The Literati of New York/No. III/Christopher Pease Cranch
The Reverend C. P. Cranch is one of the least intolerable of the school of Boston transcendentalists — and, in fact, I believe that he has at last "come out from among them," abandoned their doctrines (whatever they are) and given up their company in disgust. He was at one time one of the most noted, and undoubtedly one of the least absurd contributors to "The Dial," but has reformed his habits of thought and speech, domiciliated himself in New York, and set up the easel of an artist in one of the Gothic chambers of the University.
About two years ago a volume of "Poems by Christopher Pease Cranch" was published by Carey & Hart. It was most unmercifully treated by the critics, and much injustice, in my opinion, was done to the poet. He seems to me to possess unusual vivacity of fancy and dexterity of expression, while his versification is remarkable for its accuracy, vigor, and even for its originality of effect. I might say, perhaps, rather more than all this, and maintain that he has imagination if he would only condescend to employ it, which he will not, or would not until lately — the word-compounders and quibble concoctors of Frogpondium [Boston] having inoculated him with preference for Imagination's half sister, the Cinderella, Fancy. Mr. Cranch has seldom contented himself with harmonious combinations of thought. There must always be, to afford him perfect satisfaction, a certain amount of the odd, of the whimsical, of the affected, page 19of the bizarre. He is as full of absurd conceits as Cowley or Donne, with this difference, that the conceits of these latter are Euphuisms beyond redemption — flat, irremediable, self-contented nonsensicalities, and in so much are good of their kind; but the conceits of Mr. Cranch are, for the most part, conceits intentionally manufactured, for conceit's sake, out of the material for properly imaginative, harmonious, proportionate, or poetical ideas. We see every moment that he has been at uncommon pains to make a fool of himself.
But perhaps I am wrong in supposing that I am at all in condition to decide on the merits of Mr. C.'s poetry, which is professedly addressed to the few. "Him we will seek," says the poet —
"Him we will seek, and none but him,
Whose inward sense hath not grown dim;
Whose soul is steeped in Nature's tinct,
And to the Universal linked;
Who loves the beauteous Infinite
With deep and ever new delight,
And carrieth where'er he goes
The inborn sweetness of the rose,
The perfume as of Paradise —
The talisman above all price —
The optic glass that wins from far
The meaning of the utmost star —
The key that opes the golden doors
Where earth and heaven have piled their stores —
The magic ring, the enchanter's wand —
The title-deed to Wonder-Land —
The wisdom that o'erlooketh sense,
The clairvoyance of Innocence."
This is all very well, fanciful, pretty and neatly turned — all with the exception of the two last lines, and it is a pity they were not left out. It is laughable to see that the transcendental poets, if beguiled for a minute or two into respectable English and common sense, are always sure to remember their cue just as they get to the end of their song, which, by way of salvo, they then round off with a bit of doggerel about "wisdom that o'erlooketh sense" and "the clairvoyance of Innocence." It is especially observable that, in adopting the cant of thought, the cant of phraseology is adopted at the same instant. Can Mr. Cranch, or can anybody else, inform me why it is that, in the really sensible opening passages of what I have here quoted, he employs the modern, and only in the final couplet of goosetherumfoodle makes use of the obsolete terminations of verbs in the third person singular, present tense ?
One of the best of Mr. Cranch's compositions is undoubtedly his poem on Niagara. It has some natural thoughts, and grand ones, suiting the subject; but then they are more than half-divested of their nature by the attempt at adorning them with [column 2:]oddity of expression. Quaintness is an admissible and important adjunct to ideality — an adjunct whose value has been long misapprehended — but in picturing the sublime it is altogether out of place. What idea of power, of grandeur, for example, can any human being connect even with Niagara, when Niagara is described in language so trippingly fantastical, so palpably adapted to a purpose, as that which follows?
"I stood upon a speck of ground;
Before me fell a stormy ocean.
I was like a captive bound;
And around
A universe of sound
Troubled the heavens with ever-quivering motion.
"Down, down forever — down, down forever —
Something falling, falling, falling;
Up, up forever — up, up, forever,
Resting never,
Boiling up forever,
Steam-clouds shot up with thunder-bursts appalling."
It is difficult to conceive anything more ludicrously out of keeping than the thoughts of these stanzas and the petit-maître, fidgety, hop-skip-and-jump air of the words and the Liliputian parts of the versification.
A somewhat similar metre is adopted by Mr. C. in his "Lines on Hearing Triumphant Music," but as the subject is essentially different, so the effect is by no means so displeasing. I copy one of the stanzas as the noblest individual passage which I can find among all the poems of its author.
"That glorious strain!
Oh, from my brain
I see the shadows flitting like scared ghosts.
A light — a light
Shines in to-night
Round the good angels trooping to their posts,
And the black cloud is rent in twain
Before the ascending strain."
Mr. Cranch is well educated, and quite accomplished. Like Mr. Osborn, he is musician, painter and poet, being in each capacity very respectably successful.
He is about thirty-three or four years of age; in height, perhaps five feet eleven; athletic; front face not unhandsome — the forehead evincing intellect, and the smile pleasant; but the profile is marred by the turning up of the nose, and, altogether is hard and disagreeable. His eyes and hair are dark brown — the latter worn short, slightly inclined to curl. Thick whiskers meeting under the chin, and much out of keeping with the shirt-collar à la Byron. Dresses with marked plainness. He is married.
(Notes: Briggs' article on "John Waters" (Henry Cary) appears in the Broadway Journal for January 25, 1845, pp. 55-56.)