The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866

Beyond the Barkpeeling, where the woods are mingled hemlock, beech, and birch, the languid midsummer note of the Black-throated Blue-Back falls on my ear. "Twea, twea, twea-e-e!" in the upward slide, and with the peculiar z-ing of certain insects, but not destitute of a certain plaintive cadence. It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in all the woods. I feel like reclining upon the dry leaves at once. Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little brown mistress. He is not the bird you would send to the princess to "cheep and twitter twenty million loves"; she would go to sleep while he was piping. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating now and then his listless, indolent strain. His back and crown are dark blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a white spot on each wing.

Here and there I meet the Black and White Creeping-Warbler, whose fine strain reminds me of hair-wire. It is unquestionably the finest bird-song to be heard. Few insect strains will compare with it in this respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter, being very delicate and tender.

That sharp, interrupted, but still continued warble, which, before one has learned to discriminate closely, he is apt to confound with the Red-eyed Vireo's, is that of the Solitary Warbling Vireo,—a bird slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy strain. I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his eye.

But the declining sun and the deepening shadows admonish me that this ramble must be brought to a close, even though only the leading characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a secluded swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great purple orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of lichens and mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger growths. Every bush and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most rich and fantastic of liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded moss festoons the branches or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every twig looks a century old, though green leaves tip the end of it. A young yellow birch has a venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at ease under such premature honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by hands for some solemn festival.

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols.

LAST DAYS OF WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

PART III

CONCLUSION

Landor has frequently been ridiculed for insisting upon an orthography peculiar at present to himself, and this ridicule has been bestowed most mercilessly, because of the supposition that he was bent upon revolutionizing the English language merely for the sake of singularity. But Landor has logic on his side, and it would be wise to heed authoritative protests against senseless innovations that bid fair to destroy the symmetry of words, and which, fifty years hence, will render the tracing of their derivation an Herculean task, unless Trenches multiply in proportion to the necessities of the times. If I ever wished the old lion to put forth all the majesty of his indignation, I had only to whisper the cabalistic words, "Phonetic spelling!" Yet Landor was not very exacting. In the "Last Fruit off an Old Tree," he says, through his medium, Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and wrote differently from the generality of the present, follow him, though alone, rather than the many. But in pronunciation we are not indulged in this latitude of choice; we must pronounce as those do who favor us with their audience." Landor only claimed to write as the best of others do, and in his own name protests to Southey against misconstruction. "One would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue; another, as modernizing; a third, as antiquating it. Wheras" (Landor's spelling) "I am trying to underprop, not to undermine; I am trying to stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trimming and flouncing; I am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good ones, and good ones accord with themselves. If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any reason why nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are imperfect, must we never make an effort to bring them a few steps nearer to what is preferable?"

It is my great good fortune to possess a copy of Landor's works made curious and peculiarly valuable by the author's own revisions and corrections, and it is most interesting to wander through these volumes, wherein almost every page is a battle-field between the writer and his arch-enemy, the printer. The final l in still and till is ignominiously blotted out; exclaim is written exclame; a d is put over the obliterated a in steady; t is substituted t is substituted for the second s in confessed and kindred words; straightway is shorn of gh; pontiff is allowed but one f. Landor spells honor in what we call the modern way, without the u; and the r and e in sceptre change places. A dash of the pen cancels the s in isle and the final e in wherefore, therefore, &c. Simile is terminated with a y; the imperfect of the verbs to milk, to ask, etc., is spelled with a t; whereat loses its second e, and although is deprived of its last three letters. To his poem of "Guidone and Lucia" has been added this final verse:—

"The sire had earned with gold his son's releaseAnd led him home; at home he died in peace.His soul was with Lucia, and he praidTo meet again soon, soon, that happier maid.This wish was granted, for the Powers aboveAbound in mercy and delight in love."

And to this verse is appended the following note: "If the pret. and partic. of lay is laid, of say, said, that of pray must be praid. We want a lexiconomist."

In his lines entitled "New Style," which are a burlesque on Wordsworth, Landor introduces a new verse:—

"Some one (I might have asked her who)Has given her a locket;I, more considerate, brought her twoPotatoes in each pocket."

Landor has been accused of an unwarrantable dislike to the manufacture of words; but so far from true is this, that I have known him to indulge with great felicity in words of his own coining, when conversation chanced to take a humorous turn. He makes Sam. Johnson say that "all words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they are not wanted should be dismissed." Tooke, in the same conversation, cites Cicero as one who, not contented with new spellings, created new words; but Tooke further declares, that "only one valuable word has been received into our language since my birth, or perhaps since yours. I have lately heard appreciate for estimate." To which Johnson replies: "Words taken from the French should be amenable, in their spelling, to English laws and regulations. Appreciate is a good and useful one; it signifies more than estimate or value; it implies 'to value justly.'"

Taking up one day Dean Trench's excellent little book on "The Study of Words," which lay on my table, Landor expressed a desire to read it. He brought it back not long afterward, enriched with notes, and declared himself to have been much pleased with the manner in which the Dean had treated a subject so deeply interesting to himself. I have singled out a few of these notes, that student of etymology may read the criticisms of so able a man. Dean Trench is taken to task for a misuse of every where in making two words of it. Landor puts the question, "Is the Dean ignorant that everywhere is one word, and where is no substantive?" Trench asserts that caprice is from capra, "a goat," whereupon his critic says, "No,—then it would be capracious. It is from caper—capere." To retract, writes Trench, means properly, as its derivation declares, no more than to handle over again, to reconsider; Landor declares that "it means more. Retrahere is to draw back." But he very vehemently approves of the Dean's remarks on the use of the word talents. We should say "a man of talents," not "of talent," for that is nonsense, though "of a talent" would be allowable.

"Κοσμος is both 'world' and 'ornament,' hence 'cosmetic,'" writes Landor in answer to a doubt expressed by Trench whether the well-known quotation from St. James, "The tongue is a world of iniquity," could not also be translated, as some maintain, "the ornament of iniquity." Making use of the expression "redolent of scorn" in connection with words that formerly expressed sacred functions and offices, Landor adds: "Gray is highly poetical in his 'redolent of joy and youth.' The word is now vilely misused daily." "By and bye," writes the Dean. "Why write bye?" asks his commentator. Once or twice Landor credits Horne Tooke with what the Dean gives as his own, and occasionally scores an observation as old. "Why won't people say messager?" he demands. "By what right is messenger made out of message?"

"Have you nothing else for the old man to read? have you nothing American?" Landor inquired upon returning Trench. Desiring to obtain the verdict of one so high in authority, I gave him Drake's "Culprit Fay," and some fugitive verses by M. C. Field, whose poems have never been collected in book form. Of the latter's "Indian Hunting the Buffaloes," "Night on the Prairie," "Les Très Marias," and others, known to but few readers now, Landor spoke in high commendation, and this praise will be welcome to those friends of "Phazma" still living, and still loving the memory of him who died early, and found, as he wished, an ocean grave. With "The Culprit Fay" came a scrap of paper on which was written: "The Culprit Fay is rich in imagination,—few poems more so. Drake is among the noblest of names, and this poem throws a fresh lustre on it." Observing in this poem a misuse of the exclamation "Oh!" Landor remarked, "'Oh!' properly is an expression of grief or pain. 'O!' without the aspirate may express pleasure or hope." Current literature rarely makes any distinction between the two, and even good writers stumble through carelessness.

Style in writing was one of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim, "What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down, saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very fine, but I cannot understand it. It is beyond me." He had little mercy to bestow upon transcendentalists, though he praised Emerson one day,—a marvellous proof of high regard when it is considered how he detested the school to which Emerson belongs. "Emerson called on me when he was in Florence many years ago, and a very agreeable visit I had from him. He is a very clever man, and might be cleverer if he were less sublimated. But then you Americans, practical as you are, are fond of soaring in high latitudes." Carlyle in his last manner had the same effect upon Landor's nerves as a discord in music produces upon a sensitive ear. "Ah," said he with a quizzical smile, "'Frederick the Great' convinces me that I write two dead languages,—Latin and English!"

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

For December, 1858.