1872.]
Diversions of the Echo Club.
cism. There is just enough of my own sentiment and poetical manner in it, to show me how monstrously blind I have been in not perceiving that scores of clever fellows may write the same things, if they should choose. I ought to relapse into the corner of a country newspaper.
The Ancient. Take heart, my dear boy! We all begin with sentiment and melodious rhythm,—or what seems to us to be such. We all discover the same old metaphors over again, and they are as new to us as if they had never been used before. Very few young poets have the slightest presentiment of their coming development. They have the keenest delight, the profoundest satisfaction, with their crudest works. With knowledge comes the sense of imperfection, which increases as they rise in performance. Remember that the Gannet is five or six years older than you, and can now write in cold blood what only comes from the summer heat of your mind.
Galahad. I understand you, and don't mean to be discouraged. But Zoïlus is fully avenged, now.
Zoïlus. I'll prove it by my notice of your next poem in the ———. Let us turn to our remaining models. Whatever may be thought of them at home, they have all made a very positive impression in England; how do you account for it, Ancient?
The Ancient. I can only guess at an explanation, apart from the merits which three of them certainly possess. While the average literary culture in England was perhaps never so high as now, the prevalent style of writing was never so conventional. The sensational school, which has been so popu- lar here as well as there, is beginning to fatigue the majority of readers, yet it still spoils their enjoyment of simple, honest work; so, every new appearance in literature, which is racy, which carries the flavor of a fresh soil with it, unconventional yet seemingly natural, neither suggesting the superficial refinement of which they are surfeited nor the nobler refinement which they have forgotten how to relish, all such appearances, I suspect, furnish just the change they crave.
The Gannet. But the changes of popular taste in the two countries are very similar. This is evident in the cases of Bret Harte and Hay; but Walt Whitman seems to have a large circle of enthusiastic admirers in England, and only some half-dozen disciples among us. Do you suppose that the passages of his "Leaves of Grass," which are prose catalogues to us, or the phrases which are our slang, have a kind of poetical charm there, because they are not understood?
Zoïlus. As Tartar or Mongolian "Leaves of Grass" might have to us? Very likely. There are splendid lines and brief passages in Walt Whitman: there is a modern, half-Bowery-boy, half-Emersonian apprehension of the old Greek idea of physical life, which many take to be wholly new on account of the singular form in which it is presented. I will even admit that the elements of a fine poet exist in him, in a state of chaos. It is curious that while he proclaims his human sympathies to be without bounds, his intellectual sympathies should be so narrow. There never was a man at once so arrogant, and so tender towards his fellow-men.
The Ancient. You have very correctly described him. The same art which he despises would have increased his power and influence. He forgets that the poet must not only have somewhat to say, but must strenuously acquire the power of saying it most purely and completely. A truer sense of art would have prevented that fault which has been called immorality, but is only a coarse, offensive frankness.
The Gannet. Let us divide our labors. There is only one name apiece: how shall we apportion them?
Zoïlus. Take Joaquin Miller, and give Walt Whitman to the Ancient. Choose of these two, Galahad!
Galahad (opening the paper). Bret Harte.
Zoïlus. Then Hay remains to me.
