Characteristics of the Genius and Writings of L. E. L./Remarks on Ethel Churchill
Remarks on "Ethel Churchill," with Extracts.
"Ethel Churchill," as a whole, is not marked by a concentration of individual interest like "Francesca Carrara." It rather resembles "Romance and Reality" in its detached sketches and episodes; the scenes are, however, more highly wrought than in the former work, and the whole is pervaded with a richer colouring. With the many, probably, "Ethel Churchill" would be the favourite. There is less of the ideal, more of the actual; less of the poet's inner and abstract life, with more of the outward world’s experience and ways; fewer of the beings of the mind, with more of life's every-day characters; while these are depicted rather by the lights of the author's genius, its fancy, wit, and acute perception, than marked by any of its usual shadows of poetical melancholy and sad reflection. The atmosphere of the gay world has steeped these pages in its roseate hues, and we everywhere find the echoes of fashionable circles: many of the delineations of society are strikingly brilliant, and bear witness both to the artist's philosophical and actual knowledge of the world. Wit sheds its brilliance over many a page, though sometimes varied with a shade of satire,—gentle, indeed, yet how truthful!—cast over all from the heart's conviction of the world's utter vanity.
These volumes may truly be called a portrait gallery of characters, which for the most part are admirable specimens of their respective classes. With the exception of Lady Marchmont, they may find their prototypes among the varied scenes of social life. While they owe much of their interest to the poetical manner of their delineation, they also appear before us, not as the mere automata of fiction, but as actual existences animated with the life-breath of thought, feeling and action. This has required the master skill of the author, who, in placing before us the beings of the mind, has not only invested them with fancied attributes, but moulded them into very personifications of certain qualities and characteristics, which are manifested in their true nature amidst suitable circumstances,—portraits, in fact, whose realities we may often encounter in our every-day intercourse with mankind.
Take, for example, Lord Marchmont; he stands out as the robed and elected representative of his class,—that class, the pettiest, most self-loving, and self-privileged egotists to be found throughout the proprietorships of human nature. His character is the condensed and preserved essence of selfishness. How is this exemplified in every scene where his rigid and formal figure appears before us, looking and proving incapable of the slightest impulse of generous, or kindly, or considerate feeling,-as if his very soul were petrified into insensibility by the continual action of self-love! We scarcely wonder to hear such a man command his wife to put off her mourning for her dearest friend, because the husband of that friend was in the Opposition, and he (Lord Marchmont) would not have the reigning Minister of the day inquire the cause of Lady Marchmont's melancholy dress and appearance! We cannot be surprised even to find such a character, after uttering the sentence of final separation from his repentant and humbled wife, hurrying from her apartment, lest his delay should spoil the first goût of some delicacy he had ordered for supper.
We leave him after this, without regret, to his fate; sympathy is alike unnecessary and impossible. Like all egotists of his class, Lord Marchmont, from his self-revolving pivot, regards his own petty feelings and small interests through the magnifying medium of self-love; while the joys and sorrows and welfare of others, however vast or important, he puts far away from his sight, or with the cold hand of indifference places them at the wrong end of the telescope of observation. Thus does selfishness effectually preclude any due concern for, or sympathy with the lot of our fellow-creatures. Fearfully will the neglect of the divine law of love—"Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you"—bring under condemnation characters who resemble that so forcibly delineated in the conduct of Lord Marchmont.
Constance Courtenaye is a beautifully drawn and touching portrait of a far different class to the character just mentioned. Her nature is one that interests all the best feelings, and appeals to all the deepest sympathies of the heart. Although we are told of no positive beauty, yet we feel throughout her history the spirit-loveliness which hangs around her delicate form. We perceive its charm as we watch her sweet expression, her purity, her fragility; and when we are told "that we must believe in angels as we gaze upon her face," so softly shadowed by her long, pale, golden hair, we are at once reminded of some of the hallowed countenances in Raphael's pictures, which do indeed appear as if their radiance were reflected from angelic beings. There was, too, a spirit light of tenderest emotion in the eyes of Constance, while "her own peculiarly sweet and pleading smile seemed to implore kindness," and spoke, too, of that peace within, which arose from her truly Christian character shedding its own soft lustre like lamplight over flowers, on every trait of conduct, and showing forth new beauties not else observable.
We scarcely know whether the touching depth, purity and devotedness of her woman's heart is more exquisitely shown in her love to her cousin, or in her affection to her father. So gentle, so disinterested was the former attachment, it is described as "the deepest and holiest feeling of her nature next to her love for her parent. It was love in its gentlest, tenderest, least earthly essence: it was hopeless, for in her humility she had never dreamed of a return. It was unalloyed by any meaner motive of vanity or interest, and surrendered its whole existence in a spirit of the purest and richest devotion." How is this exemplified in the scene with her father on the morning of her marriage with that cousin whom she so utterly loved, and who, though a former attachment rankled in his heart, had been induced, by family reasons, to wed the gentle Constance? "I never dreamt," were her words, "that one so beautiful and gifted could waste a thought on myself; but it was happiness to hope that he might be happy,–to think of him, to pray for him,—and now to know that he loves me (for he would not marry me without);"—how does the pure and trusting nature of woman shine forth in these few simple words!—"yet his love scarcely fills me with a deeper joy than does yours, my father!"
"As the door closed after Lord Norborne, Constance fell on her knees, and half said, half wept a thanksgiving for her entire happiness." Thus in the hour of joy did her Christian feelings bless the Gracious Hand whose Divine support she would soon need in the hour of trial.
Her love now showed itself in devotedness to her husband; "she would have made any sacrifice to have gratified his slightest wish; or rather she would not have made any, since nothing could have appeared a sacrifice for him."
"In works of love, and these alone,
How restless, how minute,"
and how constant were all her tender cares and womanly kindnesses! But in the midst of her happiness that entire love which can only be answered by love, finds that it is not fully requited. Kind and attentive as her husband was, the impress of his earlier attachment is visible on his spirit to the searching eye and subtle instinct of love. His kindness "too often appeared to Constance as if it had something to make up to its object." With most touching pathos is depicted her sweet openness to Lady Marchmont, whom, for the moment, she fancied had been her rival. Her own self-depreciation softly blends with the devoted wife's appeal to the generosity of one more gifted and beautiful than herself: "Will you not leave to me the little that my unwearied affection may gain of his heart! Tell me, (and she knelt at Henrietta's feet) that you will not seek to win him again from me!"
Although mistaken as to the object of her husband’s attachment, the impression remains in her heart, and there enkindles that generous feeling which desires only the happiness of its loved one. Never was such feeling more sweetly embodied, or beautifully delineated. When thinking and speaking of her own, to herself, evidently approaching death, Constance rejoices even in the thought that her husband will be spared the bitterness of love's separation. "How could I bear," she says, "to dwell for a moment on the agony of sorrow that he must feel did he love me with a love like mine own, and had to part? It soothes me to feel that he will be spared that bitter, that terrible despair." With a self-forgetting affectionate forethought does she in her dying letter to her father seek to promote her husband's future happiness, praying even "that she whom he marries may be to Lord Norborne as a daughter." "My father, I charge you with the care of his happiness; think that it is the last, the dearest wish of your child. His ties will become yours, and a new growth of kindly interests and warm affections will spring up under the shadow of the old. If, as I sometimes hope, the departed spirit is permitted to retain its affections in another world, how tenderly will I watch over you!"
This is, indeed, a triumph over self, which only genuine Christian principle could achieve; and to this sacred influence all that is amiable and lovely and pure in Constance Courtenaye is throughout her brief life's history ascribed. This, too, supports her on her death-bed,—a scene, how pathetically given and, oh! how different in its light of immortal hope from the dying hour of Guido, elsewhere described! Sweetly does she commend her husband and father to each other's mutual care: her only request to that husband so purely and devotedly loved, and the only words in which she trusts herself to breathe aught of that affection-(yet what a volume of meaning lies therein!)—speak to the inmost soul—"Love my father, were it only for the great love I have borne to you."
The source whence her spirit's strength had been derived is shown to us in her last act,—the gift of her own Bible to her father,—and in the words which accompany that gift, together with the language of her dying letter: "This has been my constant companion; let it henceforth be yours: may it teach you, as it has taught me, the blessed hope in which I die. We shall meet again in a happier and better world. Henrietta, dear and kind friend, think sometimes of the peace and faith which support me even in death. Father, my beloved father, could I leave you as I do, with words of comfort, but for that divine belief whose truth is immortal?"***"Not in vain have those divine words been spoken; I die in their glorious faith, and in their cheering hope."
We are left to rejoice in, rather than regret, the early death of the gentle, the lovely, the Christian Constance. We feel that it was far happier for her trusting though wounded spirit to find its home of rest far away from the heart-withering realities of what, to her, was a wearying world:—
"Then hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things,—
Her quiet is secure;
No thorns can pierce her tender feet,
Whose life was like the violet sweet,
And like the jasmine pure.
Her nature to its inmost part
Had faith refined, and to her heart
A peaceful cradle given,—
Calm as the dew-drop's, free to rest
Within a breeze-fanned rose's breast,
Till it exhales to heaven."
Wordsworth.
The other characters pourtrayed in these volumes have each their own separate interest. To many readers the real and celebrated personages of the time, skilfully introduced and appropriately delineated, will be most attractive. The wit, so piquant and renowned, of Lady Wortley Montague; the acute susceptibility and bitter self-regard of Pope, alike the poet and egotist; the political generalship and predominant qualities of the statesman, Walpole; are all most graphically given in their circumstantial details, and most accurately wrought out in their varied combinations.
With the other beings of the author's mind, excepting Walter Maynard, we cannot now linger, as we have elsewhere commented on the melancholy history of Lady Marchmont; while for Ethel Churchill and Norborne Courtenaye, we feel from the first an irresistible conviction that we shall somehow leave them comfortably together; there is nothing in either to excite our strongest sympathies. These are called forth by Walter Maynard, the gifted, the enthusiastic, but unfortunate young poet, who is, perhaps, mentally, but too often, a true type of his class.
A sad, yet faithful tale, indeed, is contained in the page of human history which we have now opened; its picture of a literary life is so fraught with truth and beauty, with knowledge and feeling, that we cannot refrain from examining it somewhat minutely, while we embody our quotations from these volumes as illustrations of the mental character and outward history of the young poet.
Walter Maynard is first introduced among the still valleys of his youthful home, where, though apparently leading a desultory life, he was storing his mind with materials for the future productions of a creative and poetical mind. His reflections are the natural results of his own hopes and dreams of fame's charmed futurity.
"Ay," said he, while musing over the tombstones of a village churchyard, "this rude verse long outlasts those for whom it was written. The writer, the reader, the sorrow which it embalmed have long past away; not so the verse itself. Poetry is the immortality of earth; where shall we look for our noblest thoughts and our tenderest feelings, but in its eternal pages? The spirit within me asserts its divine right; I know I am different from those who surround me. Can the gifts of which I am conscious be given to me in vain? It were a mockery of the mind's supremacy did I not believe in my own future."***
"We begin life; how buoyant, how hopeful! difficulties but bring out a healthful exertion, and obstacles stimulate by the resources they call into action. This cannot and does not last; it is not lassitude so much as discouragement that gains upon us; we feel how little we have done of all we once thought that we could do, and still more how little that we have done has answered its intention. This I believe to be experienced in every career, but more especially in a literary one. Necessarily dependent on imagination, feeling and opinion, of how exhausting a nature is both the work and the appeal of literature! Not a volume but has been the burial-place of many hopes, and the graven record of feelings never to be known again!
"Fame is bought by happiness! With what secret sorrow has that praise been received from strangers, denied to us by friends! Nothing astonishes me more than the envy which attends literary fame, and the unkindly depreciation which waits upon the writer; of every species of fame it is the most ideal and apart, and would seem to interfere with no one.****Perhaps—for the divine purpose runs through every aim of our being—the disappointment and the endurance are but sent to raise those hopes above, which else might cling too fondly to their fruition below. Sooner or later dawns upon us the conviction, that the gifts we hold most glorious were given for a higher object than personal enjoyment, or the praise which is of man. We learn to look at the future result, to acknowledge our moral responsibility, and to hope that our thoughts, destined to become parts of the human mind, will worthily fulfil the lofty duty assigned to their exercise."
And this was the career Walter Maynard now proposed to himself—a career begun under the brightest auspices of imagination, but closed amid the darkest shadows of disappointment and of hope unfulfilled. Such were the convictions whose reality he fully verified in his experience. He leaves the scene of his youthful dreams and noble aspirations to seek fame among men. He is soon destined to pine under the harsh realities of life. Necessity forces him to write for his daily bread. His own lofty and refined ideal of literature is brought down by the stern pressure of circumstances to the calculating question—Will what I have written sell? At length, worn out by the conflicts between the actual and imaginative, after having exhausted his energies of body and mind for the amusement of others, he is left to die, almost alone, neglected by all save his earliest friends, and mourning over the frequent abuse of talents of which approaching death reveals to him the true and high responsibility.
Let us, however, first follow him, from the quiet of his early abode, through some of his struggles with circumstance and misfortune. From these, alas! genius can grant no exemption; rather does it render more keenly alive to outward evil that imaginative temperament which is not only susceptible to the thorns, but prone to multiply the briars of this working-day world.
The collision of the poet's ideal hopes with the publisher's matter-of-fact mercenary proceedings is graphically described in Maynard's first interview with his bookseller:—
"It was with slow and languid steps that Walter Maynard entered a bookseller's shop; he gave in his name, and the young man behind the counter civilly asked him to wait. He sat down, and mechanically turned over some volumes that lay beside him, but their contents swam before him. The lover may tremble while waiting for the mistress on whose lip hangs the heart's doom; but I doubt whether he feels equal anxiety with the young author waiting the fiat of his publisher. One figure after another emerged from the room behind, and at each step Walter Maynard felt a cold shudder steal over him, and then he started and coloured lest his agitation should be discovered; but the shop-boy was too used to such scenes to heed them. He never looked at the white lip tremulous with hope, which was rather fear; he noticed not the drops that started on the forehead.****
"At last Walter Maynard's turn came; he entered a low, dark back-parlour, whose close and murky atmosphere seemed ominous; a little man was seated on a very high stool writing at a desk before him."
*****
The publishing autocrat of the day is then characteristically pourtrayed. Reputation, feelings, or even chastisement, were as nothing weighed in the balance against his interest; life was to him only a long sum; his ledger was his Bible, and his religion, profit. For a little while he went on writing: this he did on principle.
"'Do you think the pamphlet will suit you?' said Maynard.
"'Why, no—no,—yes, perhaps—but we must talk a little about it. You reason too much,—all young people are so fond of reasons—as if reasons were of any use.'
"'Why, mine is a dispassionate appeal to the reason of the public; my object is to convince.'
"'As if you ever convinced people by reason.'
"'But I feel it is a duty I owe to the public,' said the author.
"'Good Lord! why, my dear sir, what duty do you owe to the public? The only duty you owe is to me, your publisher. It is your duty to write what will sell, and, I tell you, reasons are unmarketable commodities.'
"'What would you have me do?' sighed Maynard, in a desponding tone.
“‘Why, pepper and salt your reasons; your pamphlet has talent, but talent is like a cucumber,—nothing without the dressing; you must be more personal.’
"'I detest personalities,' said Walter.
"'And I detest nonsense,' said the other; 'and I also detest works that wont sell. You mean to make scribbling your business?'
"'I am,' replied our young poet, 'anxious to devote my feeble services to the cause of literature.'
"'Here, take your pamphlet again; there is good material in it, but it requires the making up.'
"Walter took up his manuscript with an embarrassed and mortified air. He had written with all the enthusiasm of a patriot of one-and-twenty, who believes and who hopes; suddenly, his high profession of faith, his earnest appeal to the noblest principles, was changed into a mere question of business. Moreover, in his secret soul he despised the plan proposed; but what could he do? His forlorn garret rose visibly before him; he could not even pay its rent for the coming week. It was the first conflict between the expedient and the ideal. For the first time a bitter sense of how little consequence his speculative opinions could possibly be, rushed across him, and he held his papers with a hesitating grasp. Curl's quick eye caught the struggle, which yet he affected not to notice.
"'I must have the pamphlet by the day after to morrow,' said he; 'and to show that I have good hope of its success, here—here are ten guineas for you,' and he counted the money out upon the table.
"There was something in the ring of the coin that jarred upon Walter's ear; he was ashamed of being paid,—a false shame, and yet how natural to one both proud and sensitive!
"'Time enough,' said he, colouring, 'to pay me when my work is done.'
"'No, no,' said Curl, 'it will encourage you as a beginner. You young ones are so eager to see your selves in print.'
"'In print!'—there was a charm in that phrase which decided Walter. He took up his papers, and assured Curl that he should have sentiment and sarcasm enough by the following night.
"'Good Lord!' cried the astonished publisher; 'you are a young hand at your work. Why, you are walking off, and have left your money behind you!' ****
"Walter again pursued his way, but in a very mixed reverie; sometimes writhing under an idea of degradation in thus making a trade of his talents; and then again somewhat consoled by the pride of art; for how many felicitous and stinging epigrams arose in his mind!
"Lost in meditated satire, he arrived at the shop of Mr. Lintot. ****
"His welcome to his visitor was more than friendly,—it was paternal, as he asked so anxiously how the air of London agreed with him.
"'Terrible fog, sir,—terrible fog! You did not write your pastoral poems here? Very pretty they are; I wish every body had my taste for green fields and sheep; poetry would sell then.'
"'One portion of my volume, at all events, finds favour with you?' said Walter, very much encouraged by his reception.
"'The whole, sir—the whole. It is a charming volume; the love-verses, too; pity that people don’t care about love; nobody's in love now-a-days!'
"'But what do you say to the satires?' asked the author, not quite so elated.
"'Dangerous things, sir,—dangerous things,' said Mr. Lintot, drawing a deep breath. ****
"'But there is nothing personal in my satire,' said Walter.
"'So much the worse!' exclaimed Mr. Lintot. 'What is the use of denouncing a vice?—denounce the individual.' ****
"'And now, do you think,' asked Walter, 'that the volume I left with you is likely to give satisfaction?'
"'It is a charming book—very charming book! and I see that you are a clever young man. **I foresee that you will succeed.'
"'But about my volumes of poems?' interrupted its author.
"'Why, sir, it is hard to say,' replied the cautious publisher; 'poetry is not worth much at present; indeed, I never heard that it was. Homer begged his bread; you will excuse my little joke.'
"'I am to understand,' then, replied Maynard, 'that it does not suit you?'
"'Never draw a hasty conclusion,' answered Mr. Lintot; 'I mean to do my best for you.'
"'Do you mean to publish my poems?' cried Walter.
"'Why, you see, sir, the times are bad, and I am no speculator. I have a wife and family, and a man with a wife and family must be just before he is generous.**I appeal to your feelings, sir, whether you would drive a hard bargain with a man in my situation?'
"'I leave it entirely to yourself,' replied Maynard, despondingly.
"'Sir, I will run the risk of publishing your volume. Paper and printing are terrible things; I wish books could do without them; but I will venture. I heard you highly spoken of yesterday; we will share what profits there are, and your list of subscribers will ensure us against loss.'
"It did far more, by-the-bye, to say nothing of Sir Jasper Meredith’s secret guarantee.
"'And now business being over,' said Lintot, 'will you dine with me?'
"Walter declined the invitation, precisely because he wanted a dinner. He was also conscious that he had made a very bad bargain; but how could he chaffer and dispute about things so precious as the contents of those pages, which were the very outpourings of his heart? There were recorded dreams glorious with the future, and feelings soft and musical with the past.***He walked along those crowded streets alive but to one delicious hope; and amid poverty, labour and discouragement, still steeped to the lip in poetry.
"The fanciful fables of fairy land are but allegories of the young poet's mind when the sweet spell is upon him. Some slight thing calls up the visionary world, and all the outward and actual is for the time forgotten. It is a fever ethereal and lovely; but, like all other fevers, leaving behind weakness and exhaustion: I believe there is nothing that causes so strong a sensation of physical fatigue as the exercise of the imagination. The pulses beat too rapidly; and how cold, how depressed is the reaction!"
"And now Walter Maynard at the midnight hour is bending over a little table, while the rapid pen is slow in putting down the thoughts that crowd upon him; his cheek is flushed with eagerness, and the red lip is curved with triumph. It does not suit the scene around, but from that the mind of the young poet is far, far away. There was that desolate air about the chamber which is peculiar to an ill-furnished London room.***The young student was too much engrossed in his own charmed employ not to be insensible for a time to all external influences: he might suffer afterwards, but now his mind was his kingdom. Solitary, chilled and weary, yet the young poet hung over his page, on which was life, energy, and beauty; and under such or similar circumstances have been written those pages to which the world owes so much. A history of how and where works of imagination have been produced would be more extraordinary than the works themselves. Walter Maynard is but a type of his class."
"The life of the most successful writer has rarely been other than one of toil and privation; and here I cannot but notice a singularly absurd popular fancy that genius and industry are incompatible. The one is inherent in the other. A mind so constituted has a restlessness in its powers which forces them into activity. Take our most eminent writers, and how much actual labour must have been bestowed on their glorious offerings at the altar of their country and their fame! What a noble thing that fame is! Think what it is to be the solace of a thousand lonely hours,—to cheer the weary moments of sickness,—to fling a charm around even nature! How many are there to whom in long after-years your name will come like a note of music, who will love and honour you because you have awakened within them thoughts and feelings which stir the loftiest dreams and sweetest pulses of their nature! The poet's life is one of want and suffering, and often of mortification; but far be it from me to say that it has not its own exceeding great reward. It may be late in coming, but the claim on universal sympathy is at last allowed. The future, glorious and calm, brightens over the grave; and then for the present the golden world of imagination is around it."
We must pass over a powerfully-written description of the first night's success of Walter Maynard's tragedy.
He gains acquaintance, money and popularity; but the vanity of trivial success led him from loftier pursuits, and induced habits of extravagance which soon involved him in debt, and he became poorer than ever. Bitterly did he feel the moral degradation of writing down to the taste or prejudices of a party, or flattering the self-love of his patrons. The eagerness of youthful hope was now gone, the enthusiasm of high endeavour had been disappointed, his idol of fancied gold had proved but clay in his hour of worship. In the next picture of him at his studies we have a contrast to the one formerly given.
"'I cannot help,' said Walter, one evening, as he gazed listlessly from the window, 'reading my fate in one of those little boats now rocking on the tide, only fastened by a rope scarcely visible to the passer by. So am I tossed on the ebbing tide of life,—now in sunshine,—now in shade; seemingly free, yet in reality fettered by the strong yet slight chain of circumstances. For a small sum any passenger may enter that boat, and direct its course; and here again is similitude: I am at the beck of others; I may scarcely think my own thoughts; they must run in whatever channel public taste may choose. And that reminds me I promised Curl his pamphlet this very night. How weary I am of exhausting the resources of language in dressing up the vague common-places of party, or giving plausibility to sophisms I feel to be untrue! but it must be done; and muttering to him self,—
'For inspiration round his head,
The goddess Want her pinions spread,'
he drew his table towards him, and began to write.***At first he wrote mechanically. It was no longer the eager and impassioned writer who in his early composition forgot want, cold and misery. No, the real had eaten like rust into his soul."
******
"Composition, like everything else, feels the influence of time. At first all is poetry with the young poet; his heart is full of emotions eagerly struggling for utterance; everything suggests the exercise of his own sweet art. A leaf, a flower, the star far off in the serene midnight, a look, a word, are enough for a poem. Gradually this profusion exhausts itself, the mind grows less fanciful, and poetry is rather a power than a passion. Feelings have hardened into thoughts, and the sensations of others are no longer almost as if they had been matter of experience. The world has become real, and we have become real along with it. Our own knowledge is now the material wherewith we work; and we have gathered a stock of recollections, bitter and pleasant, which now furnish the subjects that we once created; but these do not come at the moment's notice like our former fantasies: we must be in the mood; and such mood comes but seldom to our worn and saddened spirits. Still ‘the vision and the faculty divine’ are never quite extinguished; the spiritual fire rises when all around is night, and the sad and tender emotion finds its old accustomed resource in music.
"Such was now the case with Walter Maynard; the softening influence of the quiet garden and the dreamy evening had gradually subdued him. Scenes long since forgotten had been peopling his solitude with one still cherished image paramount over all, whose eyes seemed to look upon him reproachfully."
At length a friend procures for Maynard the office of secretary to Sir George Kingston, one of the gallant wits of the day. Servitude he could submit to, but not to dishonour. His whole nature recoils from the mean deceit he was expected to countenance. He is again thrown destitute on the world with fast declining health, and with no resources but his own wearied mind and exhausted energies. Remembering his first mean lodging when he came to London, as a cheap, out-of-the-way place, he repaired thither to die uncared for and unknown.
We cannot so explain all the intermediate scenes as to impart to this brief summary the touching interest attached to the visit of Maynard's earliest and dearest friends to his dying bed. Suffice it to say, that they who were the first companions of his youthful dreams were by his side in his last moments, sympathizing in his mournful situation, and gathering many a lesson of wisdom from his dying regrets and self-accusations.
"'I cannot bear,' said Walter, at one time, 'to be here thinking over thoughts that fret my very life away. Alas! how I pine over all that was yet stored in my mind! Do you know,' continued he, with the eagerness of slight delirium, 'I am far cleverer than I was? I have felt—have thought so much. Talk of the mind exhausting itself—never! Think of the mass of material which every day accumulates! Then, experience, with its calm, clear light, corrects so many youthful fallacies; every day we feel our greater power and our higher moral responsibilities. What beautiful creations even now rush over me!—but no, no, I am dying,—I shall write no more.' * * *
"'Deeply do I feel,' said the poet, on another occasion, 'when the scattered thoughts obey my bidding no longer, and the hand once so swift to give them tangible shape lies languid at my side, that I have not done half that I ought to have done. How many hours of wasted time, how many worse than wasted, now rise up in judgment against me! And, oh, my God! have I sufficiently felt the moral responsibility of gifts like my own? Have I not questioned, sometimes too rashly, of what it was never meant mortal mind should measure? Have I not sometimes flung the passing annoyance of a wounded feeling too bitterly on my pages? I repent me of it now. Oh, my Creator!' exclaimed he, 'I am not worthy of the gifts bestowed upon me! Let me not forget, that, though this worn and fevered frame perish, my mind remains behind to influence and to benefit its race! May what was in aught evil of its creations be forgotten; may aught that was good endure to the end!'
"And so perished, in the flower of his age, in the promise of his mind, the high-minded and gifted Walter Maynard. He died poor, surrounded by the presence of life's harsh and evil allotment, but the faithful and affectionate spirit kept its own till the last.
"How many beautiful creations, how many glorious dreams, went with him to the tomb! But the unfulfilled destiny of genius is a mystery, whose solution is not of earth. It is but one of those many voices wandering in this wilderness of ours that tell us not here is our lot appointed to finish. We are here but for a space and for a season,—for a task and a time,—and the end no man knoweth. The earthly immortality of the mind is but a type of the heavenly immortality of the soul. Peace be to the beating heart and the worn spirit that had just departed—where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest!"