The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-29 00:00:00

f ittraturt. The Passionate Pilgrim; or, Eros and Anteros. By Henry J. Thurstan. London : and Hall. Is old times, when men were in love and the passion of celebration was str'ng upon them, they could be content with a rough-hewn copy of verses or with carving the beloved name in the bark of an old tree. But the art of speech has made great advances, and now Orlando publishes his octavo volume. When he lived in the Ardenne forest, he tagged his rhymes in honour of his mistress, and not of himself. But he writes differently now. The art of celebration has been so much improved that Rosalind's name, which appeared so absurdly often in her lover's first essay, has almost disappeared in his latest effu sions, and if these have a fault, it is rather the too frequent occurrence of Orlando's. He is also much more analytical and philosophical than he used to be, and in telling his love-tale takes oc casion to solve the mystery of existence by the way. Moreover, he is so learned in the poets that he has some ready-made dainty phrase from one or other of them for every delicate thought and fancy with which love can inspire him. In Ardenne he had words of his own, but they were much less refined; perhaps he loved as much, but he did not so copiously describe it. Mr. Thurstan does not himself pretend that he has anything new to tell the world. He has been in love, and has been disappointed. Before he left the nursery he loved Desiree. Her image made his childhood happy, and was the guardian of his purity through all the temptations of youth. When the time came, he put the deci sive question, and was refused. Since then he has struggled with the crossness of his destiny, with thoughts of suicide. This is the whole story. It contains, he acknowledges, nothing of which we have not heard before. To those who asks, why he publishes it, he can only answer, "tie fire burns." There was nothing new in Dante's passion for Beatrice; the "In Memo riam" is a very old story. Mr. Thurstan does not write for applause nor for the instruction of the world, but to ease his heart— To speak my grief is more than fame, T utter love more sweet than praise. This pleasure in utterance is no doubt natural to one who feels that he possesses a precious treasure of experience. Divitiis solum ineubuisse repertis is not less selfish and criminal when the treasure is spiritual than when it is material. But can such treasures be communicated by mere verbal utterance ? True love is proverbially unutterable. It cannot be put into words, and yet the man who has experienced it is for ever unconsciously revealing it, even though he does not speak of it ; perhaps it cannot be uttered in words without being diminished. It seems to us, therefore, that the impulse to talk about such a passion as Mr. Thurstan describes should be resisted. Men should not, as a general rule, make a confidant of the public, nor squeeze their hearts into octavo volumes. If " the fire burns," there are fire-engines. Some rare men have feelings so strong and deep that they can interpret the feelings of other men to themselves, and hit upon words so apt that other men find themselves constrained to adopt them. Mankind itself gives an imprimatur to such men's personal narratives. The general prohibition i s suspen d e d f or them. But Mr. I hurstan is not one of this very small number. Ile is a very intelligent man; a man of much reading, much reflection, and some fancy. But there is a certain weakness about him ; he depends too much on other thinkers to follow in the steps of Dante. In the " Divine Comedy " we have the loves of a poet ; this volume contains the loves of a dilettante. True poets have not generally been great readers of poetry ; Coleridge has said that it is injurious to them to be so. (in the other hand, the constant and exclusive read ing of poetry inspires men who have no poetical commission with a feeble, short-lived inspiration which makes them seem to themselves to be poets, or at l east ta k es away t h e power of writing prose. Such men, unable to attain to song, and at the sam e time unable from habit to part with THE PRESS, MAY 29, 1858. measures, rhythms, and poetical embellishments' fall into an ungraceful and wearisome sing -song, which is sometimes ridiculous, at all times un pleasing, and in some cases, particularly where close reasoning or a sober statement of facts is required by the subject, toositively offensive and odious. Mr. Thurstan belongs to this class. He is devotedly fond of poetry. His ear drinks in verbal felicities and rhythmical melodies with an insatiable delight. Nor is his taste less pure than it is strong. lie has studied the greatest poets with the greatest ardour. He quotes the poets of antiquity with no pedantic spirit : his reverence for them, we are sure, is genuine ; his acquaintance with them is not superficial. The poets of Italy and Germany are not strange to him ; those who have honoured our own tongue, and who are honoured by those who speak it, have no more ardent admirer and no more diligent student than Mr. Thurstan. Nor is his reading entirely confined to the poets. A few philosophers and moralists, who have written an eloquent and musical style, receive a share of his attention. But, on the whole, the literature he cultivates is the literature of excitement and enthusiasm. Ile is always struggling, always revolving the weightiest questions, never at rest. And as he never rests, so he seems never to work with all his might. his philosophical investigations are carried on in a luxurious manner, and then he wonders that they end in disappointment. He is captivated by the sublime sound of some well turned maxim, attempts to practise it, discovers it to be untrue, and then is plunged into the deepest despair. Ile labours to follow the poets in their flights, striving anxiously, like Words worth, to commune with nature, and to ascend the heavens like Dante; meanwhile, the com mon life of men, those familiar things which are not written in books, escape his notice. Ile forgets to live, in labouring to dream. It is possible to be too serious in this world. The questions which Mr. Thurstan propounds to us are very solemn, and ought by all means to be answered. But the man who should not suffer them, as Mr. Thurstan does, to absorb him, but should dare to be merry and happy in the midst of such awful mysteries, would, it seems to us, be likely to bring much more vigour, a freshness more unimpaired, a more un dimmed discernment to the investigation of them. Those who cannot rest can seldom work to any purpose; those who are always serious, always solving the mystery of life, seldom make much progress towards their goal. We like to think how cheerily Shakespeare, " prince of f , ood fellows," laughed at these heavy Dr. aunts :- I'll tell thee what, Gratiano, There is a sort oimen whose visages Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond. Luther, too, when assailed by any of these solemn men, used to say, "Don't you think the " subject might be discussed to more advantage " over a pot of beer ?"—" the devil being a " proud spirit," he used to give as his reason, " who can bear anything better than being " laughed at." Such a reply would, indeed, be merely inso lent, if the questioner were really in earnest. But we cannot persuade ourselves that Mr. Thurstan, with his profusion of vague language, rhetorical argumentation, and glittering imagery, is properly in earnest. He has that impulsive ness which keeps out earnestness by persona ting it. His sorrow, only sorrow's shade, Keeps real sorrow far away. These verses ought not literally to be applied to Mr. Thurstan, for there is no reason to question the sincerity of the sorrow which he lays before the public in this volume, but we are strongly reminded of them by some of his drowsy and highflown disquisitions on fate, and Providence, and human life. The misfortune of having no vocabulary but a poetical one, cannot be better illustrated than by the following wonderful description of the effect of Aristotle's Ethics upon a boy : A translation of Aristotle's " Nikomachean Ethics," drawn forth one morning from a corner of my father's library, first broke these clouds a little. That great, lor.lly morality, presented in a form so severe and dissimilar, even from Cicero's treatment, impressed the boy with a vague same of incomprehensible awe : a blind reverence. 511 Among these Titanic shapes of Virtue and of Vice, ranked in vast series by Aristotle's scientific method, and converg• ing to the high vision of Theoretic Happiness, I felt like a child wandering through the Sphinx avenue of Thebes and putting questions to Memnon. It is with such tawdry embellishments that a dream-fed imagination decks a very trivial inci dent. The boy dawdled among the bookcases, and looked into the old translation, in which he saw the names of the virtues and vices printed with capital letters, as if they were persons. They interested him for a moment, but he soon found that the book had little amusement for a dawdler, and threw it down. Such a very natural feeling becomes in poetical phraseology " a vague sense of incomprehensible " awe : a blind reverence." This same blind and distant reverence is the highest and most poetical feeling, we imagine, which Mr. Thurstan can manage to entertain t'or books whidi, like Aristotle, require close and methodical study, and aftbrd no pleasure to the ear or the fancy. Lectionern sine delectatione negligo is, we fancy, Mr. Thurstan's maxim. We have spoken chiefly in dispraise of this book, because, as we read it, disapprobation decidedly preponderates in our minds. The dis tinction between poetry and prose is disregarded in it, and that distinction we consider to be founded in the nature of things. This great error betrays Mr. Thurstan sometimes into ridiculous magniloquence, as when he talks of the " expectant silence of the central cricket field " ; sometimes into odious affectation, as when he finds the word "worthiness" too common, and must needs say " worthihood "; or when he writes " childly" for "childlike." Yet he is, beyond doubt, an accomplished man, and if he could have told his history in simple lan guage, it would have been deeply interesting. There are passa g es of genuine eloquence, in which his deep veneration for great authors, which seems to us a more deeply-seated passion in him than his love for Desiree, finds vigorous expression : I have spoken (he says) of the master-writers as sove reigns each over his own separate star. But we may con ceive them also a glorious company, such as Dante met in the emerald meadow—tueu of more than our stature, and bearing on their faces the calm of an immortal sadness, and the acailes of eternal delight. Below the high rock on a hich, as one of themselves long ago sang, they stand around excellence, they see meu contending in the unpro fi!able strife, or traversing the dusty highways of earth ; but sometimes a few, and chiefly the young, strike off from the crowd and climb the high rock, and are nut checked by the "soul-corroding labour," but gain the summit, and the holy throng stands there and reaches them friendly hands, and each accepts the welcome from that master spirit with whom his own soul is most in communion, and speaks with him awhile apart, and goes down towards the other labourers on the meadow of life strengthened, and perhaps wi!h new aims for the labour from the inter course with the immortal ; and some great sentence of wisdom or melcalioas counsel that he has learned above is on his lips as he leaps down the crag; and the many smile as he joins them on the highway, and he is silent, but carries with him an inner music in his heart to his labour. And then, if the youth finds or meets the Desired, his lips are again unsealed, and he teaches her what he had learned on that lofty place, and she repeats it to him, and he fails to know the words again, they come so changed from her lips, deepened in their wisdom, more musical in their melody, sweeter iu their sweetness. There are some Platonic touches in this vision, while the phrase "melodious counsel" curiously marks the author's weakness. lie de pends too much upon the " holy poets ;" it is strange that he should fall into this error, since he himself has undergone so much passion and has travelled through life, as he tells us, under a sun and stars of his own, under the blue heaven of Love and the constellations of Love. Men commonly care for poets less when they have been themselves initiated into poets' lore. "Every man who has loved," says Arthur Helps, " thinks that nothing but conceits and pretty " words have been said about love by other " people." Mr. Thurstan greatly injures the effect of his love-tale by importing so many foreign phrases to describe it. Alas for the man who must needs borrow words to describe his mistress ! His billets-doux will be plagiarized, or he will court by proxy. Our dilletante is fur too learned a lover. We might paraphrase the dissenting preacher's triumphant appeal to St. Paul against learned preachers, and ask, What does Cupid know of Greek ? We can hardly wonder at Mr. Thurstan's ill-success with Desir6e. He is almost capable of proposing in Latin verse.