and light.
We admit that there is a rainbow-colouring, a richness of style thrown over the poetry of L. E. L., which at first sight diverts the mind from the subject-matter, herein differing from many other writings, whose excellencies are rather obscured by clouds than darkened by excess of their own light. With many of our poets their gems are set in lead; their pictures framed in painted wood; their flowers and fruits buried among weeds and rubbish; so that the gems and pictures and flowers when they are discovered appear brighter from the relief of contrast. Not thus is it with L. E. L. The setting of her jewels is all so brilliant and finely wrought, that no wonder if the gem be often passed over for the broader surface of the glittering metal in which it is shrined; and her pictures are hung in such gorgeous frames, that the eye at first is prone to rest upon them; and her flowers and fruit are so embowered in leaves, that care is required lest we pass unheedingly the choicest productions.
A redundant style (if it be an error) leans to the side of excellence, when embodying, as in this instance, the creations of thought and imagination. It is a living witness of the presence, not an evidence of the absence, of genius; while the very obscurity which it occasions is pleasing as the soft summer mist stealing over a landscape, and shrouding in its half-transparent veil, woven of sun and dews, the field and forest, hill and dale, stream and flower, half-hiding, indeed, their individualities, yet withal so lovely; that we cannot persuade ourselves to wish it away. Is not the poet's language likewise beautiful as a forest tree's foliage; and does it not receive light and clearness from the day-beam of genius, which doth ever make
"right sunshine in the shady place?"
Such a kind of diction, being poetical, is consistent with the writer's character as a poet. It may not possess, indeed, the consolidation of algebraical statements, or the conciseness of mathematical propositions: the attempt to give it these characteristics would destroy its nature. For while Philosophy piles its massive bridges of reasoning across the deep streams of thought, Poetry gracefully throws over them its suspended chain-work, which combines equal safety with greater elegance.
It does not follow, therefore, that truth and right reason must be absent when the manner of their exposition differs from that employed in the abstract sciences, to which truth is supposed essentially to belong. A geometrical diagram itself may be equally correct in all its parts, though drawn in golden lines on tablets of silver as if sketched in the roughest manner with the rudest materials. The demonstration, too, need be no less conclusive, though proved amid the elegancies of a drawing-room, than if worked out in the recesses of a cloister. So truths are not less true when decorated with the graces of poetry than when contemplated in the abstract; while in the former case they have the advantage of being more agreeable to the mental eye.
This reminds us of a second objection, a plea against the subject-matter of L. E. L.'s poetry, viz., that her poems are always founded upon or connected with the passion of love. Admitting for a moment the truth of this objection, what does it prove but the writer's acquaintance with human nature, as developed in the sentiments of the mind and the feelings of the heart? Philosophy will tell us that love is the excitement of one class of our susceptibilities,—one order of our moral emotions.
Admitting that the delineation of such emotion occupies the chief part of our author's works, we cannot see why this circumstance should be adduced as a ground of objection against those writings. Such emotion is confessedly an inherent characteristic of human nature; a writer, therefore, who professes to make human nature an object of study, and yet considers as unworthy of attention one of its principal manifestations, cannot deserve the name of a philosopher. Now, the very essence of L. E. L.'s poetry is human nature. Intellect and feeling, the head and heart, are her leading topics. Genius and study, knowledge and taste, all concentre here; while nature and art, society and conventional life are made to subserve the grand design of illustrating the development of human character, with all its diversified phases incident from adventitious circumstances. And if, in pursuance of this design, she recurs frequently to what may be termed, philosophically, the ruling emotion of human nature, let her own eloquent words aid our defence: "For a woman whose influence and whose sphere must be in the affections, what subject can be more fitting than one which it is her peculiar province to refine, spiritualize and exalt? I have always sought to paint it self-denying, devoted, and making an almost religion of its truth; and, I must add, such as I would wish to draw her, woman, actuated by an attachment as intense as it is true, as pure as it is deep, is not only more admirable as a heroine, but also in actual life, than one whose idea of love is that of light amusement or vain mortification."*[1]
It is indeed well, that the highest and purest forms which love ever assumes should be often pourtrayed; since upon the characters of those in whose hearts it sets up its throne it is necessarily so influential. "Even into philosophy is carried the deeper truth of the heart. If there be one emotion that stirs all that is truly generous and unselfish within us, that awakens all the knowledge of our nature, and that makes us believe in that heaven of which it bears the likeness, it is love—love, spiritual, de voted and eternal; love, that softens the shadows of the valley of death, to welcome us after to its own and immortal home."† [2]
Truly does right affection awaken the deepest susceptibilities, and the noblest efforts of which our nature is capable. The feelings and conduct to which love gives rise are far more self-denying, and involve a much greater sacrifice of personal interest and comfort, than mere justice or benevolence ever induce.
"The exertions of the affections of love and friendship," says a judicious philosopher, "are directed to promoting the interest or comfort of the objects of our regard; preserving, defending or advancing their reputation, treating their feelings with peculiar tenderness, and their failings with peculiar indulgence, receiving their opinions with peculiar favour, and anxiously endeavouring to improve their intellectual and moral condition. In exercising simple love and friendship, we rejoice in the advantage and happiness of the objects, though they should be accomplished by others and be separate from our own."* [3]
Another and yet more eloquent philosopher observes, in replying to some objections against love, "If true love be selfishness, it must be allowed at least to be a selfishness which, for the sake of others, can often prefer penury to wealth; which can hang for many sleepless nights, unwearied, and unconscious of any personal fear, over the bed of contagion; which can enter the dungeon, a voluntary prisoner, without the power even of giving any other comfort than that of the mere presence of an object beloved; or fling itself before the dagger which would pierce another breast, and rejoice in receiving the stroke. It is the selfishness which thinks not of itself—the selfishness of all that is generous and heroic in man."†[4]
If testimonies like these, from high authorities in the intellectual empire, be admitted and undenied, why should our poet's pages be condemned when she makes this love her theme—when she tells us, with equal truth and beauty, how
"affection can resign
Its own best happiness for one dear sake;
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And doth prefer another to itself:
Unchangeable and generous, what like Love
Can melt away the dross of worldliness,—
Can elevate, refine, and make the heart
Of that pure gold which is the fitting shrine
For fire, as sacred as e'er came from heaven?"
History of the Lyre.
—when she represents love as
"Made of every fine emotion,
Of generous impulses and noble thoughts;—
It looketh to the stars, and dreams of heaven;
It nestles 'mid the flowers, and sweetens earth :
Love is aspiring, yet is humble too;
It doth exalt another o'er itself,
With sweet heart-homage which delights to raise
Its object?"
—or, again, when we are eloquently assured that
"There is in life no blessing like affection;
It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues,
And bringeth down to earth its native heaven:
It sits beside the cradle patient hours,
Whose sole contentment is to watch and love:
It bendeth o'er the death-bed, and conceals
Its own despair with words of faith and hope:
Life has nought else that may supply its place;
Void is ambition, cold is vanity,
And wealth an empty glitter without love?"
Ethel Churchill, vol. i.
Besides, surely that must be a worthy subject of consideration which is not only a source of direct individual influence, but also of general benefit and happiness! It is the affection on which all our other emotions may be said indirectly to depend, and of which the moral relations, while so powerful in their effects on character and conduct, claim also universal empire. It is an affection whose right use is not more productive of virtue and happiness than its neglect and abuse tend to vice and misery. By the refining and humanizing—by the brightening and soothing—by the generous and expanding influences which affection diffuses over the world, it holds its place among the component elements of the happiness and good of the social system. "It is affection," observes the philosopher already quoted, "which in some of its forms, if I may use so bold a phrase, animates even life itself, that without it would be scarcely worthy of the name."* [5]
If then the wise and good thus turn reverentially and admiringly to contemplate the light of love and the ennobling blessings of that light; if its influences be almost universal as those of the sun, and in themselves as pure, however occasionally darkened and distorted by the media through which they may pass, is it reasonable to condemn a gifted writer for shedding over her pages, or even for there concentrating, as in a crystal focus, the unsullied rays of pure and exalted affection?
After all, we cannot agree with the assertion that there is nothing but "love" in Miss Landon's poetry. How varied are the subjects which her versatile genius has delineated! Has it not fathomed the depths of the poet's soul, and laid bare to our gaze its glorious intellectual operations and their results,—its creations and aspirings,—its hopes and fears,—not only with poetic feeling, but with philosophic accuracy? Has not that genius led us into the interior of conventional life, and showed to us the vanity, the heartlessness, the petty strifes, the mean jealousies of the circles whose idols are outward appearances? Has it not borne us on its rainbow-coloured wings from scene to scene, from subject to subject, of nature and art, giving to each a grace and interest it knew not before; and, from apparently the most intractable sources, winning rich gems of historical association and permanent truth, being always and every where constant to the grand philosophical principle of generalization, and to the writer's favourite topic of human character? It needs only a reference to her works to prove that there is scarcely one production of her genius that might not be cited as an illustration of her extensive knowledge and diversified talents.
The last objection which we shall mention relates to the effect of L. E. L.'s poetry: this, it is said, is invariably melancholy.
Her works may indeed be read almost as a commentary on the words of the wise man, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" Intellect, with its lofty aspirations, but comparatively feeble effects; genius, with its burning energies, surrounded by antagonist elements; emotion, pouring out its treasures on the unthankful and unreturning sands; earthly hope, ever ending in disappointment or satiety; worldly pleasure, wearing out its votary with unsatisfying dissipation; life, in short, affording no rest to the soul,—no aliment suited to the cravings of an immortal spirit. These are truths which ought to be familiarized to the mind, however the worldly or selfish may shrink from their declaration; and these are the truths which are so often eloquently exposed in the poems of L. E. L. If they induce melancholy, at all events that must be a wise melancholy whose tendency is thoughtfulness.
The young and inexperienced, too, might learn wisdom in the midst of enjoyment (a combination somewhat rare on earth), would they but read these poems in a right spirit. Are they expecting fame, as with the might of a Creator's voice, to embody happiness? Time will soon set his seal to the mournful truth of the poet's experience,—
"Oh dream of fame, what hast thou been to me,
But the destroyer of life's calm content!"
Or is it in pleasure they are seeking an enduring portion? Let the sea of worldly enjoyment encircle them with sparkling tide; and as each billow bursts into foam at their touch and sinks back into the ocean of forgetfulness, let them listen to every receding wave, whose deep-toned murmuring seems to say of happiness—"It is not in me," while blending its chorus with the poet's truthful music,—
"Mortal, nor pleasure, nor wealth nor power
Are more than the toys of a passing hour;
Earth's flowers bear the foul taint of earth,
Lassitude, sorrow, are their's by their birth:
One only pleasure will last—to fulfil
With some shadow of good the Holy One's will;
The only steadfast hope to us given,
Is the one which looks in its trust to heaven."
Golden Violet.
Far be it from us to sanction a spirit of complaint, a disposition to morbid misanthropy, which looks on nature and society with the jaundiced eye of discontent or disappointment, and which speaks of all things in the querulous tone of thankless repining. Truth, however, is truth, whether pleasant or unpalateable; and we challenge any one who has made the actual experiment of seeking for happiness amid worldly pleasures, to deny either the correctness of the outline, or of the deep filling up shadows of L. E. L.'s faithful delineations. Such a votary, if he allowed himself to be sincere, must acknowledge the truth of the representation which tells him that
"One word may read his heart,
And that one word is utter weariness."
Melancholy in sooth are such representations, in the sense in which most people use the term, as a synonyme for any sentiment or feeling which bears the impress of right reflection,—of serious, yet serene emotion. When such persons are compelled to a moral introversion, to a turning from the glittering exterior of earthly things, to fast-fading impressions on their own minds,—from the gay dissonance of outward but hollow mirth to the still solemn voice of their own hearts, echoing "All is vanity!"—then do they accuse of needless melancholy the cause that has been instrumental in arresting for a moment their thoughtful attention. Well will it be if at length they acknowledge its salutary influence; for is not such a monition calculated to teach the important lesson that happiness is not of the earth, earthly, but can only be realized in the pursuit of objects which bear the image of the heavenly? By implication at least it must be so, since a vivid representation of the hollowness and deception of earthly vanities, founded on the conviction and experience of their instability and insufficiency as a foundation whereon to rear the superstructure of abiding hope, must tend to induce inquiry after some supreme good,—some all-sufficient object of felicity,–whose glory it should be man's chief aim to promote, and whose favour it will be found better than life to have secured. What is the end of all else, the poet tells us by the sad and warning voice of "Experience:"—
"My very heart is filled with tears! I seem
As I were struggling under some dark dream,
Which roughly bore me down life's troubled stream.
The past weighs heavily upon my soul,
A tyrant mastering me with stern control,
The present has no rest—the future has no goal;
For what can be again, but what has been?
Soon the young leaf forgets its early green,
And shadows with our sunshine intervene.
Quenched is the spirit's morning wing of fire,
We calculate where once we could aspire,
And the high hope sets in some low desire.
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Alas! our kindest feelings are the root
Of all experience's most bitter fruit,
They waste the life whose charm they constitute.
At length they harden, and we feel no more
All that we felt so bitterly before,
But with the softness is the sweetness o'er.
Of things we once enjoyed how few remain!
Youth's flowers are flung behind us, and in vain
We would stoop down to gather them again.
Why do we think of this? bind the red wreath,
Float down time's waters to the viol's breath,
Wot not what those cold waters hide beneath.
We cannot do this: from the sparkling brink
Drops the glad rose, and the bright waters shrink;
While in the midst of mirth we pause to think.
And if we think we sadden—thought and grief
Are vowed companions:—while we turn the leaf
It darkens, for the brilliant is the brief.
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Our better nature pineth,—let it be!
Thou human soul,—earth is no home for thee;
Thy starry rest is in eternity!"
- ↑ * Preface to "The Venetian Bracelet."
- ↑ † Ethel Churchill, vol. i.
- ↑ * Abercrombie on the Moral Feelings.
- ↑ † Dr. T. Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind.
- ↑ * Dr. T. Brown. He gives a most striking illustration of this assertion. "How pathetically, and almost sublimely, does one of the saints of the Romish Church express the importance of affection to happiness, who, when speaking of the great enemy of mankind whose situation might seem to present so many other conceptions of misery, singles out this one circumstance, and says, 'How sad is the state of that being condemned to love nothing!'"