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THE 
 
 CHO MLUB, 
 
 And Other Literary Diversions. 
 
 BY 
 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
 1876. 
 
 t. 
 

 Copyright, 1872 attd 1876. 
 Y JAMES R. OSGOOD k CO. 
 
 University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 »— 
 
 Pack 
 Introduction v 
 
 Night the First 11 
 
 Morris, Poe, Browning. 
 
 Night the Second 34 
 
 Mrs. Sigolrney, Keats, Swinburne, Emeeson, Stedman. 
 
 Night the Third 52 
 
 Barry Cornwall, Whittier, Rossetti, Aldkich. 
 
 Night the Fourth 72 
 
 Bryant, Holmes, Willis, Tennyson. 
 
 Night the Fifth . . . . . . .93 
 
 Tvckerman, Longfellow, Stoddard, Mrs. Stoddard. 
 
 Night the Sixth 113 
 
 Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Browning, Bokkr. 
 
 Night the Seventh 132 
 
 Jean Tngelow, Buchanan Read, Julta Ward Howe, 
 Piatt, William Winter, Mrs. Piatt. 
 
IV COXTEXTS. 
 
 Night the Eighth 150 
 
 "Walt Whitman, Beet Haste, John Hav, Joaquin 
 Miller. 
 
 The Battle of the Bards 168 
 
 A Review 175 
 
 Paradise Discovered 186 
 
INTRODUCTION". 
 
 HE papers wliich make up tliis volume are 
 sufficiently described by its title. They 
 are literary "Diversions," — the product 
 of a good many random hours of thought- 
 less (or, at least, only half-thoughtful) recreation and 
 amusement, — nothing else. More than as many 
 burlesque imitations of authors, living or dead, as 
 are here contained, had been written before any 
 thought of publication was suggested. The fact that 
 there was no such original design requires that the 
 form ill which the diversions are now presented 
 should be explained to the reader. 
 
 The liabit originated, very much as it is described 
 in the " First Evening," at least twenty years ago, 
 in a small private circle. Three or four young- 
 authors found not only amusement, but an agree- 
 able relaxation from their graver tasks, in drawing 
 names and also subjects as from a lottery- wheel, and 
 improvising imitations of older and more renowned 
 poets. Nothing was further from their minds than 
 ridicule, or even incidental disparagement, of the 
 
VI IXTEODUCTION. 
 
 latter, many of whom were not only recognized, but 
 genuinely revered, by all. One form of intellectual 
 diversion gradually led to another : the parodies 
 alternated with the filling up of end-rhymes (usually 
 of the most difficult and incongruous character), 
 with the writing of double or concealed acrostics, 
 spurious C[uotations from various languages, and 
 whatever else could be devised by the ingenuity of 
 the company. I may mention that some years before 
 Mr. Lewis Carroll delighted all lovers of nonsense 
 with his ballad of " The Jabberwock," we tried pre- 
 cisely the same experiment of introducing invented 
 w'ords. The following four lines may serve as a 
 specimen of one attempt : — 
 
 " Smitten by harsh, transcetic thuds of shame, 
 My squelgcnce fades : I mogrify my bkme : 
 The lui)kin workl, that leaves me yole and blant. 
 Denies my affligance with looks askaut ! " 
 
 Of course, nothing further than amusing nonsense 
 was ever contemplated. A few of the imitations found 
 their way into print, but tliey were comparatively mmo- 
 ticed in the flood of burlesque with which the public 
 Avas then supplied from many other quarters. As a 
 participant, for several years, in a variety of fun which 
 was certainly harmless so long as it remained private, 
 I was of the opinion that very little could be made 
 public without some accompanying explanation. The 
 idea of setting the imitations in a framework of dia- 
 logue which should represent various forms of literary 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 taste and opinion seemed, first, to make the publica- 
 tion possible. But when I came to examine the 
 scattered leaves with a view to this end, I was at 
 once struck with their inadequacy to the purpose of 
 comical illustration. Removed from the genial atmos- 
 phere in which they had spontaneously grown, many 
 of them seemed withered and insipid. Many others 
 were simply parodies of particular poems, instead of 
 being burlesque reproductions of an author's manner 
 and diction. The plan demanded that they should 
 be rewritten, in consonance with the governing con- 
 ception of the work, as a whole. This was accord- 
 ingly done ; and not more tlian three or four of the 
 following poems belong to the original private " diver- 
 sions." 
 
 There is scarcely a more hazardous experiment 
 which an author can make, than to attempt to draw 
 amusement from the intellectual characteristics of his 
 contemporaries. If I had not been firmly convinced 
 that the absence of any conscious unfriendliness on 
 my part must make itself evident to many who were 
 old and honored friends, I never should have dared 
 it. In addition to this, I ventured on a number of 
 private tests, and was further assured by finding that 
 the subject of each travesty accepted his share with 
 the greatest good-nature. I have yet to learn that 
 the publication has given other than a very slight 
 momentary annoyance, and that only in one or two 
 cases. It is doubtful whether the same experiment 
 could be made in any of the other arts, with a sim- 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ilar result. I am satisfied that opera-singers, actors, 
 composers, sculptors, painters, theologians even, have 
 a better right to be called the genus irrUabile than 
 the literary guild. The more devotedly an author 
 aspires towards his ideal of achievement, the less 
 he is concerned with all transitory estimates of his 
 work. Looking back now, four years since the pa- 
 pers appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly," I see more 
 clearly how much was ventured, and I am profoundly 
 grateful to find that no serious wound was given. 
 
 Some of my friends have suggested that the char- 
 acters introduced in the Echo Club, and the course of 
 their dialogues, might have been made more interest- 
 ing to the reader. This is probably true ; but, on 
 the other hand, all work of the kind has but an 
 ephemeral interest, and the leisure of mind whicli 
 produced it seems now so remote, so beyond recall, 
 that I have not undertaken to make any change. 
 The four principal characters were designed to repre- 
 sent classes, not individuals. In " The Ancient," I 
 endeavored to express something of the calmer judi- 
 cial temper, in literary matters, which comes from 
 age and liberal study. The name of " ZoTlus " (tlie 
 Ilomeromastix, or " Scourge of Homer") explains liis 
 place : he is the carping, cynical, unconsciously arro- 
 gant critic, — though these qualities could not be 
 given with entire dramatic truth. " Galahad " is the 
 young, sensational, impressive element in the reading 
 pnblic ; admiration, in liim, is almost equivalent to 
 adoration. " The Gannet " — a name suggested by a 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 poem written by a member of the class, long ago — 
 represents brilliancy without literary principle, the 
 love of technical effect, regardless of\he intellectual 
 conception of a work. This is a class which is 
 
 always large, and always more or less successful 
 
 for a time. It was not necessary that each character 
 should keep rigidly within the limits of his part, and 
 thus each of them may be occasionally inconsistent. 
 I need hardly explain that the author's own views, 
 though scattered here and there through the dia- 
 logues, together with their exact opposites, are not 
 specially expressed by any one of the four persons. 
 
 The papers were meant to be anonymous, but the 
 secret was soon betrayed, — not, however, before 
 some amusing illustrations of the personal character 
 of much so-called criticism were furnished. The 
 comments of certain writers for the press, before and 
 after the authorship was known, formed a curious 
 and instructive contrast. In London, the papers 
 were collected and published as a volume, more than 
 two years ago ; and there may be possibly enough 
 diversion still lingering about them to satisfy the 
 indolent mood of a summer afternoon. More than 
 this is not intended by their appearance in the pres- 
 ent form. 
 
 ^ I have added some other specimens of the same 
 kind of fooling, partly in order to put everything of 
 the sort in its place and leave it behind me, and 
 partly because a good many personal friends have 
 been amused, and hence some unknown friends may 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 also be. This preliitle is no doubt longer than neces- 
 sary ; but on completing and offering to others a 
 diversion which will never be repeated, one may be 
 pardoned for an over-scrupulousness in explaining 
 circumstances and justifying motives. 
 
 B. T. 
 New York, June, 1876. 
 
 ^^9^ 
 
Diversions of the Echo Club. 
 
 NIGHT THE FIRST. 
 
 F it were not that tlie public clierislies rather 
 singular and fluctuating notions with regard 
 to the private and familiar intercourse of au- 
 thors, the reports which follow would need no 
 prologue. But between the two classes of readers, one 
 of which innocently supposes T. Percy Jones to be the 
 strange and terrible being whom they find represented in 
 his "Firmilian," while the other, having discovered, by 
 a few startling disillusions, that the race of authors is 
 Janus-faced, is sure that T. Percy Jones is the exact 
 opposite of his poetical self, there has arisen a confusion 
 which it may be well to correct. 
 
 The authors themselves, I am aware, are chiefly re- 
 sponsible for these opposite impressions. When Joaquin 
 Miller at Niagara, standing on the brink of the American 
 precipice, kisses his hands grandly to Canada, exclaiming, 
 " England, I thank you ! " or when Martin Parquhar 
 Tupper, in a speech at New York, cries out with noble 
 
12 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 magnanimity, " America, be not afraid, / Tvill protect 
 you ! " the public might reasonably expect to find all 
 poets visibly trailing their mantles m our streets. But 
 when an eager listener, stealing behind Irving and Hal- 
 leck at an evening party, found them talking of — shoe- 
 leather! and a breathless devotee of Thackeray, sitthig 
 opposite to him at the dinner-table, saw those Delphian 
 lips unclose only to utter the words, "Another potato, if 
 you please ! " — they had revelations which might cast a 
 dreadful suspicion over the nature of the whole tribe of 
 autho]-s. 
 
 1 would not have the reader imagine that the members 
 of the Echo Club are represented by either of these ex- 
 tremes. They are authors, of diilerent ages and very 
 unequal places in public estimation. It would never 
 occur to them to seat themselves on self-constructed 
 pyramids, and speak as if The Ages were listening ; yet, 
 like their brethren of all lands and all times, the staple 
 of their talk is literature. "What EngUshmcn call "the 
 shop," is an mevitable feature of their conversation. 
 They can never come together without discussing the 
 literary news of the day, the qualities of prominent 
 authors, living or dead, and sometimes their own. How- 
 ever the enlightened listener inight smile at the posit ivc- 
 iicss of their opinions, and the contradictions into which 
 they arc sometimes led in the lawless ])lay and keen clash 
 of the ligiitcr intellect, he could not fail to recognize the 
 sovereign importance they attach to their art. Without 
 lifting from their intercourse tiiat last veil of mystery, 
 behind which only equals are peiinitted to pass, 1 may 
 safely try to report the mixture of sport and earnest, of 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 13 
 
 satire and enthusiasm, of irreverent audacity and pure 
 aspiration, wliicli met and mingled at their meetings. If 
 tlie reader cannot immediately separate these elements, it 
 is no fault of mine. He is most desirous, I know, to be 
 present at the private diversions of a small society of au- 
 thors, and to hear them talk as they are wont to talk 
 when the wise heads of the world are out of ear-shot. 
 
 The character which the society assumed for a short 
 time was entirely accidental. As one of the Chorus, I 
 was present at the first meeting, and of course I never 
 failed afterwards. The four authors who furnished our 
 entertainment were not aware that I had written down, 
 from memory, the substance of the conversations, until 
 our evenings came to an end ; and I have had some diffi- 
 culty in obtaining their permission to publish my reports. 
 The Ancient and Galahad feared that certain poets whom 
 they delight to honor might be annoyed, not so much at the 
 sportive imitation of their manner, as at the possible mis- 
 conception of its purpose by the public. But Zoilus and 
 the Gannet agreed with me, that where no harm is meant 
 none can be inflicted; that the literature of our day is in 
 a sad state of bewilderment and confusion, and that a 
 few effervescing powders would perhaps soothe a public 
 stomach which has been overdosed with startling ef- 
 fects. 
 
 At last the Ancient said : " So be it, then ! Take the 
 poems, but don't bring your manuscript to us for correc- 
 tion ! I am quite sure you have often reported us 
 falsely, and if our masks of names are pulled off, we 
 will have that defence." 
 
 I have only to add that the three or four gentlemen 
 
14 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 comprismg the Clioms are not authors by profession. 
 The Ancieut is in the habit of dividing the race of artists 
 into active and passive,, — the latter possessing the artis- 
 tic temperament, tlie tastes, the delights, the instincts of 
 the race, — everything, except that creative gadfly which 
 stings to expression. Jn every quality except production 
 they are the equals of the producers, he says ; and they 
 are quite as necessary to the world as the active artists, 
 since they are the first to recognize the good points of 
 the latter, to strengthen them with warm and intelligent 
 sympathy, and to connnend them to the slower percep- 
 tions and more vmcertain tastes of the mass of readers, 
 lam sure, at least, that our presence and. participation 
 in the amusements was a gentle stimulus to the principal 
 actors. "We were their enthusiastic audience, and kept 
 them fresh and warm to their work. I do not record 
 our share in the conversation, for there is sufficient di- 
 versity of opinion without it ; and I made no notes of it 
 at the time. — The Nameless Repokter. 
 
 In the rear of Karl Schafer's lager-beer cellar and res- 
 taurant — which every one knows is but a block from the 
 central part of Broadway — there is a small room, with 
 a vaulted ceiling, MJiich Karl calls his Lbicoir/rube, or 
 Lions' Den. Here, in 1 heir Bohemian days, Zoilus and the 
 Gannet had been accustomed to meet to discuss literary 
 projects, and read fragments of manuscript to each other. 
 The Cliorus, the Ancient, and young Galahad gradually 
 fell into the same habit, and thus a little circle of six, 
 seven, or eight members came to be formed. Tlie room 
 could comfortably contain no more : it was quiet, with a 
 
DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 15 
 
 dim, smoky, confidential atmosphere, and suggested Auer- 
 bach's Cellar to the Ancient, who had been in Leipzig. 
 
 Here, authors, books, magazines, and newspapers 
 were talked about ; sometimes a manuscript poem was 
 read by its writer ; while mild potations of beer and the 
 dreamy breath of cigars delayed the nervous, fidgety, 
 clattering-footed American Hours, One night they 
 chanced upon a discussion of Morris's "Earthly Para- 
 dise," which Galahad rapturously admired, while the An- 
 cient continued to draw him out, at first by guarded praise, 
 then by critical objections to the passages which Gala- 
 had quoted. The conversation finally took this turn : — 
 
 Galahad. Indeed, you are not just ! Tell me, have 
 you read the whole work ? 
 
 The Ancient. Yes: I had it with me on my last 
 trip to Havana, and read all three volumes under the 
 most favorable auspices, — lying on deck in the shadow 
 of a sail, with the palms and mangroves of the Bahamas 
 floating past, in the distance. Just so I floated through 
 the narrative poems, one after the other, admiring the 
 story-teller's art, heartily enjoying many passages, accept- 
 ing even the unnecessary quaintness of the speech, and 
 at first disposed to say, " Here is a genuine poet ! " 
 But I was conscious of a lack of something, which, in my 
 lazy mood, I did not attempt to analyze. When the 
 lines and scenes and characters began to fade in my 
 mind (which they did almost immediately), I found that 
 the final impression which tiie work left behind was very 
 much like the Hades of the Greeks, — a gray, misty, 
 cheerless land, full of wandering shadows, — a place, 
 where there is no sun, no clear, conscious, joyous life. 
 
16 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 wliere even fortunate love is sad, where hope is unknowii 
 to the heart, and there is nothing in the distance but death, 
 and nothing after death. There Imd been a languid and 
 rather agreeable sense of enjoyment ; but it was followed 
 by a chill. 
 
 Galahad. Oh ! 
 
 The Gannet. How often have I told you, Galahad, 
 that you 're too easily taken off your feet ! He 's very 
 clever, I admit ; but there 's a deal of trick in it, for all 
 that. His revival of obsolete words, his imitation of 
 Chaucer — 
 
 Galahad {impatiently). Imitation! 
 
 The Gannet. Well, — only half, and half similarity 
 of talent. But no writer can naturally assume a manner 
 of speech which has long fallen into disuse, even iu 
 literature : so far as he does so, he is artificial. And this 
 artifice Morris carries into his i)ictures of sentiment and 
 passion. You cease to feel with and for his characters, 
 long before he has done with them. 
 
 Galahad. As human beings, perhaps; but as con- 
 ceptions of beauty, they have another existence. 
 
 The Ganxet. When I want a Greek frieze, let me 
 have it in marble ! Yes, he 's a skilful workman, and 
 a successful one, as his popularity proves. And he 's 
 lucky in producing his camied fruit after Swinburne's 
 curry and pepper-sauce : biit it is canned. I don't say 
 I could equal him in his own line, for that requires 
 natural inclination as well as knack, yet I think I could 
 give you something exactly in his style, in ten minutes. 
 
 The AxNXiENT. Ciiallengc him, Galahad! 
 
 The Gannet. Get mc paper and pencil! I will at 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 17 
 
 least try. Now, Galahad, put up your watch; I only 
 stipulate that you don't time me too exactly. Stay ! — • 
 take another sheet and try the same thing yourself. 
 {They write ; meanwhile the others talk.) 
 The Gannet {after twenty minutes). I have failed in 
 time, because I began wrong. I tried to write a serious 
 passage in Morris's manner, and my own habit of expres- 
 sion immediately came in as a disturbing influence. Then 
 I gave up the plan of producing something really earnest 
 and coherent, — that is, I kept in mind the manner, 
 alone, and let the matter come of itself. Yery little ef- 
 foi't was required, I found : the lines arranged themselves 
 easily enougli. Now, lend me your ears : it is a passage 
 from " The Taming of Themistocles," in the ninth vol- 
 ume of the " Earthly Paradise" : {Reads.) 
 
 " He must be holpen ; yet how help shall I, 
 Steeped to the lips in ancient misery. 
 And by the newer grief apparelled ? 
 If that I throw these ashes on mine head. 
 Do this thing for thee, — while about my way 
 A shadow gathers, and the piteous day. 
 So wan and bleak for very loneliness, 
 Turneth from sight of such unruthfulness ? " 
 Therewith he caught an arrow from the sheaf. 
 And brake the shaft in witlessness of grief ; 
 But Chiton's vest, such dismal fear she had. 
 Shook from the heart that sorely was a-drad. 
 And she began, withouten any pause, 
 To say : " Why break the old iEtolian laws, 
 Send this man forth, that never harm hath done. 
 Between the risen and the setten sun ? " 
 
18 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And next, they wandered to a steepy till, 
 Whence all the land was lying gray and still, 
 And not a living creature there might he, 
 From the cold mountains to the salt, cold sea ; 
 Only, within a little cove, one sail 
 Shook, as it whimpered at the cruel gale, 
 And the mast moaned from chafing of the rope ; 
 So all was pain : they saw not any hope. 
 
 ZoiLTJS. But that is no imitation ! You have copied 
 a passage out of — out of — pshaw ! I know the poem, 
 and I remember the lines. 
 
 The Ganxet {imUgnantJij). Out of Milton, why not 
 say ? — M'here you '11 be just as likely to find them. Now, 
 let me hear yours, Galahad ; you were writing. 
 
 Galahad {crushing the paper hi his hand). Mine is 
 neither one thing nor the other, — not the author's po- 
 etic dialect throughout, nor hinting of his choice of sub- 
 jects. I began something, which was really my ow^n, 
 and then gradually ran into an echo. I think you have 
 hit upon the true method ; and we must try again, since 
 we know it. 
 
 The Gannet. Why not try others, — a dozen of 
 them ? By Jove, 1 should like some mere gynuiastics, 
 after the heavy prose I 've been writing ! And you, too, 
 Gala]uul,and the Ancient (if liis ponderous dignity does n't 
 prevent it) ; and here 's Zoilus, the very fellow for such 
 a diversion ! We can come together, here, and be a pri- 
 vate, secret club of Parodists, — of Echoes, — of Icono- 
 clasts, — of — 
 
 The Ancient. Of irreverent satirists, I fear. That 
 would be a new kind of a llaiiibund, indeed ; but, after 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 19 
 
 all, it need not be ill-natured. At least, to insure j^our- 
 selves against relapsing into mere burlesque and inciden- 
 tal depreciation, — wliicli is a tempting, but nearly always 
 a fatal course, for young writers, — I must be present. 
 My indiiferentism, as you call it, which sometimes pro- 
 vokes you when I cannot share all your raptures, may do 
 good service in keeping you from rushing into the oppo- 
 site extreme. As for taking part in the work, I won't 
 promise to do much. You know I am a man of uncer- 
 tain impulses, and can get nothing out of myself by force 
 of resolution. 
 
 Omnes. 0, you must take part ! It will be capital 
 sport. 
 
 The Ancient {deliberate!?/, between the whiffs of his 
 cigar). First of all, let us clearly understand what is to 
 be done. To undertake parodies, as the word is gener- 
 ally comprehended, — that is, to make a close imitation 
 of some particular poem, though it should be character- 
 istic of the author, — would be rather a flat business. 
 Even the Brothers Smith and Bon Gaultier, admirable as 
 they are, stuck too closely to selected models ; and Phebe 
 Gary, who has written the best American parodies, did 
 the same thing. I think the Ganuet has discovered some- 
 thing altogether more original and satisfactory, — a sim- 
 ple echo of the author's tone and manner. The choice 
 of a subject gives another chance of fun. 
 
 {He takes up the Gannet's imitation and looks over it.) 
 
 Here the dialect and movement and atmosphere are 
 suggested; the exaggeration is neither coarse nor ex- 
 treme, and the comical effect seems to lie mainly in the 
 circumstance that it is a wilful imitation. If we were to 
 
20 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 find tlie passage in one of Morris's poems, we might think 
 it carelessly written, somewhat obseure, but still in tlie 
 same key with wliat precedes and follows it. Possibly, 
 nay, almost certain!}^, it would not amuse us at all ; but 
 just now I noticed that even Galahad could not help 
 laughing. A diversion of this sort is less a labor and 
 more a higher and finer recreation of the mind, than the 
 mechanical setting of some given poem, line by line, to a 
 ludicrous subject, like those endless and generally stupid 
 parodies of Longfellow's "Excelsior" and Emerson's 
 "Brahma." For heaven's — no. Homer's — sake, let us 
 not fall into that vein ! 
 
 The Gannet. Thou speakest w^ell. 
 
 Galahad. But how shall we select the authors ? And 
 shall I be required to make my own demigods ridiculous ? 
 
 ZoiLUs. Let me prove to you, by one of your own 
 demigods, that nothing can be cither sublime or ridicu- 
 lous. Poetry is the Brahma of literature, — above all, 
 pervading all, self-existent, though so few find her (and 
 men of business reckon ill who leave her out), and tliere- 
 fore quite unmoved by anything we may do. Don't you 
 remember the lines ? — 
 
 " Far or forgot to me is near, 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
 The vanished gods to me appear, 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame." 
 
 The Ancient. You are right, Zoilus, in spite of your 
 sarcasm. Besides, it is an evidence of a poet's distinct 
 individuality, when he can be annisingly imitated. "\Vo 
 can only make those the objects of our fun whose manner 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 21 
 
 or dialect stamps itself so deeply into our minds that a 
 new cast can be taken. We are sporting around great, 
 and sometimes little names, like birds or cats or lizards 
 around the feet, and over the shoulders, and on the heads 
 of statues. Nom^ there 's an idea for a poem, Galahad. 
 But, seriously, how would you imitate Pollok's " Course 
 of Time," or Young's "Night Thoughts," or Blair's 
 " Grave," or any other of those masses of words, which 
 are too ponderous for poetry and too respectable for ab- 
 surdity ! Either extreme will do for us, excellence or imbe- 
 cility; but it must liave a distinct, pronounced character. 
 
 The Gannet. Come, now ! I 'm eager for another 
 trial. 
 
 The Ancient. Let us each write the names of three 
 or four poets on separate slips of paper, and throw them 
 into my hat ; then let each draw out one slip as his model 
 for to-night. Thus there will be no clashing of tastes or 
 inclinations, and our powers of imitation will be more 
 fairly tested. 
 
 {They write three names apiece, the Chorus taUng 'part. 
 Then all are thrown iftto the The Ancient's hat and 
 shaken up together.) 
 
 Galahad {drawing). Robert Browning. 
 
 The Gannet. So is mine. 
 
 ZoiiLus. Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 The Ancient. Some of us have written the . same 
 names. Well, let it be so' to-night. If we find the ex- 
 periment diverting, we can easily avoid any such repeti- 
 tion next time. Moreover, Browning alone will challenge 
 echoes from all of us; and I am curious to see whether 
 the several imitations will reflect the same characteristics 
 
22 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 of liis style. It vri\], at least, show wlietlier the stamp 
 upon each mind has any common likeness to the original. 
 
 The Gaxnet. A good idea ! But Zoilus is already 
 possessed by the spirit of Poe ; not, I hope, in the manner 
 of Dr. Garth Wilkinson of London, whose volume of 
 poems dictated by the spirits of the dead authors is the 
 most astonishing collection I ever saw. He makes Poe's 
 "wet locks" rhyme to his "fetlocks" ! It is even worse 
 than Harris's "Epic of the Starry Heavens," dictated to 
 him in forty-eight hours by Dante. By the by, we have 
 a good chance to test this matter of possession; the 
 suggestion nimbly and sweetly recommends itself to my 
 fancy. But since I was your pioneer to-night, I '11 even 
 rest until Zoilus has finished ; then, let us all start fairly. 
 
 Zoilus [afeic minutes later). If this is at all good, it 
 is not because of labor. I had an easier task than the 
 Gannet. {Reads?) 
 
 THE PROMISSORY NOTE. 
 
 In the lonesome latter years, 
 
 (Fatal years !) 
 To the dropping of my tears 
 Danced the mad and mystic spheres 
 In a rounded, reeling rune, 
 'Neath the moon. 
 To the dripping and the dropping of my tears. 
 
 Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom, 
 
 (T'lalunie !) 
 In a dim Titanic tomb, 
 For my gaunt and gloomy soul 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 23 
 
 Ponders o'er tlie penal scroll. 
 O'er the parchment (not a rhyme). 
 Out of place, — out of time, — 
 I am shredded, shorn, unshifty, 
 
 (O, the fifty !) 
 And the days have passed, the three. 
 
 Over me ! 
 And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me ! 
 
 'T was the random runes I via-ote 
 At the bottom of the note, 
 
 (Wrote and freely 
 
 Gave to Greeley,) 
 In the middle of the night. 
 In the mellow, moonless night, 
 "When the stars were out of sight. 
 When my pulses, like a knell, 
 
 (Israfel !) 
 Danced with dim and dying fays 
 O'er the ruins of my days. 
 O'er the dimeless, timeless days. 
 When the lift}'", drawn at thirty. 
 Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty 
 Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise ! 
 
 Fiends controlled it, 
 (Let him hold it !) 
 Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen ; 
 Now the days of grace arc o'er, 
 
 (Ah, Lenore !) 
 I am but as other men : 
 What is time, time, time. 
 To my rare and runic rhyme. 
 
24 DIVERSIONS or THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 To my random, reeling rtyme, 
 By tha sands along the shore, 
 "Where the tempest whispers, " Pay him ! " and I answer, "Never- 
 more ! " 
 
 Galahad. What do you mean by the reference to 
 Greeley ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. I Ihouglit everybody had heard that Greeley's 
 only autograph of Poe was a signature to a promissory 
 note for fifty dollars. He offers to sell it for half the 
 money. Now, I don't mean to be Avicked, and to do 
 nothing with the dead except bone 'em, but when such a 
 cue pops into one's mind, what is one to do ? 
 
 Tee Ancient. 0, 1 think you 're still Avithin decent 
 limits ! There was a congenital twist about poor Poe. 
 "VYe can't entirely condone his faults, yet we stretch our 
 charity so as to cover as much as possible. His poetry 
 has a hectic flush, a strauge, fascinating, narcotic quality, 
 which belongs to him alone. Baudelaire and Swinburne 
 after him have been trying to surpass him by increasing 
 the dose ; but his Muse is the natural Pythia, inheriting 
 her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots 
 to produce theirs. 
 
 Galahad {eagerlt/). Did you ever know him ? 
 
 The Ancient. I met him two or three times, heard 
 him lecture once (his enunciation was exquisite), and saw 
 him now and then in Broadway, — enough to satisfy me 
 that there were two men in him : one, a refined gentle- 
 man, an aspiring soul, an artist among those who had 
 little sense of literary art ; the other — 
 
 ZoiLUS. Go on ! 
 
 TuE Ancient. " Built, his nest with the birds of 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 25 
 
 Night." No more of that ! Now let us all invoke the 
 demigod, Browning. 
 
 Galahad. It will be a task. 
 
 ZoiLus. I don't think so; it's even simpler than 
 what we 've done. Why, Browning's manner is as dis- 
 tinctly his own as Carlyle's, and sometimes as wilfully 
 artificial. In fact, he is so peculiarly himself that no 
 younger poet has dared to imitate his fashion of speech, 
 although many a one tries to follow him in the choice and 
 treatment of subjects. Browning is the most dramatic 
 of poets since Shakespeare ; don't you think so. Ancient ? 
 
 The Ancient. In manner and language, perhaps. 
 I should prefer to call him a psycliologist. His subtile 
 studies of all varieties of character are wonderful, if you 
 look at the substance only ; but every one of them, from 
 first to last, speaks with the voice of Browning. Take 
 " The Ring and the Book," for instance, — and I con- 
 sider it one of the most original and excellent poems in 
 the English language, — and in each of the twelve divis- 
 ions you will find exactly the same interruptions, paren- 
 theses, ellipses, the same coinage of illustration and play 
 of recondite hints under what is expressed. I should 
 guess that he writes very rapidly, and concerns himself 
 little with any objective theories of art. You ought to 
 copy his manner easily enough. 
 
 ZoiLUS. I can. I have caught the idea already. {He 
 takes a pencil and writes rapidly. Galahad and the 
 Gannet also begin to write, hut slowly.) 
 
 The Chorus {to The Ancient). Wliy don't you 
 begin ? 
 
 The Ancient. I was deliberating ; what a range of 
 2 
 
26 DIYERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 forms there is ! He is as inexhaustible as Raphael, and 
 he always expresses the same sense of satisfaction in his 
 work. Well, anything will do for a subject. {Writes.) 
 
 TjdiiAj^ {after a few minutes) . Hearken! I must read 
 at once, or I shall go on wanting forever ; it bewilders 
 me. {Reads.) 
 
 "Who toil Is, may hear Sordello's story told 
 
 By Robert Browning : warm ? (you ask) or cold ? 
 
 But just so much as seemeth to enhance — 
 
 The start being granted, onward goes the dance 
 
 To its own music — the poem's inward sense ; 
 
 So, by its verity .... nay, no pretence 
 
 Avails your self-created bards, and thus 
 
 By just the chance of half a hair to us. 
 
 If understood .... but what the odds to you, 
 
 "Who, with no obhgations to pursue 
 
 Scant tracks of thought, if such, indeed, there be 
 
 In this one poem, — stay, my friend, and see 
 
 "Whether you note that creamy tint of flesh, 
 
 Softer than bivalve pink, impearled and fresh. 
 
 Just where the small o' the back goes curving down 
 
 To orbic muscles .... ha ! that sidelong frown 
 
 Pursing the eye, and folded, deeply cleft 
 
 r the nostril's edge, as though contempt were left 
 
 Just o'er the Une that bounds indifference 
 
 But here 's the test of any closer sense 
 
 (You follow me ?) such as I started with ; 
 
 And there be minds that seek the very pith, 
 
 Crowd dose, bore deep, push far, and reach the light 
 
 Through league-long tunnels — 
 
 Galahad {interrupting). But that is Sordello you're 
 reading ! 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 27 
 
 ZoiLUS, Yes, mine. I am one of the few who have 
 bored their way through that amazing work. Browning's 
 " Sordello " (if you ever read it, you will remember) 
 begins with something about " Pentapolin o' the Naked 
 Arm." It is not any particular passage, but the manner 
 of the whole poem which I 've tried to reproduce ; a little 
 exaggerated, to be sure, but not much. Now, I call this 
 perplexity, not profundity. Was n't it the Swedish poet, 
 Tegner, who said, "The obscurely uttered is the ob- 
 scurely thought " ? 
 
 The Ancient. Yes ; and it is true in regard to poetry, 
 however the case may be with metaphysics. But we have 
 a right to be vexed with Browning, when, in the dedica- 
 tory letter to the new edition of " Sordello," he says that 
 he had taken pains to make the work something " which 
 the mauy might, instead of what the few must, like," but, 
 after all, did not choose to publish the revised copy. 
 There is a touch of arrogance in this expression which I 
 should rather not have encountered. The " inust " which 
 he flings at the few is far more offensive than utter indif- 
 ference to all readers would have been ; and not even 
 those few can make us accept " Sordello." However, 
 midtum creavit is as good a plea as multum dilexit. 
 Browning has a royal brain, and we owe bim too much 
 to bear malice against him. Only, we must not encour- 
 age our masters in absolute rule, or they will become 
 tyrants. 
 
 ZoiLUS. I don't acknowledge any masters ! 
 
 The Ancient. We all know that. Now, Galahad, 
 what have you done ? 
 
 Galahad (^reads) : — 
 
28 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 BY THE SEA. 
 
 {Jilutatis mutandis.) 
 
 I. 
 
 Is it life or is it death ? 
 
 A ^Ylliff of the cool salt scum, 
 As the whole sea putfed its breath 
 
 Against you, — blind and dumb. 
 This way it answereth. 
 
 Nearer the sands it shows 
 Spotted and leprous tints : 
 
 But stay ! yon fisher knows 
 Rock-tokens, which evince 
 
 How high the tide arose. 
 
 How high ? In you and me 
 'T was falling then, I think 
 
 Open your heart's eyes, see 
 From just so slight a chink 
 
 The chasm that now must be. 
 
 You sighed and shivered then, 
 
 Blue ecstasies of June 
 Around you, shouts of lishciTnen, 
 
 Sharp wings of sea-gulls, soon 
 To dip — the clock struck ten ! 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 29 
 
 V. 
 
 Was it the cup too full, 
 
 To carry it you grew 
 Too faint, the wine's hue dull, 
 
 (Duluess, misjudged untrue !) 
 Love's flower unfit to cull ? 
 
 VI. 
 
 You should have held me fast 
 
 One moment, stopped my pace. 
 Crushed down the feeble, vast 
 
 Suggestions of embrace. 
 And so be crowned at last. 
 
 But now ! . . . . Bare-legged and brown 
 
 Bait-diggers delve the sand, 
 Tramp i' the sunshine down 
 
 Burnt-ochre vestured laud. 
 And yonder stares the town. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A heron screams ! 1 shut 
 
 This book of scurf and scum, 
 Its final page uncut ; 
 
 The sea-beast, blind and dumb, 
 Done with his bellowing ? All but ! 
 
 The Gannet. It seems we have all hit upon the ob- 
 vious characteristics, especially those which are most 
 confusing. There is something very like that in the 
 " Dramatis Persona," or there seems to be. Now, I 
 wonder how my attempt will strike you? {Reads.) 
 
30 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ANGELO ORDERS HIS DINNER. 
 
 I, Angelo, obesei, black-garmented. 
 
 Respectable, much iu demand, well fed 
 
 With mine own larder's dainties, — where, indeed, 
 
 Such cakes of myrrh or fine alyssum seed, 
 
 Thin as a maDow-leaf, embrowned o' the top, 
 
 "Which, cracking, lets the ropy, trickling drop 
 
 Of sweetness touch your tongue, or potted nests 
 
 AVhich my recondite recipe invests 
 
 "With cold conglomerate tidbits — ah, the bill ! 
 
 (You say,) but given it were mine to fill 
 
 My chests, the case so put were yours, we 'U say, 
 
 (This counter, here, your post, as mine to-day,) 
 
 And you 've an eye to luxm-ies, what harm 
 
 In smoothing down your palate with the charm 
 
 Yourself concocted ? There we issue take ; 
 
 And see ! as thus across the rim I break 
 
 This puffj' paunch of glazed embroidered cake, 
 
 So breaks, through use, the lust of watering chaps 
 
 And craveth plainness : do I so ? Perhaps ; 
 
 But that 's my secret. Find me such a man 
 
 As Lippo yonder, built upon the plan 
 
 Of heavy storage, double-navelled, fat 
 
 From his own giblets' oils, an Ararat 
 
 Vplift o'er water, sucking rosy di-aughts 
 
 Prom Noah's vineyard, — ... crisp, enticing wafts 
 
 Y'on kitchen now emits, which to your sense 
 
 Somewhat abate the fe;ir of old events, 
 
 Qualms to the stomach, — I, you see, am slow 
 
 Vnncccssary duties to forego, — 
 
 Y'ou understand ? A venison hauuch, haut gout. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 31 
 
 Ducks that in Cimbrian olives mildly stew. 
 And sprigs of anise, might one's teeth provoke 
 To taste, and so we wear the complex yoke 
 Just as it suits, — my liking, I confess, 
 More to receive, and to partake no less. 
 Still more obese, while through thick adipose 
 Sensation shoots, from testing tongue to toes 
 Far off, dim-conscious, at the body's verge, 
 "Where the froth -whispers of its waves emerge 
 On the untasting sand. Stay, now ! a seat 
 Is bare : I, Angelo, will sit and eat. 
 
 The Chorus. There 's no mistaking any of them ! 
 
 The Ancient. And yet what a wealth of forms and 
 moods there is left ! You have only touched the poet 
 on two or three of his shifting sides. Whoever should 
 liear these imitations first, and then take up the original 
 works, would recognize certain fashions here and there, 
 but lie would be wholly unprepared for the special best 
 qualities of Browning. 
 
 The Chorus. How, then, have you fared ? 
 
 The Ancient. I 'm afraid I 've violated the very 
 law I laid down at the beginning. But I took the first 
 notion that came into my head, and I could not possibly 
 make it either all imitatiou or all burlesque. However, 
 hear, and then punish me as you like ! {Reads.) 
 
 ON THE TRACK. 
 
 Where the crags are close, and the railway-curve 
 
 Begins to swerve 
 From its straight-shot course i' the level plain 
 
 To the hills again, 
 
32 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 At tlie end of the twilight, when you mark 
 The denser dark 
 
 Blown by the wind from the heights, that make 
 
 A cold, coiled snake 
 Round the shuddering world, as a Midgards-orm- 
 
 like, sinuous form, — 
 With scant-cut hosen, jacket in hands. 
 
 The small boy stands. 
 
 Clipt by the iron ways, shiny and straight. 
 
 You see him wait, 
 'Twixt the coming thunder and the rock, 
 
 To fend the shock. 
 As a mite should stay, with its wriggling force, 
 
 A planet's course. 
 
 Even as he dances, leaps, and stoops. 
 
 The black train swoops 
 Up from the level : wave jacket, cry ! 
 
 Must all then die ? 
 Sweating, the small boy smiles again ; 
 
 He has stopped the train ! 
 
 Galahad, Well, that somehow suggests to me two 
 poems: his " Love amougthe Ruius," and the "Incident 
 of the Ereuch Camp," yet it is not an imitation of either. 
 I should only apply to it the same criticism as to my 
 own, — that it gives no hint of Browning's subtile and 
 ingenious way of dealing with the simplest subjects. He 
 seems always to seek some other than the ordinary and 
 natural point of view. I believe he could change 
 "Motiier Hubbard" and "Kits, cats, sacks, and wives" 
 into profound psychological poems. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 33 
 
 The Ancient. Now, why did n't you say that before 
 we began ? I miglit have made, at least, a more gro- 
 tesque failure. But, O Gambriuus! our glasses have 
 been empty this hour. Ring for the waiter, Galahad ; let 
 us refresh our wearied virtue, and depart ! 
 
 OiMNES {touching glasses). To be continued ! 
 
 2* 
 
NIGHT THE SECOND. 
 
 ^g^^'HE friends came together again in tlie Lions* 
 %MJ Den, a little earlier than tlieir wont ; but they 
 did not immediately take up the chief diversion 
 of the evening. In intellectual, as in physical 
 acrobatics, the joints must be gradually made flexible, 
 and the muscles warm and elastic, by lighter feats ; so 
 the conversation began as mere skylarking and mutual 
 chaffing, as empty and evanescent, when you attempt to 
 catch it, as the foam-ripples on a swift stream. But 
 Galahad had something on his mind ; he had again read 
 portions of the "Earthly Paradise," and insisted that the 
 atmosphere of the poems was not gray and overcast, but 
 charged with a golden, luminous mist, like that of the 
 Indian summer. Pinally, he asked the Ancient, — 
 
 " Granting the force of your impression, might not 
 much of it come from some want of harmony between 
 your mood or temper of mind and the author's ? In that 
 case, it would not be abstractly just." 
 
 The Ancient. I don't think that we often can be 
 "abstractly just" towards contemporary poets; we 
 either exalt or abase them too much. For we and they 
 breathe either the same or opposite currents in the intel- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 35 
 
 lectual atmosphere of the time, and there can be no im- 
 partial estimate until those winds have blown over. This 
 is precisely the reason why you sometimes think me in- 
 different, when I am only trying to shove myself as far off 
 as the next generation ; at least, to get a little outside 
 of the fashions and whims and prejudices of this day. 
 American authors, and also their publishers, are often 
 cliarged with an over-concern for the opinion of the Eng- 
 lish literary journals. I think their interest quite nat- 
 ural — 
 
 ZoiLUS {jinth energy). Now, you surely are not going 
 to justify that sycophantic respect for the judgment of 
 men who know so much less than we do of our own lit- 
 erature ! 
 
 The Ancient. I condemn all sycophancy, even to 
 the great, triumphant, overwhelming American spirit ! 
 But, until we have literary criticism of a more purely ob- 
 jective character in this country, — until our critics learn 
 to separate their personal tastes and theories from their 
 estimate of the executive and artistic quality of the au- 
 thor ; or, which amounts to the same thing, to set this 
 quality, this creative principle, higher than the range of 
 themes and opinions, — the author will look to the judg- 
 ment of critics, whose distance and whose very want of 
 acquaintance with our prejudices and passions assure him 
 of a certain amount of impartiality. The feeling is recip- 
 rocal ; I venture to say that an intelligent American criti- 
 cism has more weight with an English author than that 
 of one of his own Reviews. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Bo you mean to say that we have no genuine 
 criticism ? 
 
36 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The Ancient. Bj no means ; ttc have some that is 
 admiiable. But it is only recognized at its true value by 
 a very small class ; the great reading public is blissfully 
 ignorant of its existence. It adds to the confusion, that 
 many of our writers have no definite ideas of literary ex- 
 cellence apart from the effect which immediately follows 
 their work ; and readers are thus actually misled by those 
 who should guide them. Why, a year ago, the most 
 popular book iu the whole country was one which docs 
 not even belong to literature; and Ihe most popular 
 poem of late years was wTitten, not from a poetic, but 
 from a high moral, inspiration ! Somebody must set up 
 a true aesthetic standard ; it is high time this were done, 
 and a better criticism must be the first step. 
 
 The Gannet. Why don't you undertake it yourself ? 
 
 The Ancient. I 'm too fond of comfort. Think 
 what a hornet's-nest I should thrust my hand into ? 
 Moreover, I doubt whether one could force such interests 
 beyond their natural growth ; we are still suffering from 
 the intellectual demoralization which the war left behind 
 it. But, where 's the hat ? We are spoiling ourselves 
 by all this serious prose. Let us throw in a few more 
 names, and try our luck again. 
 
 {Tlieij draw the lots as before.) 
 
 The Gannet. John Keats ! How shall I wear his 
 mantle ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. I 'm crushed, buried under an avalanche of, 
 — well, not much, after all. Don't ask me who it is, 
 \intil I try my hiuid. You would confuse me M'ith your 
 laughter. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 37 
 
 The Ancient. I shall keep ^ mine specially for you, 
 Zoilus. 
 
 Galahad. I have drawn one of the names I wrote 
 myself ; but you have already so demorahzed me, that I 
 will try to parody him as heartily as if I did n't like his 
 poetry. 
 
 The Ancient. You are getting on. But I think the 
 Gannet ought to draw another name ; it is best not to go 
 back of our own day and generation. I propose that we 
 limit ourselves to the poets who stand nearer to our own 
 minds, under whom, or beside whom, or above whom (as 
 each chooses to estimate himself), we have grown and are 
 now growing. The further we withdraw from this at- 
 mosphere, the more artificial must our imitations be. 
 
 The Gannet. Let it pass this once, I pray thee, for 
 I have caught my idea ! But, even taking your limita- 
 tion, who is nearer us than Keats ? Not alone in his 
 own person, though there he stands among ns ; he is in 
 Tennyson, in Morris, in Swinburne, and, more remotely, 
 in the earlier poems of Browning and Lowell, besides a 
 host of small rhymers. He still approaches us, while 
 Shelley and Byron withdraw. I think it 's a fair excep- 
 tion ; and if yon won't admit it, 1 '11 take the sense of 
 the company. 
 
 Omnes. Go on ! 
 
 {All write limly for fifteen mimites, except The Ancient 
 who talks in a lower tone to The Chorus.) 
 
 The Gannet {looking ti-p). Zoilus, you were ready 
 first. 
 
 Zoilus. Could you guess whom I represent ? 
 The Gannet. Tupper? 
 
38 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ZoiLXJS. He ? he is liis own best parody. No ; it is 
 a lyrical inanity, "which once was tolerably famous. The 
 Ancient's rule as to what is properly parodiable does n't 
 apply here ; for it is neither excellent nor imbecile. I 
 think I had the right to reject the name, but I have tried 
 to see whether a respectable jingle of words, expressing 
 ordinary and highly proper feelings, can be so imitated as 
 to be recognized. Here it is. {Reads.) 
 
 OBITUARY. 
 
 On the Death of the Rev. Elijah W. Batey. 
 
 Ay, bear him to his sainted rest. 
 
 Ye mourners, but be calm ! 
 Instead of dirge and sable crest. 
 
 Raise ye thanksgiving psalm ! 
 For he was old and full of years. 
 
 The grandsire of your souls : 
 Then check ye now your heaving tears. 
 
 And quench the sigh that roUs ! 
 
 Ye heard him from yon pulpit preach. 
 
 For sixty years and more, 
 Still battering with nnwearied speech 
 
 The ceiling, pews, and floor ; 
 As, hour by hour, his periods fell, 
 
 Yonr pious hopes arose, 
 And each one murmured, " All is well," 
 
 Long ere the sermon's close. 
 
 Think ye the voice that spake so long 
 Can anywhere be dumb ? 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 39 
 
 Before him went a goodly throng, 
 
 And wait for him to come. 
 He preaches still, in other spheres, 
 
 To saved and patient souls ; 
 Then, mourners, check your heaving tears. 
 
 And quench the sigh that rolls ! 
 
 Omnes {shouting). Mrs. Sigourney ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. I have succeeded, then ! But, O my friends, 
 is the success a thing over which I should rejoice ? Do 
 not, I beg of you, do not congratulate me ! 
 
 Galahad. Come, now, don't abuse good old Mother 
 SIgourney! For a long time she was almost our only 
 woman-poet ; and I insist that she was not a mere echo 
 of Felicia Hemans. 
 
 ZoiLUS {ironically). Of course not! None but her- 
 self could ever have written that exquisite original poem, 
 "On Finding a Shred of Linen." One passage I can 
 never forget : — 
 
 " Methinlcs I scan 
 Some idiosyncrasy, which marks thee out 
 A defunct pillow-case." 
 
 Galahad. You are incorrigible ; but we wait for the 
 Gannet and the idea he has caught. 
 
 The Gannet. It was better in anticipation than it 
 seems after execution. However, Keats is too dainty a 
 spirit to be possessed in a few minutes. {Reads) 
 
40 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ODE ON A JAR OF PICKLES. 
 
 m I. 
 
 A sweet, acidulous, down -reaching ttrill 
 
 Pervades my sense : I seem to see or hear 
 The lushy garden-grounds of Greenwich Hill 
 
 In autumn, when the crispy leaves are sere : 
 And odors haunt me of remotest spice 
 
 From the Levant or musky-aired Calhay, 
 Or from the saffron-fields of Jericho, 
 Where everything is nice : 
 
 The more I sniff, the more I swoon away. 
 And what else mortal palate craves, forego. 
 
 II. 
 Odors unsmelled are keen, but those I smell 
 Are keener ; wherefore let me sniff again ! 
 Enticing walnuts, I have kno^^^^ ye well 
 
 In youth, when pickles were a passing pain ; 
 Unwitting youth, that craves the candy stem. 
 
 And sugar-plums to olives doth prefer. 
 And even licks the pots of marmalade 
 "When sweetness clings to them : 
 But noAv I dream of ambergris and myrrh. 
 Tasting these walnuts in the poplar shade. 
 
 ITI. 
 
 Lo ! hoarded coolness in the heart of noon. 
 Plucked with its dew, the cucumber is here. 
 
 As to the Dryad's parching lips a boon. 
 
 And crescent bean-pods, unto Bacchus dear ; 
 
 And, last of all, the pepper's pungent globe. 
 The scarlet dwelling of the sylph of lire. 
 
DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 41 
 
 Provoking purple draughts.; and, surfeited, 
 I cast my trailing robe 
 O'er my pale feet, toueli up my tuneless lyre. 
 And twist the Delphic wreath to suit my head. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Here shall my tongue in other wise be soured 
 
 Than fretful men's in parched and palsied days ; 
 And, by the mid-May's dusky leaves embowered 
 
 Forget the fruitful blame, the scanty praise. 
 No sweets to them who sweet themselves were born, 
 
 Whose natures ooze with lucent saccharine ; 
 Who, with sad repetition soothly cloyed. 
 The lemon-tinted morn 
 
 Enjoy, and for acetic darkness pine : 
 Wake I, or sleep ? The pickle-jar is void. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Not to be mistaken; but you have almost 
 stepped over the bounds of our plan. Those two odes 
 of Keats are too immediately suggested, though I find 
 that only two lines are actually parodied. I agree with 
 the Ancient ; let us stick to the authors of our own day ! 
 Galahad, you look mysterious; are we to guess your 
 singer from the echo ? 
 
 Galahad. Are you all ready to hear me chant, in 
 rare and rhythmic redundancy, the viciousness of virtue ? 
 
 The Chorus. 0, Swinburne ! chant away ! 
 
 Galahad {reads) : — 
 
 THE LAY OF MACARONI. 
 
 As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy 
 From creek to cove of the curving shore. 
 
42 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, 
 
 Scattered and spread to its sunlit core ; 
 As a dove that dips in the dark of maples 
 
 To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, 
 I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples, 
 
 I bathe in thine beautj^ by thee embayed ! 
 
 "V\'hat is it ails me that I should sing of her ? 
 
 The queen of the flashes and flames that were ! 
 Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her. 
 
 The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her ! 
 I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters, 
 
 I have danced her dances of dizzy delight, 
 I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars, 
 
 Between the nightingale's song and the night ! 
 
 "What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee ? 
 
 "What is it now T should ask at thine hands ? 
 Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee ? 
 
 Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands ? 
 Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni, 
 
 And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold, 
 She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni. 
 
 The choice of her childi'en when cheeses are old ! 
 
 And over me hover, as if by the wings of it. 
 
 Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, 
 The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, 
 
 Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat : 
 Lo ! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it, 
 
 Lifts me the links of the limitless chain, 
 Bidding mine month chant the splcndidcst things of it, 
 
 Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain ! 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 43 
 
 Behold ! I have done it : my stomach is smitten 
 
 With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled. 
 Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten : 
 
 I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold ! 
 No man of thine millions is more macaronied. 
 
 Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me : 
 The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied, 
 
 And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee ! 
 
 The Ancient {laughing). Galahad, I can fancy 
 your later remorse. It is not a year since you were ab- 
 solutely Swinburne-mad, and I hardly dared, in your 
 presence, to object even to " Anactoria " and " Dolores." 
 I would not encourage you, then, for I saw you were 
 carried away by the wild rush of the rhythm, and the 
 sparkle of epithets which were partly new and seemed 
 wholly splendid ; but now I will confess to you that as a 
 purely rhythmical genius I look on Swinburne as a phe- 
 nomenon in literature. ^ 
 
 Galahad {eagerly). Then you admit that he is great ? 
 
 The Ancient. Not as you mean. I have been wait- 
 ing for his ferment to settle, as in the case of Keats and 
 Shelley ; but there are no signs of it in his last volume. 
 How splendidly the mind of Keats precipitated its crudity 
 and redundancy, and clarified into the pure wine of " Hy- 
 perion " ! In Shelley's case the process was slower, but 
 it was steadily going on ; you will find the same thing 
 in Schiller, in Drydeu, and many other poets, therefore I 
 mean to reserve my judgment in Swinburne's case, and 
 wait, at least until his next work is published. Mean- 
 while, I grant that he has enriched our English lyric 
 poetry with some new and admirable forms. 
 
44 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The Ganxet. He has certainly made a " sensation " 
 in tlie literary world ; does that indicate nothing ? 
 
 The Axciext. That depends. I declare it seems to 
 me as if the general taste Avere not quite healthy. To a 
 very large class reading has become a form of lazy luxury, 
 and such readers are not satisfied without a new great 
 poet, every four or five years. Then, too, there has been 
 an amazing deal of trash written about the coming authors, 
 — what they should be, how they must write, and the like ; 
 and so those luxurious readers are all the time believing 
 they have discovered one of the tribe. Why, let a man 
 take a thought as old as Confucius, and put it into some 
 strange, jerky, convulsed form, and you will immediately 
 hear the cry, " How wonderful ! how original ! " You 
 all remember the case of Alexander Smith ; it seems in- 
 credible, now, that the simulated passion and forced sen- 
 timent of his "Life -Drama" should have been accepted 
 as real, yet, because of this book, he was hailed as a second 
 Shakespeare. Tiiis hunger of the luxurious reader for 
 new flavors is a dangerous tiling for young poets. 
 
 ZoiLiJS. I almost think I hear my own voice. "We 
 don't often agree so thoroughly. 
 
 The Anciext. So nmch the better. I wonder if 
 you '11 be as well satisfied with the task I have in store for 
 you ; here is the name. {Gicing him the slip ofpajier.) 
 
 ZoiiLUS. Emerson ! I think I can guess why. 
 
 The Axciext. Yes, I remember what you wrote when 
 " Brahma " was first pubHshed, and what you said to 
 Galahad the other evening. I confess I was amazed, at 
 the time, that tlic newspapers should so innocently betray 
 their ignorance. There was a universal cry of " iucom- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 45 
 
 preliensible ! " when the meaning of the poem was per- 
 fectly plain. In fact, there are few authors so transpar- 
 ently clear, barring a few idiosyncrasies of expression, 
 which one soon learns, as just Emerson. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Then explain to me those lines from "Al- 
 phonso of Oastile " : — 
 
 " Hear you then, celestial fellows ! 
 Fits not to be over-zealous ; 
 Steads not to work on the clean jump. 
 And wine and brains perpetual pump ! " 
 
 The Ancient. That is simply baldness of language 
 (which Emerson sometimes mistakes for humor), not ob- 
 scurity. I will not explain it ! Read the whole poem 
 over again, and I 'm sure you will not need to ask me. 
 But now, to your work ! Who will draw again ? 
 
 The Gannet {drawhig). Ha! A friend, this time; 
 and I wish he were here with us. Nobody would take 
 more kindly to our fan than he. 
 
 Galahad. I shall try no more, to-night. My imita- 
 tion of Swinburne has exhausted me. I felt, while writ- 
 ing, as Zoihis did when he was imitating Browning, — 
 as if I could have gone on and on forever ! Really there 
 is some sort of possession or demoniac influence in these 
 experiments. They fascinate me, and yet I feel as if a 
 spirit foreign to my own had seized n*ie, 
 
 The' Ancient. Take another cigar ! I wish we had 
 
 'the Meleager, or the Earnese torso, here ; five minutes of 
 
 eiilier would surround you with a different atmosphere. 
 
 I know precisely how it affects you. Thirty years ago, 
 
 Tempus Edax, must I say tliirty ? when I dreamed hot 
 
46 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 dreams of fame, and "\yalked the streets in a mild delirium, 
 pondering over the great and godlike powers pent within 
 me, I had the same chills and fevers. I 'm not laugh- 
 ing at you, my dear Galahad ; God forbid ! I only pray 
 that there may be more vitality in the seeds which your 
 dreams cover, than in mine. Waiter ! Our glasses are 
 empty. 
 
 (ZoiLUS and the GkT^'i'i'E.T co7itiuue to write: meantime, fresh 
 glasses of beer are brought, and there is a brief silence) 
 
 ZoiLUS. I suspect the Ancient will want to knock me 
 on the head for this. {Reads.) 
 
 ALL OR NOTHING. 
 
 "Whoso answers my questions 
 
 Knoweth more than me ; 
 Hunger is but knowledge 
 
 In a less degree : 
 Prophet, priest, and poet 
 
 Oft prevaricate, 
 And the surest sentence 
 
 Hath the greatest weight. 
 
 When upon my gaiters 
 
 Drops the morning dew, 
 Somewhat of Life's riddle 
 
 Soaks my spirit through. 
 I am buskiucd by the goddess 
 
 Of Monadnock's crest. 
 And my wings extended 
 
 Touch the East and West. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 47 
 
 Or ever coal was hardened 
 
 In the cells of earth. 
 Or flowed the founts of Bourhon, 
 
 Lo ! I had my birth. 
 I am crowned coeval 
 
 With the Saurian eggs, 
 And my fancy firmly 
 
 Stands on its own legs. 
 
 Wouldst thou know the secret 
 
 Of the barberry -bush. 
 Catch the slippery whistle 
 
 Of the moulting thrush. 
 Dance upon the mushrooms. 
 
 Dive beneath the sea, 
 Or anything else remarkable. 
 
 Thou must follow me ! 
 
 The Ancient. Well, you have read somewhat more 
 than I imagined, Zoilus, This is a fair imitation of tlie 
 manner of some of Emerson's earlier poems ; but you 
 may take heart, Galahad, if you fear the povi^er of associa- 
 tion, for not one of the inimitable, imperishable passages 
 lias been suggested. 
 
 Zoilus. Now, seriously, do you mean to say that 
 there are such ? 
 
 The Ancient. 
 
 " Still on the seeds of all he made 
 The rose of beauty burns ; 
 Through times that wear, and forms that fade, 
 Immortal youth returns." 
 
48 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Galahad {drawing a long breath). How beautiful ! 
 The Ancient. 
 
 " Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake. 
 But it carves the bow of Beauty there, 
 
 And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." 
 
 ZoiLUS. Peccavi ! 
 
 The Ancient. Then I will lock up my half-unbolted 
 thunders. The Master does not need my vindication ; 
 and I should do him a poor service by trying to drive 
 any one towards the recognition of his deserts, when all 
 who think for themselves must come, sooner or later, to 
 know him. 
 
 The Gannet. But I never saw those stanzas ! 
 
 The Ancient. Yet they are printed for all the world. 
 The secret is simply this : Emerson cut from his limbs, 
 long ago, the old theological fetters, as every independent 
 thinker must. Those who run along in the ruts made by 
 their grandfathers, unable to appreciate the exquisite fibre 
 of liis intellect, tlie broad and grand eclecticism of his 
 taste, suspect a heresy in every sentence which they are 
 too coarsely textured to understand. Ko man of our day 
 habitually lives in a purer region of thought. 
 
 ZoiLUS {looking at his watch). Now, wc must know 
 what the Gannet has been doing. 
 
 The Gannet. My name was Edmund Clarence Stcd- 
 man. 
 
 The Ancient. One of the younger tribes, with some 
 of whom 1 'm not so familiar. I have caught many of 
 his "fugitives," in their llight, finding them of a kind 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 49 
 
 sure to stay wliere they touch, instead of being blown 
 quietly on until they pass forever out of the world. 
 Tliere 's a fine masculine vibration in his lines : he sings 
 in the major key, which young poets generally do not. 
 I 'd be willing to bet that your imitation has a sportive, 
 not a solemn, character. 
 
 The Gannet. Why, in spite of your disclaimer, 
 you 're not so ignorant. Your guess is right : therefore, 
 listen ! (Reads.) 
 
 THE GOLD-ROOM. 
 
 An Idyl. 
 
 They come from mansions far up -town, 
 
 And from their countiy villas, 
 And some, Charybdis' gulf whirls down. 
 
 And some fall into Scylla's. 
 Lo ! here young Paris climbs the stairs 
 
 As if their slope were Ida's, 
 And here his golden touch declares 
 
 The ass's ears of Midas. 
 
 It seems a Bacchic, brawling rout 
 
 To every business -scoruer. 
 But such, methinks, must be an " out," 
 
 Or has not made a "corner." 
 In me the rhythmic gush revives ; 
 
 I feel a classic passion : 
 We, also, lead Arcadian lives,. 
 
 Though in a Broad-Street fashion. 
 
 Old Battos, here, 's a leading bull. 
 And Diomed a bear is, 
 
 3 D 
 
50 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And near them, shearing hankers' wool. 
 
 Strides the Tiltonian Charis ; 
 And Atys, there, has gone to smash, 
 
 His every hill protested. 
 While Cleon's eyes with comfort flash, — 
 
 / have his funds invested ! 
 
 Mehercle ! 't is the same thing yet 
 
 As in the days of Pindar : 
 The Isthmian race, the dust and sweat. 
 
 The prize — why, what 's to hinder ? 
 And if I twang my lyre at times. 
 
 They did so then, I reckon ; 
 That man 's the hest at modern rhymes 
 
 "Whom you can di'aw a check on ! 
 
 Omnes {clapping their hands). Bravo ! 
 
 The Ancient. To think of Stedniau's being the only 
 voice in our literature which comes out of the business 
 crowds of the whole country ! The man who can spend 
 his days in a purely material atmosphere, and sing at 
 night, has genuine pluck in him. It 's enough to make 
 any green poet, who wails about the cruel world, and the 
 harsh realities of life, and the beautiful realm of the ideal, 
 ashamed of himself ! 
 
 Galahad {annoyed). You don't mean as much as you 
 say ! Every poet, green or not, must Iiave faith in an 
 ideal. 
 
 TuE Ancient {gen(lf). Ay, but if it make him 
 
 " Pamijcr the coward heart 
 "With feelings all too delicate for use," 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 51 
 
 as Coleridge translates Schiller, it is a deceit and a snare 
 to him. Your Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, 
 were made of different claj. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Here 's to their sublime Shades, wherever 
 they may be wandering ! Out, to the last drop ! We 
 ai-e in the small hours ; the Donne rwetters ! are all silent 
 in the saloon, and Karl Schafer is probably snoring over 
 his counter, waiting for us. Come ! \Tlxeunt. 
 
NIGHT THE THIRD. 
 
 HEN the sportive tilting with liglit lances, the 
 reciprocal, good-uatured chaffing, in which the 
 members of the Club were wont to indulge on 
 coming together, had subsided, the conversa- 
 tion took the following turn : 
 
 ZoiLUS {to The Ancient). I've been considering 
 what you said the last time, about the prevalent literary 
 taste not being entirely healthy. How far would you 
 apply that verdict to the authors ? Their relative popu- 
 larity is your only gauge for the character of the readers. 
 
 The Ancient. I don't think I had any individual 
 authors in my mind, at the time. But a great deal of all 
 modern literature is ephemeral, created from day to day 
 to supply a certain definite demand, and sinking out of 
 sight, sooner or later. Nine readers out of ten make no 
 distinction between this ephemeral material and the few 
 works which really belong to our literary history ; that 
 is, they confound the transitory with the permanent au- 
 thors. 
 
 ZoiLUS. So far, I agree with you. Now the inference 
 M'ould be that those nine readers, who lack the iiner 
 judgment, and who, of course, represent the prevalent 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 53 
 
 taste, are responsible for tlie success of the transitory au- 
 thors. But they do not make the latter; they do not 
 even dictate the character of their Avorks : hence the 
 school, no matter how temporary it may be, must be 
 founded by the authors, — which obliges us to admit a 
 certain degree of originality and power. 
 
 The Ancient. I see where you are going ; let us 
 have no reasoning in a ring, I pray you ! If you admit 
 the two classes of authors, it is enough. I have already 
 seen one generation forgotten, and I fancy I now see the 
 second slipping the cables of their craft, and making 
 ready to drop down stream with the ebb-tide. I remem- 
 ber, for instance, that in 1840 there were many well- 
 known and tolerably popular names, which are never 
 heard now. Byron and Mrs. Hemans then gave the tone 
 to poetry, and Scott, Bulwer, and Cooper to fiction. 
 WiUis was, by all odds, the most popular American au- 
 thor ; Longfellow was not known by the multitude, 
 Emerson was only "that Transcendentalist," and Whit- 
 tier "that Abolitionist." We young men used to talk 
 of Rufus Dawes, and Charles Penno Hoffman, and Gren- 
 ville Mellen, and Brainard, and Sands. Why, we even 
 had a hope that sometliing wonderful would come out 
 of Chivers ! 
 
 Omnes. Chivers ? 
 
 The Ancient. Have you never heard of Chivers ? 
 He is a phenomenon ! 
 
 The Gannet. Doesn't Poe speak of him some- 
 where ? 
 
 The Ancient. To be sure. Poe finished the ruin of 
 him which Slielley began. Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, 
 
54 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 of Georgia, author of " Yirginalia/' "The Lost Pleiad," 
 " Facets of Diamond," and " Eonchs of Kuby ! " 
 
 ZoiLrs. What ! Come, now, this is only a ben 
 trovato. 
 
 The Axcient. Also of "Nacoochee, the Beautiful 
 Star " ; and there "was still another Tolume, — six in all ! 
 The British Musenm has the only complete set of his 
 works. I speak the sober truth, Zoilus ; a friend of mine 
 has three of the volumes, and I can show them to you. 
 One of the finest images in modern poetry is in his 
 "Apollo": — 
 
 " Like cataracts of adamant, uplifted into mountains. 
 Making oceans metropolitan, for the splendor of the dawn ! " 
 
 Zoilus. Incredible ! 
 
 The Anciext. I remember also a stanza of his 
 "Rosalie Lee": — 
 
 " Many mellow Cydonian suckets, 
 
 Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine. 
 From the ruhy-rimmed beryline buckets. 
 
 Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline ; 
 Like the sweet golden goblet found growing 
 
 On the wild emerald cucumber-tree. 
 Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing, 
 
 "Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee ! " 
 
 Zoilus. Hold, hold ! I can endure no more. 
 
 The Ancient. You see wliat comes of a fashion in 
 literature. There was many a youth in tliosc days who 
 made attempts just as idiotic, in the columns of country 
 papers ; and perhaps the most singular circumstance 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 55 
 
 was, that very few readers laughed at them. Why, 
 there are expressions, epithets, images, which run all 
 over the land, and sometimes last for a generation, I 
 once discovered that with both the English and German 
 poets of a hundred years ago, evening is always called 
 brown, and morning either rosij or purple. Just now the 
 fashion runs to jewelry ; we have ruby lips, and topaz 
 light, and sapphire seas, and diamond air. Mrs. Brown- 
 ing even says : — 
 
 " Her cheelcs pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark ! " 
 
 What sort of a cheek must that be ? Then we have such 
 a wealth of gorgeous color as never was seen before, — 
 no quiet half-tints, but pure pigments, laid on with a pal- 
 let-knife. Eeally, I sometimes feel a distinct sense of 
 fatigue at the base of the optic nerve, after reading a 
 magazine story. The besetting sin of the popular — not 
 the best — authors is the intense. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Why do you call intensity of expression a 
 sin ? 
 
 ^ The Ancient. I mean intensity of epithet: the 
 strongest expression is generally the briefest and barest. 
 Take the old ballads of any people, and you will find few 
 adjectives. The singer says : " He laughed ; she wept." 
 Perhaps the poet of a more civilized age might say : "He 
 laughed in scorn ; she turned away and shed tears of 
 disappointment." But nowadays, the ambitious young 
 writer must produce something like this : "A hard, 
 fiendish laugh, scornful and pitiless, forced its passage 
 from his throat through the lips that curled in mockery 
 of her appeal; she covered her despairing face, and a 
 
56 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 gust and whirlwind of sorrowing agony burst forth in her 
 irresistible tears ! " 
 
 Omnes {clappimj their hands). Go on ! Go on ! 
 
 The Ancient. It is enough of the Bowery, for to- 
 night. 
 
 Galahad. 0, you forget the intenser life of our day ! 
 I see the exaggeration of which you speak, but I believe 
 something of it comes from the struggle to express more. 
 All our senses have grown keener, our natures respond 
 more delicately, and to a greater range of influences, than 
 those of the generations before ns. There is a finer 
 moral development ; our aims in life have become spirit- 
 ualized ; we may have less power, less energy of genius, 
 but we move towards higher and purer goals. 
 
 ZoiLUS. The writers of Queen Anne's time might 
 have compared themselves in the same way with their 
 predecessors in Charles II. 's. What if your own poems 
 should be considered coarse and immoral a hundred years 
 hence ? 
 
 Galahad {bewildered). What has that to do with the 
 question ? 
 
 The Ancient. Only this ; that there are eternal laws 
 of Art, to which the moral and spiritual aspirations of 
 tlie author, which are generally relative to his own or 
 the preceding age, must conform, if they would also 
 become eternal. 
 
 The Gannet. Very fine, iudeed ; but you arc all for- 
 getting our business. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Let us first add a fresli supply of names. 
 
 The Gannet. Write them yourself; we shall other- 
 wise repeat. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 57 
 
 (Zoi'Lus writes a dozen or more slips, whereupon they draw) 
 
 Gala-HAD. Daute E.ossetti ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. I have Barry Cornwall. 
 
 The Gannet. And I — Whittier. 
 
 Omnes. Whittier must not be parodied. 
 
 Galahad (earnestly). Draw another name ! 
 
 The Ancient. Why ? 
 
 Galahad. There is at once an evidence of what I 
 said ! Where are your jewelry and colors ? On the 
 other side, where will you find an intenser faith, a more 
 ardent aspiration for truth and good ? The moral and 
 spiritual element is so predominant in him, — so wedded 
 for time and eternity to his genius as a poet, — that you 
 cannot imitate him without seeming to slight, or in some 
 way oflPend, what should be as holy to us as to him ! 
 
 The Ancient [lai/lng his hand on Galahad's shoul- 
 der). My dear boy, Whittier deserves all the love and 
 reverence you are capable of giving him. He is just as 
 fine an illustration of my side of the question : his poetic 
 art has refined and harmonized that moral quality in his 
 nature, which, many years ago, made his poetry seem 
 partisan, and, therefore, not unmixed poetry. But the 
 alloy (in a poetic sense, only) has been melted out in the 
 pure and steady flame of his intellect, and the preacher 
 in him has now his rightful authority because he no longer 
 governs the poet. As for those poems which exhale de- 
 votion and aspiration as naturally as a violet exhales odor, 
 there is no danger of tlie Gannet imitating them ; he has 
 not the power even if he had the will. But Whittier has 
 also written — 
 
 The Gannet. Don't you see I 'm hard at work ? 
 3* 
 
58 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 What do you mean by dictating what I may or may not 
 do ? I am ah'eady well launched, and {declaiming) " I 
 seek no change ; and, least of all, such change as you 
 ■would give me ! " 
 
 The Ancient. I can't help you, Galahad; go on 
 with your own work now. I have drawn one of the 
 youngsters, this time, and mean to turn him over to you 
 when you have slaughtered E,ossetti. 
 
 Galahad. Who is he ? 
 
 The Ancient. A brother near your throne. 
 
 ZoiLus {to The Ancient). I have done Barry Corn- 
 wall ; it 's an easy task. He is nearly always very brief. 
 His are not even short swallow-flights of song, but little 
 hops from one twig to another. While Galahad and the 
 Gaunet are finishing theirs, repeat to me something more 
 of Chivers ! 
 
 The Ancient. I can only recall fragments, here and 
 there. The refrain to a poem called " The Poet's Voca- 
 tion," in the " Eonchs of Ruby," is : — 
 
 " In the music of the morns, 
 
 Blown through the Conchimarian horns, 
 Down the dark vistas of the rehoantic Norns, 
 To the Genius of Eternity, 
 Crying : ' Come to me ! Come to mc ! ' " 
 
 ZoiLUS. Ye gods ! It is amazing. Why can't you 
 write a stanza in his manner ? 
 
 The Ancient {smiling). I think I can even equal 
 him. 
 
 {lie takes a 'pencil and ivrites rap'idli/. Jitst as lie Jiuis/zcs, 
 Galahad and The Gannet lag domi their pencils and 
 leaji back in their seats.) 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 59 
 
 The Chorus {eagerly). We must first hear the An- 
 cient ! He is a medium for the great Chivers. 
 
 The Ancient. I have been merciful towards you. 
 One stanza will sujQBice. {Reads.) 
 
 Beloved of the wanderer's father 
 That walks mid the agates of June, 
 
 The wreaths of remorse that I gather 
 "Were torn from the turrets of Rune ; 
 
 When the star-patterns broidered so brilliant 
 Shone forth from the diapered blue, 
 
 And the moon dropped her balsam scintilliant. 
 Soul-nectar for me and for you ! 
 
 The Gannet. Send for a physician ; tie a wet towel 
 around his head ! A tliousand years hence, when the 
 human race comes back to polytheism, Chivers will be 
 the god of all crack-brained authors. 
 
 The Ancient. I recognize a fantastic infection. 
 Come, Zoilus, give me a tonic ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. Wine has become a -very fashionable tonic, 
 and that is just what I have put into Barry Cornwall's 
 mouth. {Reads.) 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Talk of dew on eglantine, — 
 Stuff! the poet's drink is wine. 
 Black as quaffed by old King Death, 
 That which biteth, maddeneth ; 
 For my readers fain would see 
 What effect it has on me. 
 
60 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Nose may redden, head may swim, 
 Joints be loose in every limb. 
 And the golden rhymes I chant 
 Sheer away on wings aslant. 
 Whale may whistle, porpoise roll. 
 Yet I '11 di-ain the gentle bowl ! 
 
 Pleasure's dolphin gambols near ; 
 Virtue's mackerel looks austere ; 
 Duty's hippopotamus 
 Waddles forward, leaving us ; 
 Joy, the sturgeon, leaps and soars, 
 While we coast the Teian shores ! 
 
 The AxcieisT. What a fearful Bacchanalian you have 
 
 made of good and gentle Barry Cornwall ! You must 
 
 have been possessed by Poe's " Imp of the Perverse," to 
 
 yoke his manner to such a subject. I was expecting to 
 
 hear something of spring and clover and cowslips. Faith ! 
 
 I believe I could improvise an imitation. Wait a second ! 
 
 Now: — 
 
 When spring returneth. 
 
 And cowslips blow, 
 The milkmaid churneth 
 
 Her creamy snow. 
 The mill-wheel spurneth 
 
 The stream below ; 
 The cherry-tree skippeth in earth and air. 
 The small bird callcth : beware, prepare ! 
 And all is fair ! 
 
 OiOTES. Another stanza ! 
 
 TuE Ancient. 0, you have but to turn things up- 
 side down, and there it is : — 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 61 
 
 The cold wind bloweth 
 
 O'er brake and burn, 
 The cream o'erfloweth 
 
 The tilted churn, 
 The mill-wheel sloweth, 
 
 And fails to turn ; 
 The cherry-tree sheddeth her leaves in the fall, 
 The crow and the clamoring raven call. 
 And that is all ! 
 
 But, seriously, Galahad, after what Zo'ilus has done, I 
 am a little afraid of the Gannet's work. Suppose he 
 should make our beloved Whittier 
 
 " Troll a careless tavern -catch 
 Of Moll and iMeg, and strange experiences 
 Unmeet for ladies " ? 
 
 Galahad {earnestly). Then I should withdraw fron> 
 the Club. 
 
 The Gannet. Prythee, peace, young hotspur! I'll 
 agree to start with you for Massachusetts by to-morrow 
 morning's express train, and lay before the poet what 
 I 've written. If he does n't laugh heartily, on reading 
 it, I '11 engage to come all the way back afoot. 
 
 The Ancient. We can decide for him : read ! 
 
 The Gannet. It is a ballad of New England life 
 which you shall hear. {Reads.) 
 
 THE BALLAD OF HIRAM HOVER. 
 
 "Where the Moosatockmaguntic 
 Pours its waters in the Skuntic, 
 
 Met, along the forest-side, 
 
 Hiram Hover, Huldah Hyde. 
 
62 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 She, a maiden fair aud dapper, 
 He, a red-haired, stalwart trapper. 
 
 Hunting beaver, mink, and skunk. 
 In the woodlands of Squeedunk. 
 
 She, Pentucket's pensive daughter. 
 Walked beside the Skuntic water, 
 Gathering, in her apron wet, 
 Snakeroot, mint, and bouncing-bet. 
 
 " Why," he murmured, loath to leave her, 
 " Gather yarbs for chills and fever. 
 When a lovj^er, bold and true. 
 Only waits to gather you ? " 
 
 " Go," she answered, " I 'm not hasty ; 
 
 I prefer a man more tasty : 
 
 Leastways, one to please me well 
 Should not have a beasty smell." 
 
 "Haughty Huldah ! " Hiram answered; 
 
 " Mind and heart alike are cancered : 
 Jest look here ! these peltries give 
 Cash, wherefrom a pair may live. 
 
 " I, you think, am but a vagrant. 
 Trapping beasts by no means fragrant ; 
 Yet — I 'm sure it 's worth a thank - 
 I 've a handsome sum in bank." 
 
 Turned and vanished Hiram Hover ; 
 
 Aud, before the yOar was over, 
 
 Huldah, with the yarbs she sold. 
 Bought a cape, against the cold. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 63 
 
 Black and thick the furry cape was ; 
 Of a stylish cut the shape was ; 
 
 And the girls, in all the town. 
 
 Envied Huldah up and down. 
 
 Then, at last, one winter morning, 
 
 Hiram came, without a warning : 
 
 " Either," said he, " you are hlind, 
 Huldah, or you 've changed your mind. 
 
 " Me you snub for trapping varmints. 
 Yet you take the skins for garments : 
 
 Since you wear the skunk and mink. 
 
 There 's no harm in me, I think." 
 
 " "Well," said she, " we will not quarrel, 
 Hiram : I accept the moral. 
 
 Now the fashion 's so, I guess 
 
 I can't hardly do no less." 
 
 Thus the trouble all was over 
 Of the love of Hiram Hover ; 
 
 Thus he made sweet Huldah Hyde 
 
 Huldah Hover, as his hride. 
 
 Love employs, with equal favor. 
 
 Things of good and evil savor ; 
 
 That, which iirst appeared to part. 
 Warmed, at last, the maiden's heart. 
 
 Under one impartial hanner. 
 Life, the hunter, Love, the tanner. 
 
 Draw, from every heast they snare, 
 
 Comfort for a Avedded pair ! 
 
64 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ZoiLUS. The Gannet distances us all to-niglit. Even 
 Galahad is laugh hig. yet, and I saw, Avheu the reading 
 began, that he was resolved not to smile, if he could help 
 it. What does our Ancient think ? 
 
 The Ancient. It does, certainly, suggest the style 
 of some of Whittier's delightful ballads, only substituting 
 a comical for an earnest motive. Change that motive 
 and a few expressions, and it would become a serious 
 poem. The Gannet was lucky in striking the proper key 
 at the start. And here, perhaps, is one result of our 
 diversions, upon which we had not calculated, over aiid 
 above the fun. I don't see why poets should not drill 
 themselves in all that is technical, as well as painters, 
 sculptors, opera-singers, or even orators. All the facul- 
 ties called into play to produce rhythm, harmony of 
 words, richness of the poetical dialect, choice of keys and 
 cadences, may be made nimbler, more active, and more 
 obedient to command, by even mechanical practice. I 
 never rightly believed in the peculiar solemnity of the 
 poet's gift ; every singer should have a gay, sportive side 
 to his nature. I am sure the young Shakespeare would 
 have heartily joined in what we are here doing; the 
 young Goethe, we know, did many a similar thing. He 
 was a capital improvvisatore ; and who knows how much 
 of his mastery over all forms of poetry may not have come 
 from just sucli gymnastics ? 
 
 Galahad. Might not an aptness in representing the 
 manner of others — like 1 hat of an actor who assumes a 
 different character every night — indicate some lack of 
 original force ? 
 
 The Ancient. The comparison is deceptive. Au 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 65 
 
 actor's sole business is to assume other individualities. 
 What we do is no more than every novelist does, in talk- 
 ing as a young girl, an old man, a saint, or a sinner. If 
 anything of yourself is lost in the process, and you can't 
 get it back again, why — let it go ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. You have it now, Galahad ! 
 
 Galahad. Well, I '11 cover my confusion by transfer- 
 ring myself into Dante Gabriel Rossetti. {Beads.) 
 
 CIMABUELLA. 
 
 I. 
 
 Fair-tinted cheeks, clear eyelids drawn 
 
 In crescent curves above the light 
 Of eyes, whose dim, uncertain dawn 
 
 Becomes not day : a forehead white 
 Beneath long yellow heaps of hair : 
 She is so strange she must he fair. 
 
 Had she sharp, slant-wise wnngs outspread. 
 She were an angel ; hut she stands 
 
 "With flat dead gold behind her head. 
 And lilies in her long thin hands : 
 
 Her folded mantle, gathered in. 
 
 Falls to her feet as it were tin. 
 
 III. 
 
 Her nose is keen as pointed flame ; 
 
 Her crimson lips no thing express ; 
 And never dread of saintly blame 
 
 Held down her heavy eyelashes : 
 
Q6 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 To guess what she were thinking of 
 Precludeth any meaner love. 
 
 IV. 
 
 An azure carpet, fringed with gold. 
 Sprinkled Avith scarlet spots, I laid 
 
 Before her straight, cool feet unrolled : 
 But she nor sound nor movement made 
 
 (Albeit I heard a soft, shy smile. 
 
 Printing her neck a moment's while) ; 
 
 V. 
 
 And I was shamed through all my mind 
 For that she spake not, neither kissed, 
 
 But stared right past me. Lo ! behind 
 JNIe stood, in pink and amethyst. 
 
 Sword-girt and velvet-doubleted, 
 
 A taU, gaunt youth, with frowzy head. 
 
 Wide nostrils in the air, dull eyes. 
 Thick lips that simpered, but, ah me ! 
 
 I saw, with most forlorn surprise. 
 He was the Thirteenth Centuiy, 
 
 I but the Nineteenth ; then despair 
 
 Curdled beneath my curling hair. 
 
 VIT. 
 
 O, Love and Fate ! IIow could she choose 
 My rounded outlines, broader brain. 
 
 And my resuscitated Muse ? 
 
 Some tears she shed, but whether pain 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 67 
 
 Or joy in him unlocked their source, 
 I could not fathom which, of course. 
 
 But I from missals, quaintly bound. 
 
 With cither and with clavichord 
 Will sing her songs of sovran sound : 
 
 Belike her pity will afford 
 Such faint return as suits a saint 
 So sweetly done in verse and paint. 
 
 The Gannet. Galahad! Who could have ex- 
 pected this of you? 
 
 Galahad. You know I like Rossetti's poems, but, 
 really, I could n't help it, after I once got under way. 
 
 The Gannet. Rossetti is picturesque, whatever else 
 he may not be. His poetry has a delicate flavor of its 
 own, and that is much to me, in these days, when so 
 many dishes seem to be cooked with the same sauce. A 
 poet is welcome to go back to the thirteenth century, if 
 he only fetches us pictures. Poetry belongs to luxurious 
 living, as much as painting and music ; hence we must 
 value color, rhythmical eifect, quaint and unexpected play 
 of fancy, and every otlier quality that makes verse bright 
 and sparkling. The theme is of less importance. Take, 
 for instance, Victor Hugo's Orientales. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Pray, let us not open that discussion again ! 
 You know, already, how far 1 go with you, and just 
 wliere Galahad and The Ancient stand. We should 
 rather confine ourselves directly to the authors we imi- 
 tate. Now, I think Rossetti's book on the Early Italian 
 Poets better than his own poems. Perhaps it was the 
 
68 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 attempt to reproduce those poets in English which has 
 given the mediaeval coloring to his verse. We cannot 
 undertake to say how much of the manner is natural, and 
 how much assumed ; for a thirteenth or even a second 
 century nature may be born nowadays. But it is none 
 the less out of harmony with our thought and feeling, and 
 the encouragement of such a fashion in literature strikes 
 me as being related to the Pre-Raphaelite hallucination 
 in art. I should like to have tlie Ancient's opinion on 
 this point. 
 
 The Ancient. Here is your other name, Galahad. 
 {Gices him a slip of paper.) If there were not so much 
 confusion of taste, Zo'ilus, — such an uncertainty in re- 
 gard to the unchanging standards of excellence, in litera- 
 ture and art, — I could answer you in a few words. We 
 must judge these anaclironistic developments (as they 
 seem) by those which provoked them. A movement may 
 be false in itself, yet made necessary by some antecedent 
 illusion or inanity. If you want to leave port, almost 
 any craft will answer. I might carry out the image, and 
 add that we never can foresee what side-winds may come 
 to force the vessel to some other shore than that for which 
 she seems bound. I have carefully read Rossetti's book, 
 as one of the many phenomena of the day. It seems to 
 me that tliere is a genuine thread of native poetry in 
 him, but so encumbered with the burden of color, sensu- 
 ous expression, and mediaeval imagery and drapery, that 
 it often is nearly lost. What I have heard of the author 
 cx|)lains to me the existence of the volume ; but its im- 
 mediate poj)ularity is something wliich I should not have 
 anticipated. 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 69 
 
 Galahad. I have written. 
 
 The Gannet. Already ? Who was it, then ? 
 
 Galahad. A personal friend, whose poems I know by 
 heart, — Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Therefore, I could n't 
 well avoid violating our rule, for a special little rhyme 
 popped into my head, and imitated myself. If Aldrich 
 were not living in Boston, we should have him here with 
 us to-night, and he would be quite ready to burlesque 
 himself. {Reach.) 
 
 PALABRAS GRANDIOSAS. 
 
 I lay i' the bosom of the sun, 
 
 Under the roses dappled and dun. 
 
 I thought of the Sultan Gingerheer, 
 
 In his palace heside the Bendemcer, 
 
 With his Affghan guards and his eunuchs blind, 
 
 And the harem that stretched for a league behind. 
 
 The tulips hent i' the summer hreeze, 
 
 Under the broad chrysanthemum-trees, 
 
 And the minstrel, playing his culverin, 
 
 Made for mine ears a merry din. 
 
 If I were the Sultan, and he were I, 
 
 Here i' the grass he should loafing lie. 
 
 And T should bestride my zebra steed, 
 
 And ride to the hunt of the centipede : 
 
 While the pet of the harem, Dandeline, 
 
 Should fill me a crystal bucket of wine, 
 
 And the kislar aga, Up-to-Snuff, 
 
 Should wipe my mouth when I sighed, " Enough ! " 
 
 And the gay court-poet, Fearfulbore, 
 
 Should sit in the hall when, the hunt was o'er. 
 
70 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And chant me songs of silvery tone. 
 Not from Hafiz, but — mine own ! 
 
 Ah, wee sweet love, beside me here, 
 I am not the Sultan Gingei'beer, 
 Nor you the odalisque Dandeline, 
 Yet I am yom-n, and you are mine ! 
 
 The Ancient. Tliere 's a delicate, elusive quality 
 about Aldricli's short lyrics, which I should think very 
 difficult to catch. I have an indistinct recollection of 
 poor George Arnold writing something, 
 
 ZoiLUS. It was all about a mistake Aldrich made, 
 years ago, in the color of a crocus. He call it red, and 
 there may be red crocuses for aught I know ; but yellow 
 or orange is the conventional color. Of course we didn't 
 let the occasion slip ; we were all unmerciful towards 
 each other, I remember I wrote something like this : — 
 
 I walked in the garden, ruffled with rain, 
 Through the blossoms of every hue ; 
 
 And I saw the pink, with its yellow stain. 
 And the rose, with its bud of blue. 
 
 George Arnold's lines were : — 
 
 And all about the porphyry plates were stre^vn 
 The blue arbutus of the early June, 
 The crimson lemon and the purple yam, 
 And dainties brought from Seringapatam ! 
 
 The Gannet. Tliey are better than yours. Well, 
 I 'm glad that Galaliad lias not confused our color, at 
 least. I specially like Aldrich ; for he is faithful to his 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 71 
 
 talent, and gives us nothing that is not daintily polished 
 and rounded. Some of his fragments remind me of 
 Genoese liHgree-work, there seems to be so much elabora-.. 
 tion in a small compass ; yet only sport, not labor, is 
 suggested. He, also, has ceased to sing in the minor 
 key ; but I don't think he ever affected it much. 
 
 The Ancient {earnestly) . I 'm glad to hear it ! 
 ye cheerful gods of ail great poets, shall vi^e never have 
 an end of weeping and wailing and lamentation ! Is the 
 world nothing but a cavern of sorrow, and the individual 
 life a couch of thorns ? Must we have always bats, and 
 never skylarks, in the air of poetry ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Hear, hear ! I have not seen the Ancient 
 so roused this many a day. 
 
 The Ancient. The truth always excites. 
 
 Galahad. Before you put on your hats, let us have 
 one more " lager." {The glasses are filled?) Now, to 
 the health of all our young authors ! 
 
 The Gannet. Here's to them heartily, — for that 
 includes ourselves. 
 
 The Ancient. As the youngest, I return thanks. 
 
 \Tlxeunt. 
 
NIGHT THE FOURTH. 
 
 LL the members of tlie club were assembled, 
 but the Aucieut had not yet made his appear- 
 I'i ance. He was dming that eveuing, as it hap- 
 pened, with a wealthy banker, and there was 
 no possibility of omitting one of the seventeen courses, 
 or escaping before the coffee and liqueurs. As the oldest 
 of the members, the duties of chairman were always con- 
 ferred on him whenever a decision became necessary, and 
 all assumed, as a matter of course, that the Diversions 
 should be suspended until his arrival. But the conversa- 
 tion, meanwhile, settled upon him as its subject. Zoilus 
 and one of the Chorus were not as old acquaintances as 
 the Ganuet and Galahad, which circumstance led, after 
 his nature had been genially discussed, to the following 
 digression : — 
 
 Zoilus {fo The Gaxnet). I had not often met him 
 familiarly, in tliis way, before. He is a good, mellow- 
 uatured companion, and not at all dogmatic, that is, iu a 
 direct way ; but I can see tlie influence of liis Boston 
 associations. There is a great deal of external tact and 
 propriety in that city. Now, our impetuous, keen, inci- 
 sive atmosphere — 
 
DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 73 
 
 The Gannet (jut emitting). Spare me the "incisive" ! 
 It has been overdone, as an effect, and will be the ruin of 
 you, yet. If I had as much faith as Galahad there, I 
 should believe as the Ancient does. But, since you will 
 have tlie " incisive," where can you find sentences more 
 clearly cut — the very intaglio of style — than in Holmes ? 
 
 ZoiLUS {cmrjrily) . And do you remember what he 
 wrote of our New York authors, — 
 
 " Whose fame, beyond their own abode, 
 Extends — for miles along the Harlem road " ? 
 
 The Gannet. Yes, and don't you know wdio they 
 were ? Why, their fame does n't reach up to Twenty- 
 third Street, now ! It ^vas a deliberate attempt, by a 
 small clique, to manufacture the Great American Litera- 
 ture, The materials were selected in advance, the style 
 and manner settled, and then the great authors went to 
 work. Like the Chinese mechanics who copied a steam- 
 boat, the external imitation was perfect ; but there w^ere 
 no inside works, and it would n't move a paddle ! When 
 you speak of our legitimate authors, here in New York, 
 what name first comes to your lips ? Bryant, of course ; 
 and have you forgotten how Holmes celebrated him ? and 
 how his was the only garland of verse thrown upon Ilal- 
 leck's grave ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Nevertheless, they systematically depreciate 
 what we do ; they are only kind and considerate towards 
 one another. You remember Poe's experience ? 
 
 The Ancient {entering the room). Which one, pray ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Of Boston. But they did not and have not 
 put him down ! 
 
 4 
 
74 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The A^^cient. Wliy, no ; he put himself down, that 
 time : I happened to be there, and I saw the performance. 
 I guess that you and the Gannet have been repeating your 
 usual tilt ; why not say, as Goethe did of the comparisons 
 made between himself and Schiller, " Instead of quarrel- 
 ling about which of us is the greater, people ought simply 
 to be thankful for having us both " ? Thirty or forty 
 years ago, when Lowell and Whipple were boys, Long- 
 fellow and Holmes young authors, Emerson considered 
 little better than daft, and Whittier almost outlawed on 
 account of his antislavery opinions, the literary society 
 here included Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Willis, and Hal- 
 leck, then the foremost American authors. Tlie chief 
 literary periodicals were here and in Philadelphia ; and 
 Boston, altliough the average of intellectual culture was 
 always higher there than elsewhere, occupied quite a sec- 
 ondary place. But I don't remember that there was ever 
 any jealousy or rivalry ; and I coufess I can't understand 
 the spirit which fosters such a feeling now. 
 
 ZoiLUS. You have passed the age when you care for 
 recognition. '' 
 
 The AjfCiENT. Have I, indeed? Pray, wlien does 
 tliat age cease ? If I had a more general recognition, at 
 present, — by which I mean the ascription to me of ex- 
 actly the literary qualities which I tliiuk I possess, — I 
 should be stimulated to do more and possibly better work. 
 I began authorship at a time when tliere was not much 
 discrimination between varieties of literary talent, when 
 such fearful stuff as " Agathe, a Necromaunt : in Three 
 Chimfcras," by a man named Tasistro, was published in 
 " Graham's Magazine," and when a dentist in Rhode 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 75 
 
 Island wrote a poem in heroic verse, called " The Den- 
 tiad." 
 
 Tpie Gannet. What was his name ? 
 
 The Ancient. Solyman Browu. I must quote to 
 you an exquisite passage : — 
 
 " Whene'er along the ivory disks are seen 
 The rapid traces of the dark gangrene. 
 When caries come, with stealthy pace, to throw 
 Corrosive ink-spots on those hanks of snow, 
 Brook no delay, ye trembling, snflfering Fair, 
 But fly for refuge to the dentist's care. 
 His practised hand, obedient to his will. 
 Employs the slender file with nicest skill ; 
 Just sweeps the gerniin of disease away. 
 And stops the fearful progress of decay." 
 
 ZoiLUS. The latest nursling of Darwin's " Botanic 
 Garden " ! It is not antitlietical enough for Pope. 
 Surely, that was not a popular poem ? 
 
 The Ancient. I was too young to know. I only 
 mention it as one of the chaotic elements out of which 
 has grown what little permanent literature we now have. 
 Probably three fourths of the writers then commencing 
 their career might have developed some sound practical 
 ability, with a little intelligent guidance ; they were not 
 strong enough to beat their own way out of the wilder- 
 ness. When I look back upon the time, I can see the 
 bones of immortal works bleaching on all sides. 
 
 The Gannet. As ours will bleach for the young fel- 
 lows who sit here in 1900 ! While you were speaking, 
 the thought occurred to me that no young poet in Eng- 
 
76 DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 land can possibly be as green at liis entrance into litera- 
 ture as the most of us must inevitably be. I begin to see 
 that a conventional standard is better than none ; for if it 
 does not guide, it provokes resistance ; either way, there- 
 fore, the neophyte acquires a definite form and style. 
 
 The Ancient. To that extent, I agree with you. 
 But we also have a standard, only those who accept it are 
 fewer, and so scattered over the whole country that their 
 authority is not immediately felt. They distinguish be- 
 tween what is temporary and what is permanent, in spite 
 of the general public. And tliis ought to be our great 
 comfort, if we are in earnest, that no power on earth can 
 keep alive a sensational reputation. 
 
 ZoiLUS. How do you account for the popularity of 
 such single poems as " The River of Time," (is that the 
 title of it ?) and " Beautiful Snow," and " Rock me to 
 sleep. Mother ? " Why, hardly a week passes, but I see 
 a newspaper dispute about the authorship of one or the 
 other of them ! To me they are languishing sentiment, 
 not poetry. 
 
 The Ancient. " Sentiment " sufficiently accounts for 
 their popularity. Put some tender, thoroughly obvious 
 sentiment into rhyme which sounds like the melody of a 
 popular song, and it M'ill go through hides which are im- 
 pervious to the keenest arrows of the imagination. But 
 liuw much more unfortunate for us, if it were not so ! 
 This gives us just the fulcrum we need if our literature is 
 ever to be an Archimedean lever. I find myself a great 
 deal happier since I have set about discovering the rea- 
 son of these manifestations of immature taste, instead of 
 lamenting over them, or cursing them, as I once did. 
 
DIVEHSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 77 
 
 ZoiLUS {ironically). Then I have not attained your 
 higher stand-point ? 
 
 The Gannet {offering him the hat). Here, pick out 
 one of the caged birds, and make him sing ! The prehide 
 of chords and discords has hxsted long enough ; let the 
 orcliestra now fall into a lively melody. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Ila ! How shall I manage Bryant ? 
 
 Galahad. Or I, Oliver Wendell Holmes ? 
 
 The Gannet. Or I, N. P. Willis ? 
 
 Galahad. Let us either exchange, or deal again ! 
 
 The Ancient. No ! As chairman, I declare such a 
 proposition out of order. You must not pick out those 
 authors with Avhose manner you are most familiar, or 
 whom you could most easily imitate. Tfiat would be no 
 fair and equal test ; and there must be a little emulation, 
 to keep your faculties in nimble playing condition, I am 
 as oddly tasked as either of you, — see, I have drawn 
 Tennyson ! — yet, for the sake of good example, I '11 work 
 with you this time. Let us surrender ourselves, like 
 spiritual mediums, to the control of the first stray idea 
 that enters our brains : anything whatever will do for a 
 point to start from. I am curious to know what will 
 come of it. 
 
 ZoiLUS. So am I. Here goes. {Writes) 
 
 The Gannet. We must first have our glasses filled ; 
 Galahad, ring for the waiter ! 
 {A silence of fifteen or txventy minides follovjs. As the first 
 
 one who has completed his task lifts his head loith a sigh of 
 
 relief, the others write with a nervous haste ; hat all wait 
 
 for the last one) 
 
 The Gannet. You were ready first, Zoilus. 
 
78 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Zo'iLUS. Then it was not because I had the least diffi- 
 cult task. Perhaps our Ancient can tell me why it is so 
 difficult to make an echo for Bryant's verse. To parody 
 any particular poem, such as " The Deatli of the Plow- 
 ers," would be easy enough, I should think ; but I was 
 obliged to write something independent in Bryant's man- 
 ner. Now, when I asked myself, "What is his manner ? " 
 I could only answer, " Gravity of subject and treatment, 
 pure rhythm, choice diction, and a mixture more or less 
 strong of the moral element." 
 
 The Ancient. You have fairly stated his prominent 
 characteristics, and your difficulty came from the fact that 
 they are all so evenly and exquisitely blended in his verse, 
 tliat no single one seems salient enough to take hold of. 
 Bryant's range of subjects is not wide, but within that 
 range he is a most admirable artist. He is of the same 
 blood with Wordsworth, — a brotlier, not a follower, — 
 and oftentimes seems cold, because his intellectual pitch 
 is high. I confess / find the powers of control, temper- 
 ance, self-repression, abnegation of sentiment for a pur- 
 pose which aims beyond it, in his poems, rather than a 
 negative coldness. His literary position, it is true, is 
 very isolated. He has both kept aloof from the tempo- 
 rary excitements in our poetic atmosphere, and he has 
 rarely given any direct expression of an aspiration for the 
 general literary development of our people, or of sym- 
 pathy with those who felt and fostered it. Nevertheless, 
 we cannot fairly go beyond an author's works, in our 
 judgments; and I suspect we shall all agree, as Ameri- 
 cans, in estimating tlie amount of our debt to Bryant. 
 
 Galahad. You have so put down my natural rcver- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 79 
 
 ence tliat I don't dare to protest. But when I see 
 Bryant in Broadway, with his magnificent Homeric 
 beard, I wonder the people don't take off their hats as 
 he passes. Why, seventy years ago, the stoHd Beiiiners 
 almost carried Schiller on their shoulders as he came out 
 of the theatre ; the raging mob of '48 did homage to 
 Humboldt ; and every other people, it seems to me, in 
 every other civilized land, has rendered some sort of 
 honor to its minstrels. But I cannot recollect that we 
 have ever done anything. 
 
 The Gannet. Yes, we have done a little, but not 
 much, — after death. A few men have given Halleck a 
 monument, and two men have put up busts of Irving and 
 Bryant in our parks. There was a public commemora- 
 tion of Cooper, at which Webster (who knew nothing 
 and cared nothing about our literature) officiated ; but 
 that was the end of it. The Bryant Festival was almost 
 a private matter ; the public was not represented, and 
 one author belonghig to the same club refused to take 
 any part in it, on account of the political views of the 
 poet ! 
 
 The Ancient. We are forgetting our business. 
 Zuilus has the floor. 
 
 ZoJLLUS. I told you I had a hard task ; therefore I 
 shall not be vexed if you tell me 1 have failed. {Reads.) 
 
 THE DESERTED BARN. 
 
 Against the gray November sky. 
 Beside the weedy lane, it stands ; 
 
 To newer fields they all pass by, 
 
 The farmers and their harvest hands. 
 
80 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 There is no hay within the mow ; 
 
 The racks and mangers fall to dust ; 
 The roof is crumbling in, hut thou. 
 
 My soul, inspect it and be just. 
 
 Once from the green and Avinding vale 
 The sheaves were borne to deck its floor ; 
 
 The blue -eyed milkmaid filled her pail. 
 Then gently closed the stable door. 
 
 Once on the frosty Avinter air 
 
 The sound of flails afar was borne. 
 
 And from his natural pulpit there 
 
 The preacher cock called up the morn. 
 
 But all are gone : the harvest men 
 Work elsewhere now for higher pay ; 
 
 The blue-eyed milkmaid married Ben, 
 The hand, and went to loway. 
 
 The flails are banished by machines. 
 
 Which thrash the grain with equine power ; 
 
 The senile cock no longer weans 
 
 The folk from sleep at dawning hour. 
 
 They slumber late beyond the hill. 
 
 In that new house which spurus the old ; 
 
 In gorgeous stalls the kiue are still. 
 The horse is blanketed from cold. 
 
 But I from ostentatious pride 
 And hollow pomp of riches turn. 
 
 To muse that ancient barn beside : 
 Pause, pilgrim, and its lesson learn ; 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 81 
 
 So live, that thou shalt never make 
 A mill-pond of the mountain-tarn. 
 
 Nor for a gaudy stable take 
 
 The timbers of thy ruined barn ! 
 
 Galahad. I vow I don't know whetlier that is seri- 
 ous, or a burlesque imitation ! 
 
 The Ancient. Then Zoilus lias fairly succeeded. 
 The grave, autumnal tone was indispensable, for it 
 stamps itself on the minds of nine out of teu who read 
 Bryant; just as we always associate Wordsworth with 
 momitain walks and solitary musings. Did you ever see 
 Kuntze's statuette of Bryant ? He is sitting, and beside 
 him, on the ground, there is only a buffalo-skull. Of 
 course, you at once imagine a prairie mound, with noth- 
 ing in sight, — which is carrying the impression alto- 
 gether too far ; for his poems on the apple-tree and the 
 bobolink are entirely human. 
 
 Galahad {earnestly). There is much more than that 
 in his poetry ! There is the evidence of a high imagina- 
 tive quality, which, for some reason or other, he seems to 
 hold in check ! Read " The Land of Dreams " and his 
 poem on " Earth," where there is something about the 
 
 " Hollows of the great invisible hills 
 Where darkness dwells all day — " 
 
 I can't remember all the passage, but it is exceedingly 
 fine ! Generally, he reins himself up so tightly that you 
 cannot feel the fretting of the bit ; but rarely, when he 
 lets himself go, for a few lines, you get a glimpse of an- 
 other nature. 
 
 4* F 
 
82 divehsions of the echo club. 
 
 The Ancient. Just tlierein, I think, lies bis greatest 
 service to American literature. There have always been, 
 and always will be, enough of wild mustangs, unbridled 
 foals, who dash off at a gallop and can't stop themselves 
 at the proper goal, but pant and stagger a mile beyond 
 it. With Bryant's genius, he might have undertaken 
 much more ; but he has hoarded his power, and how 
 freshly it serves him still ! 
 
 " No waning of fire, no quenching of ray. 
 But rising, still rising, then passing away." 
 
 Wlio wrote those lines ? 
 
 The Gannet. He who speaks through me to-night, 
 — Willis. But Galahad comes next in order. 
 
 Galahad. I have really a better right to complain of 
 the severity of my task than Zoilus. One can't imitate 
 humor without possessing it, — which I 'm not sure tiuit 
 I do. Between " Old Ironsides " and the " Oue-Hoss 
 Shay," Holmes has played in a great many keys, and I 
 w-as forced to echo that one which seemed easiest to 
 follow. {Reads) 
 
 THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL MUSE. 
 
 iMnsc, descend, or, stay ! — evolve thy presence from within, 
 For all conditions now combine, and so I must hegin : 
 The wind is fresh from wcst-nor'wcst, the sky is deepest blue, 
 Thermometer at seventy, and pulse at seventy-two. 
 
 At breakfast fish-balls I consumed; the pliosphatcs arc sup- 
 plied ! 
 The peccant acid iu my blood by Selters alkalied ; 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 83 
 
 As far as I can see the works, my old machine of thought 
 Euns with its cogs and pivots oiled, as if in Waltham bought. 
 
 The main-spring is elastic yet, the balance-wheel is trim, 
 And if " full -jewelled " one should think, let no man scoff at him ! 
 Odi j)rofanum vulgiis, — well ! the truth is t' other way ; 
 But one eupeptic as myself can always have his say. 
 
 Suppose I let the wheels run on, till fancy's index-hand 
 Points to a verse-inspiring theme and there inclines to stand ? 
 Between the thought and rhythmic speech there often yawns a 
 
 chasm ; 
 To bridge it o'er we only need a vigorous protoplasm. 
 
 "With an unconscious sinciput, a cerebellum free, 
 
 I don't see why the loftiest lays should not be sung by me : 
 
 The fitful flushes of the Muse my diagnosis own : 
 
 I test her symptoms in the air as surely as ozone. 
 
 There 's just one thing that fails me yet ; the fancies dart around 
 Like skittish swallows on the wing, but none will touch the 
 
 ground. 
 With such conditions 't were a sin to lay the pen aside. 
 But, with the mind close-girt to run, direction is denied. 
 
 I 've waited, now, an hour or more : I 'd take a glass of wine. 
 Save that I fear 't would send the pulse to seventy-eight or nine ; 
 'T is that capricious jade, the Muse ! — I know her tricks of 
 
 old: 
 Just when my house is warm for her, she will prefer the cold ! 
 
 The Gannet. Ab, you 've only caught some general 
 characteristics, not the glitter and flash of Hohnes's 
 lines ! His humor is like a Toledo blade ; it may be 
 sheathed in a circular scabbard^ but it always springs out 
 
84 DIVEr.SIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 straight and keen, and fit for a direct lunge. He is tlie 
 only poet in llie country avIio can write good " occa- 
 sionals," without losing faith in the liner inspiration, or 
 ceasing to obey it. 
 
 Galahad. You very well know we have no time for 
 selection. I have been reading lately his "Mechanism 
 in Thought and Morals," so that my imitation was really 
 suggested by his prose. 
 
 The Ancient. That is permitted. For my part, 
 though I like Holmes's songs in all keys, I liave always 
 wished that he had written more such poems as "La 
 Grisette," wherein we have, first of all, ease and grace, 
 then just enough of sentiment, of humor, and of a light, 
 sportive fancy to make a mixture mIioIIv delightful, — a 
 beverage that cheers, but not inebriates, in which there is 
 neither headache nor morbid tears. Hood had the same 
 quality, though he does n't often reveal it ; so had Praed ; 
 so, I feel sure, had Willis, but in his case it was a neg- 
 lected talent. Wlien I say tiiat we most sorely need this 
 naive, playful element in our literature, you may not 
 agree with me ; but, 0, how tired I am of hearing tliat 
 every poem should "convey a lesson," should "inculcate 
 a truth," should " appeal to the moral sense." IVhy, 
 half our self-elected critics seem to be blind to the purely 
 aesthetic character of our art ! No man — not even the 
 greatest — can breathe a particular atmosphere all his 
 life, without taking some of its ingredients into his 
 blood ; and just those which seem best may be most fatal 
 to the imaginative faculty. I suspect there lias been 
 more of battle in the intellectual Hfe of Holmes than any 
 of us knows. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 85 
 
 ZoiLUS. Now let us hear the Gannet. 
 
 The Gannet. If it had been a leader for the " Home 
 Journal/' I should have found the task light enough ; but 
 Willis's poetic style is — as he would have said — rather 
 un-come-at-able. {Reads.) 
 
 KEREN-HAPPUCH. 
 
 The comforters of Job had come and gone. 
 They were anhungered ; for the eventide 
 Sank over Babylon, and smokes arose 
 From pottage cooked in palace and in tent. 
 Then Keren -happuch, from her lordly bower 
 Of gem-like jasper, and the porphyry floors 
 Swept by the satins of her trailing robe, 
 Came forth, and sat beside her father Job, 
 And gave him comfort, mid his painful boils, 
 And scraped him with a potsherd ; and her soul 
 Rebelled at his unlovely misery. 
 And from her lips, that parted like a cleft 
 Of ripe pomegranates o'er their ruby teeth. 
 Broke forth a wail : 
 
 " Alas for thee, my sire ! 
 And for the men and maidens of thy train, 
 And for thy countless camels on the plain. 
 
 More than thou didst require ; 
 Thou mightst have sold them at the morning dawn 
 For heavy gold : at even they were gone ! 
 
 " And they who dressed my hair 
 With agate braids and pearls from Samarcand 
 
86 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Have died ; there is no handmaid in the land, 
 
 To make my visage fair : 
 TJnpainted and unpowdei-ed, lo ! I come. 
 Gray with the ashes of my gorgeous home ! 
 
 " Yea, thou and I are lone : 
 The prince who wooed me fled in haste awny 
 From thine infection : hungered here I stray, 
 
 And find not any bone ; 
 For famished cats have ravaged shelf and plate : 
 The larder, like my heart, is desolate ! 
 
 " And it is very drear. 
 My sire, whose Avealth and beauty were my pride, 
 To see thee so disfigured at my side, 
 
 Nor leech nor poultice near. 
 To save thy regal skin from later scars : 
 Yea, thou art loathsome by the light of stars ! 
 
 " Go, hie thee to thy room. 
 And I Avill gather marjoram and nard. 
 And mix their fragrance with the cooling lard, 
 
 And thus avert thy doom. 
 A daughter's sacrifice no tongue can tell : 
 The prince will not return till thou art well ! " 
 
 Galahad. Now I must say, althougli I have eiijoN'ed 
 the travesty witli you, that this gives me a pang, I can't 
 forget Willis's sunny, kindly, and sympathetic nature, 
 and the dreary clouding of his mind at the last. There 
 was something very tragic in the way in wliicli he clung 
 to the fragments that remained, as one faculty after 
 another failed him, and strove to be still the cheerful, 
 si)arkling author of old. I was hardly more than a boy 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 87 
 
 "wlieii I first went to him, a few years ago, and no brother 
 could have been kinder to me. 
 
 The Ancient. There never was a poet more free 
 from jealousy or petty rivalry, none more ready to help 
 or encourage. As an author, he was damaged by too 
 early popularity, and he made the mistake of trying to 
 retain it through exaggerating the features of his style 
 which made him popular ; but neither homage nor defa- 
 mation — and he received both in full measure — ever 
 affected the man's heart in his breast. There was often 
 an affectation of aristocratic elegance in his writings ; yet, 
 in his life, he was as natural a democrat as Walt Whitman, 
 gentle, considerate, and familiar with the lowest whom he 
 met, and only haughty towards ignorant or vulgar preten- 
 sion. Poe said that he narrowly missed placing himself 
 at the head of American literature, which was true of his 
 career from 1830 to about 1845. By the by, I wish some 
 one would undertake to write our literary history, begin- 
 ning, say, about 1800. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Set about it yourself ! But, come, we are 
 not to be cheated out of your contribution to-night; 
 where is your Tennyson ? 
 
 The Ancient. I have added another to his brief 
 modern idyls. {Reads.) 
 
 EUSTACE GREEN; 
 
 Or, The Medicine-Bottle. 
 
 Here 's the right place for lunch ; and if, ah me ! 
 The hollies prick, and burr-weed grows too near. 
 We '11 air our eyesight o'er the swelling downs. 
 
88 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And so not mind them. "While the ]Medoc chills 
 In ice, and yon champagne-flask in the sun 
 Takes mellower warmth, I '11 tell you what I did 
 To Eustace Green — last Camhridge-term it was, 
 Just when the snowhall by the farmer's gate 
 Made jokes of winter at the garden rose. 
 
 No marvel of much wisdom Eustace was, — 
 
 You know him, Hal, — no high-hrowed intellect, 
 
 Such as with easy grab the wrangler's place 
 
 Plucks fro}u the clutching hands of college youth. 
 
 But home-bred, as it Avere ; and all the stock. 
 
 His stalwart dad, and mother Marigold 
 
 (We called her), Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane, 
 
 A country posy of great boys and girls. 
 
 But she, the mother, when the brown ash took 
 
 A livelier green beside the meadow-stile. 
 
 And celandines, the milky kine of flowers. 
 
 Were yellow in the lanes, hung o'er the fire 
 
 A caldron huge — oh me, it was a sight 
 
 To see her stir the many herbs therein ! 
 
 Of yarrow, tansy, thyme, and camomile — 
 
 What know I all ? — she boiled and slowly brewed 
 
 The strange concoction : 't was an heirloom old. 
 
 The recipe, a sovran cure, and famed 
 
 From Hants to Yorkshire : this must Eustace take. 
 
 Not that the lubber lad was ill — 0, no ! 
 
 You did but need to punch him in the ribs, 
 
 To feel how muscle overlaid the bone ; 
 
 And as for trencher-practice, — trust me, Hal, 
 
 A donkey -load of lunch were none too much. 
 
 Were he here with us. Where was I ? — Ah, yes, 
 
 The medicine ! She gave it me with words 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 89 
 
 Many, and thrice repeated ; lie should take, 
 Eustace, the dose at morn, and noon, and night, 
 For these were feverous times : she did not know. 
 Not she, what airs blew o'er the meads of Cam : 
 Preventive ounces weighed a pound of cure. 
 At last, I thrust the bottle in my sack. 
 And left her. 
 
 Now, returning Cambridge-wards, 
 Some devil tickled me to turn the thing 
 To joke, or was it humors in the blood. 
 Stirring, perchance, when, oysters out of date 
 And game prohibited, the stomach pines ? 
 Think as you will ; but to myself my mind 
 Thus reasoned : need to him of medicine 
 Is none : the green cicala in the grass 
 Chirps not more wholesome : wherefore swiftly I 
 Will cats this useless brewage to the Avinds, 
 Yea, to the thistled downs ; and substitute — 
 Haply some ancient hostel glimmering near — 
 Laborious Boreal brandy, equal bulk. 
 And this, the thing accomplished, then did I 
 Proffer to Eustace Green, all eager he 
 For news of home and mother Marigold, 
 His dad and Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane, 
 And Bloss, the ox, and Bounce, the plough-horse old, 
 One-eyed, and spavined. But the medicine 
 He took with : " Pshaw ! that beastly stuff again ? 
 Am I a rat that she should send the dose ? " 
 Then I : " Dear Eustace, times are feverous : 
 Malarial breezes blow across the Cam : 
 Preventive ounces weigh a pound of cure." 
 " O, damn your ounces ! " he profanely cried ; 
 " But if I must, I must ; so summon Giles, 
 
90 DITEPtSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The undertaker, wlien I take this close. 
 
 And gently coffin me when now I die." 
 
 So drank ; and then, with great eyes all astare, 
 
 Cried : " Taste it, you ! Fourth-proof, 0. P. and S. T. X. ! — 
 
 "We '11 have a punch ! " And that teetotal dame. 
 
 His mother, did we pledge in steaming punch. 
 
 She knowing not ; and tears of laughter ran 
 
 Down both our cheeks, and trickled in the bowl, 
 
 "Weakening the punch. 
 
 But now the INIedoc 's chill. 
 And warm the sweet champagne ; so, while the copse 
 Clangs round us like the clang of many shields, 
 Down the long hollows to the dusky sea. 
 Let us, with sandwich and the hard-boiled egg. 
 Enjoy both nature's beauty and our own ! 
 
 OiiNES, Well done ! 
 
 ZoiiLUS. Why, you liave caught the very trick of 
 Tennyson's blank-verse ! If you Lad only warmed the 
 Medoc and chilled the champagne, I sliould hardly kuow 
 the difference. But how did you ever happen to invent 
 a motive, or plot, all complete, on the spur of the mo- 
 ment ? 
 
 The ANCIE^-T. Ah, you force me to confess : I did n't 
 invent it. It was a trick I played myself, on a friend, in 
 our young days ; and, by good luck, it came to my mem- 
 ory just at the right time. Therefore, liaving the subject, 
 the imitation of Tennyson's manner was easy enough. 
 I 'm ghid, however, that you tliink it successful ; for it 
 justifies me in holding fast to the principle we accepted, 
 and w Inch I was obliged to enforce to-night. You know 
 that my own scattering poems are quite unlike — how- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 91 
 
 ever long the interval between — anything of Tennyson's ; 
 but I have made it a point, for years past, to study the 
 individual characteristics of the poets, and this proves 
 how easily those which are superficial and obvious may 
 be copied. 
 
 ZoiLUS. May I ask what your private estimate of 
 Tennyson, as a poet, is ? 
 
 The Ancient. Of course ! While I might, possibly, 
 agree with his keenest critics in regard to many details 
 of style or expression, especially in his earlier poems, I 
 yield to no one in the profoundest respect for his noble 
 loyalty to his art. Tennyson is a poet, who, recognizing 
 the exact quality of his gift, lias given all the forces of his 
 mind, all the energies of his life, to perfect it. I can see 
 that he has allowed no form of knowledge, v\?hich this age 
 has developed, to arise without assimilating, at ],east, its 
 substance ; but all is employed in the sole service of his 
 poetic art. He began with somethhig of the rank, " lush " 
 luxuriance of style which Keats was just leaving behind 
 him when he died : he now rises, often to a majestic sim- 
 plicity and dignity which nearly remind me of Milton. 
 Not that the two are similar, in any particular ; but Ten- 
 nyson, like scarcely any other except Schiller, has achieved 
 high success as a poet by comprehending clearly both 
 his powers and their limitations. How easily, by mis- 
 taking his true Avork, he might have scattered his _ rays, 
 instead of gathering them into a clear focus of light ! 
 All honor to him, I say, in this age, wlieu so many writ- 
 ers degrade their gift by making it subservient to worldly 
 ends ! 
 
 Galahad {with enthusiasm). You make me happy ! 
 
92 
 
 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The Gannet. I sliould say, nevertheless, that he was 
 well paid in ringing guineas. Eor instance — 
 
 ZoiLUS. " The continuation in next week's New York 
 Ledger ! " Do you know that it is one o'clock ? 
 
 Omnes (starting up). We go — but we return ! 
 
 [Exeunt. 
 
NIGHT THE FIFTH. 
 
 ]LL were on hand at the usual hour, fresh and 
 eager for a contmuation of the performances. 
 The Gannet, addressing Zoiliis, opened the 
 conversation : — 
 
 "I can guess one thing you have been thinking of 
 since we met, — of Tennyson's place in literature ? " 
 
 ZoiLUS. You have just hit it ! I did n't fully agree 
 with the Ancient, but there was no time left for discus- 
 sion. There must be some good reason ' for Tennyson's 
 influence on the poetry of our day ; yet, if his is a gen- 
 uine flower, it could n't be made a weed by being sown 
 everywhere. There is no doubt of the individuality of 
 his manner,' but I am not yet ready to say that it is pure, 
 as Collins's, or Gray's, for instance, or even Words- 
 worth's. He is sometimes like a perfume which cloys 
 the sense from over-richness. Now, a very slight change 
 in the odor of the tuberose might make it unpleasant ; 
 and it seems to me that some of Tennyson's younger fol- 
 lowers have made just such a change. 
 
 Galahad. Almost the same thought occurred to me 
 the other day. I was trying to recall some lines of the 
 Ancient's imitation, and then went over in my mind the 
 
94 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 numbers of blank -verse idyls more or less in Tennyson's 
 manner, -whicli Lave been written by others. He drew 
 from a very far source, as I tliink Stedman has clearly 
 sliown in his paper on "Theocritus and Tennyson" ; but 
 they, drawing from him, cannot conceal theirs. I never 
 before felt so keenly the difference between the poetry 
 which rises out of a man's own nature and that whicli is 
 impressed upon it, or communicated, like an infection, by 
 another mind. I even went so far as to try my hand 
 alone, on an imitation of this idyllic school, which I now 
 see is itself an echo. 
 
 The Ancient. Read it to us, then ! Who was your 
 immediate model ? 
 
 Galahad {t.aUng a -paper from his pocket). Why, no 
 one in particular. Now, that I look over the lines, I see 
 tliat I must have been thinking of the echoes of the 
 " Princess," rather than of those of the short idyls of 
 modern life. It is tlie craziest burlesque of the mediaeval 
 themes, revived in that form : it is absurd, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 ZoiLUS. That will do very well, for variety. 
 
 Galahad. Then, as Eustace Green says, if I must, I 
 must. {Reads) 
 
 SIR EGGXOGG. 
 
 Forth from the purple battlements he fared, 
 Sir Eggnogg of the Rampant Lily, named 
 Prom lliat embrasure of his argent shield 
 Given by a thousand leagues of heraldry 
 On snuffy parchments di-awn, — so forth he fared. 
 By bosky boles and autuam leaves he fared. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 95 
 
 Where grew the juniper with berries black, 
 
 The sphery mansions of the future gin. 
 
 But naught of this decoyed his mind, so bent 
 
 On fair Miasma, Saxon-blooded girl. 
 
 Who laughed his loving lullabies to scorn. 
 
 And would have snatched his hero-sword to deck 
 
 Her haughty brow, or warm her hands withal. 
 
 So scornful she : and thence Sir Eggnogg cursed 
 
 Between his teeth, and chewed his iron boots 
 
 In spleen of love. But ere the morn was high 
 
 In the robustious heaven, the postern-tower 
 
 Clang to the harsh, discordant, slivering scream 
 
 Of the tire-woman, at the window bent 
 
 To dress her crisped hair. She saw, ah woe ! 
 
 The fair Miasma, overbalanced, hui'led 
 
 O'er the flamboyant parapet which ridged 
 
 The muffled coping of the castle's peak. 
 
 Prone on the ivory pavement of the com't. 
 
 Which caught and cleft her fairest skull, and sent 
 
 Her rosy brains to fleck the Orient floor. 
 
 This saw Sir Eggnogg, in his stirrups poised. 
 
 Saw he and cursed, with many a deep-mouthed oath. 
 
 And, finding nothing more could reunite 
 
 The splintered form of fair IVIiasma, rode 
 
 On his careering palfrey to the wars, 
 
 And there found death, another death than hers. 
 
 ZoiLUS. After this, write another such idyl yourself, 
 if you dare ! 
 
 Galahad. I never shall ; but when you have done 
 the thing ignorantly, and a magazine wants it on account 
 of the temjDorary popularity of the theme and manner, is 
 an author much to blame for publishing ? 
 
96 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The Gais^istet. Let your conscience rest, Galahad ! 
 "Hunger and request of friends" were always valid 
 pleas. If a poet invariably asked himself, " Is this origi- 
 nal ? Is it something tliat must be written ? Is it likely 
 to be immortal ? " I suspect our stock of verse would 
 soon be very short. At least, only the Chiverses and 
 Tuppers and would still be fruitful. 
 
 The Ancie:n^t. Did you ever guess at the probable 
 permanence of the things which seem best when they 
 appear ? It is a wholesome experiment. Macaulay first 
 suggested it to me, in speaking of tlie three per cent of 
 Southey which might survive : since then, I have found 
 that the Middle Ages are an innnense graveyard of 
 poems, but nothing to what this century will be. I doubt 
 Avhether many authors would write, in the mere hope of 
 posthumous fame. 
 
 The Gannet. I would n't ! My idea of literature is, 
 the possession of a power which you can wield to some 
 purpose while you live. It may also be wealth, another 
 l)ower; it may be yoked with poHtics, which is better 
 still ; it may — 
 
 Galahad {interrupting). Stop ! don't make me feel 
 that your gift, which I have believed in, is so entirely 
 selfish ! 
 
 ZoiLUS {shal-ing the hat). Here would soon be a 
 precious row between you two ; draw your names and 
 go to work ! 
 
 The Gannet. What ? Henry T. Tuckerman ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. To be sure ! I liave — Longfellow ! 
 
 Galahad. Mine is William D. Howells. 
 
 The Ancient. I have drawn llichard Henry Stod- 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 97 
 
 dard. Now, no changing, remember ! We are better 
 suited than the last time, unless it be Zoilus, of whom I 
 have my doubts. All imitations cannot be equally for- 
 tunate, and I 'm not sure that any of us would succeed 
 better, if he sliould take his own time and pains for the 
 task, instead of trusting to the first random suggestion. 
 
 Zoilus. Then, why are you doubtful about me ? I 
 have my random suggestion already. 
 
 The Ancient. Work it out ! I think you under- 
 stand my doubt, nevertheless. Tlie Gannet is cliuckling 
 to himself, as if he were on the track of something 
 wicked : I foresee that I must use my authority to-night, 
 if I have any left. {Writes.) 
 
 The Chorus {wlmpering together'). They are very 
 evenly matched. Could any inference be drawn from the 
 manner of eacli, as lie writes ? The Gannet has the most 
 sarcastic air, Zoilus is evidently satisfied with his per- 
 formance, Galahad seems earnest and a little perplexed, 
 and the Ancient is cool and business-like. They have all 
 learned sometiiing by practice; they work much more 
 rapidly than at first. 
 
 The Gannet {after all have finished) . When you try 
 to grasp anything smooth, your hand slips. In Tucker- 
 man there is only proper smoothness which can be trav- 
 estied, and you know how difficult that is. {Reads.) 
 
 ODE TO PROPRIETY. 
 
 Thou calm, complacent goddess of the mind, 
 Look on me from thine undisturbed domain ; 
 
 Thy well-adjusted leaflets let me bind, 
 
 As once on youthful, now on manly brain. 
 
98 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Upon thy head there is no hair awry ; 
 
 Thy careful drapery falleth as it should : 
 Thy face is grave ; thy scrutinizing eye 
 
 Sees only that which hath been stamped as good. 
 
 Thou art no patron of the strenuous thought 
 That speaks at will, regardless of old rule ; 
 
 To thee no neologic lays are brought. 
 But models of the strictly classic school. 
 
 Thou teachest me the proper way and sure ; 
 
 To no imaginative heights misled. 
 My verse moves onward with a step secure. 
 
 Nor hastes with raptm-e, nor delays with dread. 
 
 I do not need to woo the fickle IMuse, 
 But am her master, justified by thee : 
 
 All measures must obey me as I choose, 
 So long as they are thine. Propriety ! 
 
 For genius is a fever of the blood, 
 
 And lyric rage a strange, disturbing spell : 
 
 Let fools attempt the torrent and the flood. 
 Beside the pensive, placid pond I dwell ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. You have too much alliteratiou iu the last 
 line : that is not at all proper. 
 
 The Ganxet. Then it shows the impossibility of re- 
 producing the tone of Pope and Gray in our day. I do 
 not know that Tuckerman attempts this in his verse ; but 
 I suspect that his prose model is still Addison. 
 
 ZoiLUS. That is really getting to be a sign of origi- 
 nality ! !Mix Addison and Imagination together, and 
 sublimate in a French retort, and where could you have 
 
DIVEUSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 99 
 
 a finer modern style ? Tuckerman lias all tradition on 
 his side ; he represents a conservative element in litera- 
 ture, which — though I don't admire it much — I think 
 necessary, to keep the wild modern schools in order. 
 
 Galahad. It is something new, to hear you take this 
 side. 
 
 Zo'iLUS. You must not always credit me with being 
 wholly in earnest. I think I am a natural iconoclast ; 
 but one might as well assail respectability in society as 
 the " classic " spirit in literature. It is impervious to all 
 our shots ; every blow slides off its cold polish. But, 
 candidly, there are times when it seems to refresh me, or, 
 at least, to give me a new relish for something warmer 
 and more pungent. 
 
 The Ancient. I believe you, fully. We should all 
 fare badly, were it not for the colder works which we 
 hear so often depreciated. They make a fire-proof temple 
 in which we may build fires at will. Now, let us hear 
 how you have treated an author who is already a classic, 
 though without the cold polish of which you speak. Very 
 few poets have been complimented by so many ordinary 
 parodies, 
 
 ZoiLUS. I am aware of that, and I have tried to get 
 as far away as possible from the risk of resembling them. 
 {lieads^ 
 
 NAUVOO. 
 
 This is the place : be still for a while, my high-pressure steam- 
 boat ! 
 Let me survey the spot where the Mormons builded their temple. 
 Much have I mused on the wreck and ruin of ancient religions. 
 
100 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Scandinavian, Greek, Assyrian, Zend, and the Sanskrit, 
 Yea, and explored the mysteries hidden in Talmudic targums. 
 Caught the gleam of Chrysaor's sword and occulted Orion, 
 Backward spelled the lines of the Hebrew graveyard at Newport, 
 Studied Ojibwa symbols and those of the Quarry of Pipe-stone, 
 Also the myths of the Zulus whose questions converted Colenso, 
 So, methiuks, it were well I should muse a little at Nauvoo. 
 
 Fair was he not, the primitive Prophet, nor he who succeeded. 
 Hardly for poetry tit, though using the Urim and Thummim. s 
 Had he but borrowed Levitical trappings, the girdle and ephod, 
 Fine-twined linen, and ouches of gold, and bells and pomegran- 
 ates. 
 That, indeed, might have kiudled the weird necromancy of fancy. 
 Had he but set up mystical forms, like Astarte or Peor, 
 Balder, or Freya, Quetzalcoatl, Perun, jNIanabozho, 
 Verily, though to the sense theologic it might be offensive, 
 Great were the gain to the pictured, flashing speech of the poet. 
 Yet the Muse that delights in Mesopotamian numbers, 
 Vague and vast as the roar of the wind in a forest of pine-trees, 
 Now must tune her strings to the names of Joseph and Erigham. 
 Hebrew, the first ; and a Smith before the Deluge was Tubal, 
 Thor of the East, who first made iron ring to the hammer ; 
 So on the iron heads of the people about him, the latter, 
 Striking the sparks of belief and forging their faith in the Good 
 
 Time 
 Coming, the Latter Day, as he called it, — the Kingdom of Zion. 
 Then, in the words of Philip the Eunuch unto Bclshazzar, 
 C:inic to him multitudes wan, diseased and decrepit of spirit, 
 Came and heard and believed, and buildcd the temple at Nauvoo. 
 
 All is past ; for Joseph was smitten with lead from a pistol, 
 Brigham went with the others over the prairies to Salt Lake. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 101 
 
 Answers now to the long, disconsolate wail of tlie steamer. 
 Hoarse, inarticulate, shrill, the rolling and bounding of ten- 
 pins, — • 
 Answers the voice of the bar-tender, mixing the smash and the 
 
 julep. 
 Answers, precocious, the boy, and bites a chew of tobacco. 
 Lone as the towers of Afrasiab now is the seat of the Prophet, 
 Mournful, inspiring to verse, though seeming utterly vulgar : 
 Also — for each thing now is expected to furnish a moral — 
 Teaching innumerable lessons for whoso believes and is patient. 
 Thou, that readest, be resolute, learn to be strong and to suffer ! 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead and act in the Present ! 
 Bear a banner of strange devices, " Forever " and " Never " ! 
 Build in the walls of time the fane of a permanent Nauvoo, 
 So that thy brethren may see it and say, " Go thou and do like- 
 wise ! " 
 
 Galahad. Zoilus, you are incorrigible. 
 
 ZoiLUS {laughing). Just what I expected you to say; 
 But it 's no easy thing to be funny in hexameters : the 
 Sappliic verse is much more practicable. I heaped to- 
 gether everything I could remember, to increase my 
 chances. In some of Longfellow's earlier poems the 
 theme and moral are like two sides of a medal ; but I 
 could n't well copy that peculiarity. 
 
 The Gannet. You will only find it in "The Beleag- 
 uered City " and " Seaweed." Longfellow is too genuine 
 an artist to fall into that or any other "peculiarity." 
 Just his best, his most purely imaginative poems are those 
 which have not been popular, because the reader must be 
 half a poet to appreciate them. What do you consider 
 his best work ? 
 
103 DIVERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ZoiLUS. " Evangeline," of course. 
 
 The Gan>'ET. No, it is the "Golden Legend"! 
 That is the spirit of the Middle Ages, and the feeling of 
 all ages, set to modern melodies. I think I could "write 
 an imitation of Longfellow's higher strains — not of those 
 which are so well known and so much quoted — which 
 would be fairer than yours. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Do it, and good luck to you. (The Gaxnet 
 writes?) 
 
 The Ancient. Not one of our poets has deserved 
 better of his countrymen than Longfellow : he lias ad- 
 vanced tlie front rank of our culture. His popularity 
 has naturally brought envy and disparagement upon him ; 
 but it has carried far and wide among the people tlie in- 
 fluence of his purity, his refinement, and his constant ref- 
 erence to an ideal of life which so many might otherwise 
 forget. As a nation, we are still full of crudity and eon- 
 fusion, and his influence, so sweet and clear and steady, 
 has been, and is, more than a merely poetic leaven. 
 
 Galahad. I have felt that, without ever thinking of 
 putting it into words. The sweetness of Longfellow's 
 verse is its most neceascm/ quality, when we consider his 
 literary career in tliis light ; but I never could see how 
 exquisite finish implies any lack of power. What was 
 that line of Goethe which you quoted to me once, Ancient? 
 
 The Ancient. Nur ans vollendeter Kraft lAiclet die 
 An ninth hcrvor, — only ]icrfccted Strength dischiscs Grace. 
 Tlicre arc singular ideas in regard to "power" afloat in 
 literary circles. Why, the sunbeam is more powerful 
 than a thousand earthquakes ! I judge the power of an 
 author by the influence of his works. 
 
DIVEllSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 103 
 
 ZoiLUS. Well, for my part, I don't appreciate " pow- 
 er," unless it strikes me square between the eyes. What 
 1 understand by "power" is something regardless of ele- 
 gance, of the conventional ideas of refinement, of what 
 you call " laws of ai-t," — something primitive, lawless, 
 forcing you, with a strong hand, to recognize its existence. 
 
 The Ancient. Give me a few instances ! 
 
 ZoiLUS [cifter a pause) . Carlyle, — Poe, — Swinburne, 
 — Emily Bronte's " Wuthering Heights " ! 
 
 Galahad. Why not Artemus Ward and Joaquin 
 Miller? 
 
 The Gannet. There ! I never quite succeed when 
 I assume a certain ability. I had in my mhid, Zoilus, the 
 " Prometheus and Epimetheus," the " Palingenesis," and 
 other poems in the same key ; but it was so difficult to 
 imitate them that I came down one grade and struck into 
 a style more easy to be recognized. It may not be better 
 than yours, but it is not so horribly coarse. {Reads.) 
 
 THE SEWING-MACHINE. 
 
 A strange vibration from the cottage window 
 
 My vagrant steps delayed, 
 And half abstracted, Hke an ancient Hindoo, 
 
 I pansed beneath the shade. 
 
 What is, I said, this nnremitted hnniming, 
 
 Louder than bees in spring ? 
 As unto prayer the murmurous answer coming, 
 
 Shed from Sandalphon's wing. 
 
 Is this the sound of unimpeded labor. 
 That now usurpeth play ? 
 
104 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Our harsher substitute for pipe and tabor, 
 Ghitteni and virelay ? 
 
 Or, is it yearning for a higher vision, 
 By spiritual hearing heard ? 
 
 Nearer I drew, to listen with preeision. 
 Deciphering not a word. 
 
 Then, peering through the pane, as men of sin do, 
 
 Myself the while unseen, 
 1 marked a maiden seated by the window. 
 
 Sewing with a machine. 
 
 Her gentle foot propelled the tireless treadle. 
 
 Her gentle baud the seam : 
 My fancy said, it were a bliss to peddle 
 
 Those shirts, as in a dream ! 
 
 Iler lovely fingers lent to yoke and collar 
 
 Some imperceptible taste ; 
 The rural swain, who buys it for a dollar, 
 
 By beauty is embraced. 
 
 O fairer aspect of the common mission ! 
 
 Only the Poet sees 
 The true siguilicance, the high position 
 
 Of such snudl things as these. 
 
 Not now doth Toil, a brutal Boanerges, 
 
 Deform the maiden's hand ; 
 Her implement its soft sonata merges 
 
 In sonu;s of sea and land. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 105 
 
 And thus the hum of the unspooling cotton. 
 
 Blent with her rhythmic tread, 
 Shall still he heard, when virelays are forgotten, 
 
 And troubadours are dead. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Ah, you could n't avoid the moral applica- 
 tion ! 
 
 The Ancient. Neither can you, in imitating Bryant 
 and Whittier. In Longfellow — excepting some half- 
 dozen of his earlier poems — the moral element is so skil- 
 fully interfused with the imaginative, that one hardly 
 suspects its presence. I should say, rather, tliat it is 
 an inherent quality of liis genius, and, therefore, can 
 never offend like an assumed purpose. I abominate as 
 much as you, Zo'ilus, possibly can, the deliberate inten- 
 tion to preach moral doctrines in poetry. T/iai is turning 
 the glorious guild of authors into a higher kind of Tract 
 Society ! But the purer the poetic art, the nearer it 
 approaches the loftiest morality; this is a truth which 
 Longfellow illustrates. I have always defended the New 
 England spirit against your prejudices, but this I must 
 admit, that there is a large class of second-rate writers 
 there who insist tliat every wayward little brook, whose 
 murmur and sparkle are reason enough for its existence, 
 must be made to turn some utilitarian mill. Over and 
 over again, I have seen how their literary estimate of our 
 poets is gauged by the assumed relation of the latter to 
 some variety of " Reform." Tlie Abolition of Slavery, 
 first, then Temperance, and now Woman Suffrage, or 
 Spiritualism, or the Labor Question, are dragged by the 
 head and heels into the temple, and sometimes laid upon 
 the very altar, of Letters. The wonder is, that this 
 
106 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 practice doesn't retrospectively affect tlieir judgment, 
 and send Dante and Shakespeare and Milton to their 
 cliaotic limbo ! 
 
 Zo'iLrs. Thanks for that much support ; but let us 
 hear Galahad ! 
 
 Galauad. Howells, at least, has escaped some of the 
 troubles through which the older authors have been 
 obliged to pass. His four years in Venice made a for- 
 tunate separation between his youthful period and his 
 true sphere of activity. He did not change front, as the 
 rest of us must do, hi the press of battle. I was very 
 much puzzled what to select, as specially distinctive, and 
 allowed myself, at last, to be guided by two or three 
 short poems. {Reads) 
 
 PREVARICATION. 
 
 The Ancient. I think I know what you had iu your 
 mind. But I was expecting to hear something in hex- 
 ameters : you know his — .... * 
 
 ZoiLUs. Yes, but .... 
 
 Galahad. It is true to some extent. Still, on the 
 other hand, he ... . 
 
 * Mr. Howclls, as Editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," in- 
 sisted that he conld not properly allow his name to appear among 
 the poets. 1 did not agree with him ; but T tiiially compromised 
 our ditference hy omitting the travesty and the opinions, and 
 adding foot-notes apparently written hy himself. The latter 
 were accepted as genuine and conmiented upon, to our mutual 
 amusement. The imitation has heen lust, or ] should restore 
 it now. — B. T. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 107 
 
 ZoiLUS. Well, after all, we seem to agree tolerably 
 well. All our younger poets are tending towards greater 
 finish and elegance. It is about time to expect the ap- 
 })earance of a third generation, with all the beauties and 
 faults of their new youth about them. Why, we have 
 hardly any known writer much less than thirty-five years 
 old ! Our liglits scarcely begin to burn until the age 
 when Keats's, Shelley's, Byron's, and Burns's went out. 
 Is there something in our atmosphere that hinders devel- 
 opment ? I always supposed it possessed a greater 
 stimulus. 
 
 The Ancient. If you look back a little, you will find 
 that Bryant, Willis, Longfellow, and Lowell were known 
 and popular authors at twenty-five. But I have noticed 
 the lack of a younger generation of poets. It is equally 
 true of England, France, and Germany ; none of those 
 who have made a strong impression, whether good or 
 bad, can be called young, with the single exception of 
 Swinburne. Bossetti, though he has appeared so re- 
 cently, must be forty-five years old ; and in Germany the 
 most popular poets — Geibel, Bodenstedt, Hamerling, and 
 lledwitz — are all in middle age. I think a careful study 
 of the literary history of the last hundred years would 
 sliow that we have had both the heroes and the epigonoi ; 
 and now nature requires a little rest. Of course, all 
 theories on the subject must be merely fanciful ; half a 
 dozen young fellows of the highest promise may turn up 
 in a month ; but I rather expect to see a good many 
 fallow years. 
 
 Galahad. Then I, at least, have fallen on evil times. 
 If I live after our stars have set, and no \\q\\ ones have 
 arisen, it will be — 
 
108 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Your great luck ! Farmi les aveiigles, you 
 know ; but we are forgetting the Aucieut's imitation. 
 
 The Ancient. Stoddard's last volume shows both 
 variety and inequality, but the most of it has the true 
 ring. I was delighted with his gift of poetic narration, 
 in "The Wine-Cup " and " The King's Sentinel " ; yet, 
 even in them, there in an undertone of sadness. One can 
 only make a recognizable echo of his verse, in the minor 
 key. {Reads.) 
 
 THE CANTELOPE. 
 
 Side by side in the crowded street, 
 
 Amid its ebb and flow, 
 "We walked together one autumn morn ; 
 
 ('T was many years ago !) 
 
 The markets blushed with fruits and flowers ; 
 
 (Both jNIemory and Hope !) 
 You stoi)ped and bought me at the stall 
 
 A spicy cantelope. 
 
 We drained together its honeyed wine, 
 
 "We cast the seeds away ; 
 I slipped and fell on the moony rinds, 
 
 And you took me home on a dray ! 
 
 The honeyed wine of your love is drained ; 
 
 I limp from the fall I had ; 
 The snow-flakes muflle the empty stall, 
 
 And everything is sad. 
 
 The sky is an inkstand, upside down, 
 It sj)lashcs the world with gloom ; 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 109 
 
 The earth is full of skeleton bones. 
 And the sea is a wobbling tomb ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. I might have written that; what do you 
 say, Galahad ? 
 
 Galahad. It is fully as rollicking as yours, but not 
 quite so coarse. I always find in Stoddard a most true 
 and delicate ear for the melody of verse, and I thorouglily 
 enjoy his brief snatches, or " catches," of song. When I 
 disagree with him, it is usually on account of the theme 
 rather than the execution. His collection of " Melodies 
 and Madrigals " gave me the key to his own taste and 
 talent ; he seems to have wandered down to us from the 
 times of Charles I. What has the Gannet been writing 
 all this while ? 
 
 The Gannet. Something not on our programme. 
 After trying my hand on Tuckerman and then on Long- 
 fellow, I felt fresh for one task more ; and we have had 
 so few ladies introduced into our diversions, that I turned 
 to Mrs. Stoddard for a new inspiration. You know how 
 I like her poems, as the efforts of a not purely rhythmic 
 mind to express itself rhythmically. They interest me 
 greatly, as everj»embodiment of struggle does. A com- 
 monplace, conventional intellect would never dare to do 
 the things sbe does, both in prose and verse ; she defies 
 the usual ways to popularity with a most indomitable 
 perseverance. 
 
 Galahad. Is not tbat tlie way to reach it in the 
 end? 
 
 The Gannet. No man knoweth ; because no one can 
 foresee how the tastes or whims of the mercurial public 
 may turn. Some authors predict their own popularity ; 
 
110 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 some secretly expect it, and never get it ; and some, 
 again, leave works which may seem dead and buried, but 
 are dug up as if by accident, after two or three centuries, 
 and become new and delightful to a different race of men. 
 Shall I read you my imitation ? 
 
 The Ancient. We wait. 
 
 The Gannet. {Reads.) 
 
 THE NETTLE. 
 
 If days were nights, I could their weigbt endure. 
 
 This darkness cannot hide from me the iihmt 
 
 I seek : I know it by the rasping touch. 
 
 The moon is wrapped in bombazine of cloud ; 
 
 The capes project like crooked lobster-shears 
 
 Into the bobbery of the waves ; the marsh. 
 
 At ebb, has now a miserable smell. 
 
 I will not be delayed nor hustled back. 
 
 Though every Avind should muss my outspread hair. 
 
 I snatch the plant that seems my coming fate : 
 
 I pass the crinkled satin of the rose, 
 
 The violets, frightened out of all their wits. 
 
 And other flowers, to me so commonplace. 
 
 And cursed with showy mediocrity. 
 
 To cull the foliage which repels and stings. 
 
 Weak hands may bleed ; but mine arc tough with pride. 
 
 And I but smile where others sob and screech. 
 
 The draggled flounces of the willows lash 
 
 INIy neck ; I tread upon the bouncing rake, 
 
 ^Vliirli bangs me sorely, but I hasten on, 
 
 AVith teeth lirm-sct as biting on a wire, 
 
 And feet and Angers clinched in bitter pain. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. Ill 
 
 This, f(!W would coniproluMid ; l)ul;, if llioy did, 
 I should despise inyscU' and merit scorn. 
 \Vc all iirc riddles whieh we eaiuiot guess ; 
 Each has his gimcracks and his ihinguinbubs, 
 And mine arc night and nettles, mud and mist, 
 Since others hate them, cowardly avoid. 
 Things arc mysterious when you make them so, 
 And the slow-pacing days arc mighty ([ueer; 
 ]}ut Fate is at the bottom of it all, 
 And something somehow turns up in the end. 
 
 ZoiLUS. That is ixn cclio willi a vengeance ! But the 
 exaggeration of ])eeiiliarities is the best part of our I'un ; 
 there you had the advantage. And this proves what 1 
 have said, tliat the " classie " style is nearly iniprcgiiablc. 
 How could you exaggerate it ? You might as well un- 
 dertake an architectural burlescpie of tlu5 rarthenon. It 
 is the Gothic, J^yzantine, Moresque styles in literature 
 which give the true material for travesty, just as they 
 allow the greatest intellectual freedom. 
 
 TiJE Ancient. We shall have to dub you " the Pugiii 
 of Poetry.'* You 'vc been taking a hint from Ciough's 
 Jioi/iie. 
 
 The Gannet. Whieh Zoilus docs n't like, !)ecause of 
 the hexameters, although there n(;vcr were lighter and 
 less encumbered lines. With all Ciough's classicism, his 
 is a thoroughly Saxon-Gothic mind. Where will you 
 find a more remarkable combination of richness and sub- 
 tlety, of seliolarly finish and the frankest realism? lie' 
 is the only man who has ever made English phrase fiow 
 naturally in elegiac cadence. You, certainly, must re- 
 member, Ancient ? 
 
11: 
 
 DITERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 " "\\'here, upon Apeimine slope, -vvitli the chestnut the oak-trees 
 immingle, 
 "V^'here amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind, 
 TN'here under mulberry branches the diligent rivulet sparkles, 
 Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply, 
 "Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still re- 
 peated. 
 Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky, — 
 Ah, that I were, far away from the crowd and the streets 
 of the city, 
 I'nder the vine-trellis laid, my beloved, with thee ! " 
 
 ZoiLUS. O, if you ouce begin to quote, I surrender. 
 The A^fCiEXT. Let us all part on good terms ; tliat 
 is, each holding to Lis own opinion. [Exeunt. 
 
NIGHT THE SIXTH. 
 
 {Enter Zoilus, last, the others being already assemhled : he 
 throvjs down a newspaper on the table.) 
 
 OILUS. There ! Read that notice of mj last 
 article in , and tell me whether such criti- 
 cism is apt to encourage the development of an 
 American literature ! 
 The Gannet {taking the paper). I see where it is, 
 by the dint of your thumb-nail ; there are only half a 
 dozen lines, in what I should call the sneering-oracular 
 style ; but, Zoilus, you have yourself done a great deal of 
 this thing. Now the poisoned chalice is commended to 
 your own lips. It is singular how little sympathy we 
 have for others, in such cases. When I am abused, 
 somebody always sends the paper to me with lines drawn 
 around the article, so that I shall not miss it ; and all my 
 friends are sure to ask, " Have you seen what So-and-so 
 says ? " When I am praised, nobody sends the paper, 
 and my friends take it for granted that I have read the 
 article. I don't complain of them : they are naturally 
 silent when they agree, and aroused when they disagree, 
 with the criticism. 
 
 The Ancient. This notice is not fair, of course ; 
 but it is only a part of the prevalent fashion of criticism. 
 
114 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 One never can be sure, in such cases, whether the writer 
 is really sincere in his judgment, or wliether he has seized 
 an opportunity to make a little literary capital for himself 
 at the expense of the author. But I firmly believe in the 
 ultimate triumph oi good work over all these airs of supe- 
 rior knowledge and patronage and contemptuous depre- 
 ciation. A friend of mine once devoted a great deal of 
 time to a very careful and thorough article upon a poet 
 who wrote in a dialect with which not ten men in tliis 
 country are familiar. He afterwards showed me the 
 critical notices it drew forth, and those which treated the 
 subject with the coolest possible air of knowledge were 
 written by men who knew nothing whatever about it. 
 
 Galahad. Then how is the ordinary reader ever to 
 be enlightened ? 
 
 The Ancient. Most readers, I imagine, simply like, 
 or dislike, what they read. Authors greatly exaggerate 
 the effect of inadequate criticism. Why, do you know 
 that critical genius is much rarer than poetical ? You 
 are not afraid of the crude poets, who publish in news- 
 paper corners, pushing you from your stools of song : 
 why should you be annoyed by the critics who stand 
 upon the same intellectual plane ? Let me repeat to you 
 what the greatest of critics, Lessing, said: ""What is 
 tolerable in my labors is owing solely to the critical fac- 
 ulty. I am, therefore, always ashamed or grieved when- 
 ever 1 hear anything said to the disadvantage of that 
 faculty. It is said to crush genius, and I flattered myself 
 that I had received in it something akin to genius." 
 After Lessing, wg can only accept Jeflrey with certain 
 reservations, until wc come to Saintc-Bcuve. In this 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 115 
 
 country, I call Lowell the first critic, tliougli Whipple 
 and Riplej have high and honorable places. A true 
 critic must not only be a universal scholar, but as clear- 
 conscienced as a saint and as tenderly impressible as a 
 woman. After that he may be rigid as Minos. 
 
 ZoiLUS. But you will certainly agree with me, that 
 a critical literature of the kind you describe — intelligent, 
 appreciative, sympatlietic, and rigidly just — is much 
 needed ? 
 
 The Ancient. Never more than just now. 
 
 ZoiLUS. What then, frankly, do you think of the tone 
 of this paper, and the and the ? 
 
 The Ancient {smiling). They remind me so much 
 of a little satirical poem of Uhland, "The Spring-Song of 
 the Critic," that I am comforted and amused, when I 
 might otherwise be most annoyed. There never was a 
 more admirable picture of that fine, insidious egotism of 
 the spurious critic, which makes him fear to praise, lest 
 admiration should imply inferiority. I can't remember 
 the original lines, or I would translate it for you ; but I 
 might try an American paraphrase. 
 
 Omnes. By all means ! (The Ancient writes?) 
 
 ZoiLUS. 1 feel as if I had had whiskey poured into an 
 open wound. You made me smart savagely for a few 
 minutes ; but I am already getting comfortable. 
 
 The Gannet. There is no real comfort until you grow 
 pachydermatous ; I don't envy Galahad the seasoning 
 that awaits him. 
 
 Galahad. I have part of my experience vicariously, 
 in Zo'ilus. 
 
 ZoiLUS. The devil you have ! wait, my boy, until you 
 
116 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 publish your next poem : I '11 return it to you, with in- 
 terest ! 
 
 The Ancient. Uliland makes the critic Avalk out in 
 the spring-time, and patronize Nature in his usual tone, 
 the very tone of which Zoilus complains. This is a rough 
 imitation : — 
 
 H'm ! Spi-ing ? 'T is popular, we 've heard, 
 
 And must be noticed, therefore ; 
 Not that a flower, a brook, or bird 
 
 Is what we greatly care for. 
 
 The trees are budding : immature ! 
 
 Yet them, no doubt, admire some : 
 One leaf comes like another, sure, 
 
 And on the whole it 's tiresome. 
 
 What kind of bird is this Ave hear ? 
 
 The song is vague and mystic ; 
 Some notes, we grant, are smooth and clear. 
 
 But not at all artistic. 
 
 We 're not quite sure we wholly like 
 Those ferns that wave and spread so : 
 
 'T is safe to doubt the things that strike 
 The eye at once ; we 've said so. 
 
 An odor ? H'm ! it might be worse ; 
 
 There must be violets nigh us : 
 Quite passable ! (For Shakespeare's verse. 
 
 This time, will justify us.) 
 
 A native plant ! We don't know what : 
 Some, now, would call it pleasant, 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 117 
 
 But, really, we would rather not 
 Commit ourselves, at present. 
 
 But further time we will not waste. 
 
 Neglecting our position ; 
 To scourge the stupid puhlic taste 
 
 Is our peculiar mission. 
 
 And if men saw us, and should deem 
 (Those ignorant human brothers !) 
 
 That we the Spriug enjoyed, we 'd seem 
 No better than the others ! 
 
 Omnes. Good ! It reads like an original. 
 
 The Ancient. It is one, properly : I have not trans- 
 lated any of Uhland's phrases. However, let us change 
 the theme, for this is a dangerous hobby of mine, and we 
 have other work before us. How many names are there 
 still undrawn ? 
 
 The Gannet {looUng in the hat). A dozen yet ! 
 
 The Ancient {drawing). James Russell Lowell, — 
 1 must gird up my loins. 
 
 The Gannet. Bayard Taylor. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 Galahad. George H. Boker. 
 
 The Gannet. The supply will be exhausted in two 
 or three nights more, and then all our fun must come to 
 an end. There will be nothing left for us, but to travesty 
 each other. 
 
 The Chorus. An excellent idea ! Four times four, 
 each doing each other and himself also, will give us six- 
 teen imitations. 
 
118 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 ZoiLUS. No doubt you Tvould enjoy it hugely. Turn 
 to Lucretius for a picture of the dehght of sitting on the 
 safe shore and looking at the waves in a storm ! 
 
 The Chorus. " The swelling and falling of the waves 
 is the life of the sea." 
 
 ZoiLUS. Go to, with your quotations ! How easy it 
 is to apply a high moral stimulus to somebody else's 
 mind ! Every poet, in his secret soul, admits his exqui- 
 site, quivering sensitiveness for the children of his brain. 
 He may hide it from the sight of every one ; but it is 
 there, or he would not be a poet ; and he is always most 
 artlessly surprised at the betrayal of the same feeling iu 
 another. /, of course, should coolly bear any amount of 
 travesty ; but how would it be with the Ancient, the Gan- 
 net, and Galahad ? 
 
 The Gannet. Zoilus, you 're a humbug ! Take your 
 pencil and begin your work : see how the Ancient is reel- 
 ing off his lines ! 
 
 {They write steadily for ffteen or twenty minutes; then all 
 have finished except The Ancient.) 
 
 The Ancient. Mine is no easy task, and I 'm afraid 
 I have laid it out on too extensive a plan. 
 
 Omnes. Go on : we will wait. 
 
 The Ancient {ten mi?iutes later). You will sympa- 
 thize with me, Galahad, for you know how much I like 
 Lowell's poetry. 1 have followed him from the start, 
 when he seemed like a vigorous young oak, and like an 
 oak he has grown slowly, strongly, and with ever-broad- 
 ening branches. But one can sport, as well as pray, 
 under your large trees. {Reads.) 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 119 
 
 THE SAGA OF AHAB DOOLITTLE. 
 
 Who hath not thought himself a poet ? Who, 
 Feeling the stuhbed pin-feathers pricking through 
 His greenish gosling-down, but straight misdeems 
 Himself anointed ? They must run their course. 
 These later measles of the fledgling mind. 
 Pitting the adolescent rose with brown, 
 And after, leaving scars ; and we must bear, 
 Who come of other stirp, no end of roil. 
 Slacken our strings, disorient ourselves, 
 And turn our ears to huge conchyliar valves 
 To hear the shell-hum that would fain be sea. 
 
 guarding thorn of Life's dehiscent bud, 
 Exasperation ! Did we clip thee close. 
 Disarm ourselves with non-resistant shears, 
 And leave our minds demassachusetted. 
 
 What fence 'gainst inroad of the spouAng throng? 
 For Fame 's a bird that in her wayward sweep 
 Gossips to all ; then, raven-like, comes home 
 Hoarse-voiced as autumn, and, as autumn leaves 
 Behind her, blown by all the postal winds. 
 Letters and manuscripts from unknown hands. 
 Thus came not Ahab's : his he brought himself, 
 One morn, so clear with impecunious gold, 
 
 1 said : " Chaucer yet lives, and Calderon ! " 
 And, letting down the gangways of the mind 
 For shipment from the piers of common life, 
 O'er Learning's ballast meant some lighter freight 
 To stow, for export to Macarian Isles. 
 
 But it was not to be ; a tauroid knock 
 
120 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Shook the ash-panels of my door with pain. 
 
 And to my vexed " Come in ! " Ahab appeared. 
 
 Homespun, at least, — thereat I swiftly felt 
 
 Somewhat of comfort, — tall, knock-kneed, and gaunt 
 
 Face windy-red, hands horny, large and loose. 
 
 That groped for mine, and finding, dropped at once 
 
 As half ashamed ; and thereupon he grinned. 
 
 I waited, silent, till the silence grew 
 
 Oppressive ; but he bore it like a man ; 
 
 Then, as my face still queried, opened wide 
 
 The stiff portcullis of his rustic speech. 
 
 Whence issued words : " You 'd hardly kalkelate 
 
 That I 'ra a poet, but I kind o' guess 
 
 I be one ; so the peojile say, to hum." 
 
 Then from his cavernous armpit drew and gave 
 
 The singing leaves, not such as erst I knew, 
 
 But strange, disjointed, where the unmeasured feet 
 
 Staggered allwhither in pursuit of rhyme. 
 
 And could not find it : assonance instead, 
 
 Cases and verbs misplaced — remediable those — 
 
 Broad-shouldered coarseness, fondly meant for wit. 
 
 I turned the leaves ; his small, gray, hungry eye 
 
 Stuck like a burr ; agape with hope his mouth. 
 
 "What could I say ? the woi-n conventional phrase 
 
 We use on such occasions, — better wait, 
 
 Verse must have time ; its seed, like timothy -grass, 
 
 Sown in the fall to sprout the following spring, 
 
 Is often winter-killed ; none can decide ; 
 
 A single rain-drop prints the eocene, 
 
 Wiiile crow-bars fail on lias : so with song : 
 
 The Doom is born in each thing's primitive stuff. 
 
 Perchance he understood not ; yet I thrust 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 121 
 
 Some hypodermic hope within his flesh, 
 Unconsciously ; erelong he came again. 
 Would I but see his latest ? I did see ; 
 "Shuddered, and answered him in sterner wise. 
 I love to put the bars up, shutting out 
 My pasture from the thistle-cropping beasts 
 Or squealing hybrids, who have range enough 
 Oil our New England commons, — whom the Fiend, 
 Encouragement-of-Native-Talent, feeds 
 "With windy provender, in Waverley, 
 And Flag, and Ledger, weakly manger-racks. 
 
 Months passed ; the catbird on the elm-tree sang 
 
 What " Free from Ahab ! " seemed, and I believed. 
 
 But, issuing forth one autumn morn, that shone 
 
 As Earth were made October twenty -seventh 
 
 (Some ancient Bible gives the date), he shot 
 
 Across my path as sped from Ensign's bow, 
 
 More grewsome, haggard-seeming than before. 
 
 Ere from his sinister armpit his right hand 
 
 Could pluck the sheets, I thundered forth, " Aroint ! " 
 
 Not using the Anglo-Saxon shibboleth. 
 
 But exorcismal terms, unusual, fierce. 
 
 Such as would make a saint disintimate. 
 
 The witless terror in his face nigh stayed 
 
 My speech, but I was firm and passed him by. 
 
 Ah, not three weeks were sped, ere he again 
 
 Waylaid me in the meadows, with these words : 
 
 " I saw thet suthin' riled you, the last time ; 
 
 Be you in sperrits now ? " — and drew again — 
 
 But why go on ? I met him yesterday. 
 
 The nineteenth time, — pale, sad, but patient still. 
 
122 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 "When Hakon steered the dragons, there was place, 
 Though but a thrall's, beside the eagle-helms, 
 For him who rhymed instead of rougher work. 
 For speech is thAvarted deed : the Berserk fire 
 But smoulders now in strange attempts at verse, 
 While hammering sword-blows mend the halting rhyme. 
 Give mood and tense unto the well-thewed aim. 
 And turn these ignorant Ahabs into bards ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. Eaith ! I think each of us imitates most amus- 
 ingly the very authors whom he most admires. I might 
 have made something fiercer, but it would n't have been 
 more characteristic. 
 
 The Gannet. When you seem dissatisfied with 
 Lowell's work, I can still see that you recognize liis 
 genius. I agree with you that he sometimes mistakes 
 roughness for strength, and is sometimes consciously 
 careless ; but neither his faults nor his virtues are of the 
 common order. I like him for the very quality out of 
 which both grow, — his evident faith in the inspiration 
 of the poet. In "The Cathedral" he says "second- 
 thoughts are prose," which is always true of the prime 
 conception ; but he seems often to apply it to the details 
 of verse. His sympathy with the Norse and Nibe- 
 lungen elements in literature, and with tlie old English 
 ballads, is natural and very strong. Perhaps it is not 
 always smoothly fused with the other spirit which is 
 born of liis scholarship and taste and artistic feeling. I 
 care less for tliat : to my mind, he is always grandly 
 tonic and stimulating. 
 
 The Ancient. I think the objection which Zoilus 
 makes comes simply from the fact tliat many of Lowell's 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 123 
 
 poems are overweighted with ideas. Instead of pouring 
 a tliin, smooth stream, he tilts the bottle a little too 
 much, and there is an impetuous, uneven crowding of 
 thought. But I should rather say that he is like his 
 own " Cathedral," large, Gothic, with many a flying 
 buttress, pinnacles melting in the air, and now and then 
 a grotesque gargoyle staring down upon you. There 
 is a great range between Hosea Biglow and the Harvard 
 Ode. 
 
 ZoiLUS. I confess I don't like unmixed enthusiasm, 
 and I 'm frequently provoked to spy out the weak points 
 of any author who gets much of it. How I should feel 
 if it were bestowed on me, I can't tell ; probably as com- 
 placent as the rest of you. 
 
 The Gannet. Zoilus, when you know that / 'm 
 only considered "brilliant," and get the most super- 
 ficial praise ! 
 
 The Ancient. Come, come ! This is a sort of per- 
 sonality. Who 's next ? 
 
 Galahad. Zoilus was ready first. 
 
 Zoilus. Yes, and none too soon. Mrs. Barrett 
 Browning was a tough subject for me, and I was glad to 
 get her off my hands. Do you know that it is much 
 more difficult to travesty a woman's poem than a 
 man's ? {Reads.) 
 
 GWENDOLTNE. 
 
 'T was not the brown of chestnut boughs 
 
 That shadowed her so finely : 
 It was the hair that swept her brows. 
 
 And framed her face divinely j 
 
124 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 -Her tawny hair, lier purple eyes, 
 The spirit was ensphered in. 
 
 That took you with such swift surprise. 
 Provided you had peered in. 
 
 Her velvet foot amid the moss 
 
 Aud on the daisies patted, 
 As, queridous with sense of loss, 
 
 It tore the herbage matted : 
 " Aud come he early, come he late," 
 
 She saith, " it wiU undo me ; 
 The sharp fore-speeded shaft of fate 
 
 Already quivers through me. 
 
 " When I beheld his red-roan steed, 
 
 I kuevv what aim impelled it ; 
 And that dim scarf of silver brede, 
 
 I guessed for whom he held it : 
 I recked not, while he flaunted by. 
 
 Of Love's relentless vi'lcnce. 
 Yet o'er me crashed the summer sky. 
 
 In thunders of blue silence. 
 
 " His hoof-prints crumbled down the vale, 
 
 But left behind their lava ; 
 "What should have been my woman's mail 
 
 Grew jellied as guava : 
 I looked him proud, but 'ueath my pride 
 
 I felt a boneless tremor ; 
 He was the Beer, I descried, 
 
 And I was but the Seemer ! 
 
 " Ah, how to be what then I seemed. 
 And bid him seem that is so ! 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 125 
 
 We always tangle threads we dreamed, 
 
 And contravene our bliss so. 
 I see the red-roan steed again ! 
 
 He looks, as something sought he : 
 Why, hoity-toity ! — he \% fain, 
 
 So /'ll be cold and haughty ! " 
 
 TiTE Ancient. You have done about as well as could 
 be expected ; but I am not sure that I should have recog- 
 nized it, without the red-roan steed and the thunders of 
 blue silence. However, Mrs. Browning's force is always 
 so truly feminine that one cannot easily analyze it. There 
 is an underlying weakness — or, at least, a sense of reliance 
 — when she is most vigorous, and you feel the beating 
 of an excited pulse when she is most calmly classic. Slie 
 often slips into questionable epitliets and incongruous 
 images, I grant you ; but I can see the first form of her 
 thought through them. 
 
 Galahad. Has any other woman reached an equal 
 height in English poetry? 
 
 The Chorus. No! 
 
 The Gannet. George Eliot ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Now you bring the two squarely before my 
 mind, I also say, No ! I do not rightly know where to 
 place George Eliot. 
 
 The Ancient. Among the phenomena, — unsur- 
 passed as a prose writer, and with every quality of the 
 poet except the single one which is born and never 
 acquired. It is amazing to see how admirable her verse 
 is, and how near to high poetry, — as if only a sheet of 
 plate-glass were between, — and yet it is not poetry. 
 Her lines are like the dancing figures on a frieze, sym- 
 
126 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 metry itself, but they do not move. When I read them, 
 I am always on the very verge of recognizing her as 
 a poet, always expecting the warm-blooded measures 
 which sing their way into my own blood, and yet I never 
 cross the invisible boundary. 
 
 The Gannet. Shall we go on ? I have Bayard Tay- 
 lor, who took possession of me readily enough. I know 
 his earlier Oriental better than his later poems. He 
 does n't seem to have any defiuite place yet as a poet. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Then it comes of having too many irons in 
 the fire. 
 
 Galahad. He may have made some mistakes ; in- 
 deed, I think so, myself; but I find signs of a struggle 
 towards some new form of development in his later 
 poems, and mean to give him a little more opportunity. 
 His rhetoric is at the same time his strength and his 
 weakness, for it has often led him away from the true 
 substance of poetry. 
 
 The Ancient. There you are riglit, Galahad. Na- 
 ture and the sensuous delight of life for a while got the 
 upper liand of him, and he wrote many things which 
 aimed to be more, and were not. I think better of his 
 later direction; but how far it will carry him depends 
 on his industry and faith. Let us have the echo ! 
 
 The Gannet. {Reads) 
 
 HADRAMAUT. 
 
 The grand conglomerate hills of Arahy 
 
 That stand empanoplicd in utmost thought, 
 "With dazzling ramparts front the Indian sea, 
 Down there iu Iladraniaut. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 127 
 
 The sunshine smashes in the doors of morn 
 
 And leaves them open ; there the vibrant calm 
 Of life magniloquent pervades forlorn 
 The giant fronds of palm. 
 
 The cockatoo upon the upas screams ; 
 
 The armadillo fluctuates o'er the hill ; 
 And like a flag, incarnadined in dreams. 
 All crimsonly I thrill ! 
 
 There have iconoclasts no power to harm, 
 So, folded grandly in translucent mist, 
 I let the light stream down my jasper arm. 
 And o'er my opal fist. 
 
 An Adamite of old, primeval Earth, 
 
 I see the Sphinx upon the porphyry shore, 
 Deprived of utterance ages ere her birth. 
 As I am, — only more ! 
 
 Who shall ensnare me with invested gold. 
 
 Or paper symbols, backed like malachite ? 
 Let gaunt reformers objurgate and scold, 
 I gorge me with delight. 
 
 I do not yearn for what I covet most ; 
 
 I give the winds the passionate gifts I sought ; 
 And slumber fiercely on the torrid coast, 
 Down there in Hadramaut ! 
 
 Galahad. That is extravagantly and absurdly like 
 some of his poems. You seem to have had in your mind 
 the very feature I mentioned, — his rhetoric. I doubt 
 whether I shall succeed as well with Boker. He and 
 
128 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Bayard Taylor are both Pennsylvanians, of nearly the 
 same age, yet they are not at all alike. 
 
 TuE A>xiENT. I remember Boker's first Tolnme. 
 There was a flavor of the Elizabethan English about it, 
 which was unusual at the time. Then came his tragedy 
 of " Calaynos," one of the few successful modern plays 
 formed on the old classic models; it ran for nearly a 
 hundred nights in England. But you cannot imitate his 
 best work, which is in this and the later plays ; you must 
 choose between his ballads and his sonnets. 
 
 Galahad. I have tried something half ballad and 
 half song, in his style. {Reads.) 
 
 PHEBE THE FAIR. 
 
 I lie and I languish for Phebe the Fair, 
 
 Ah, welladay ! 
 The blue of her eyes, the brown of her hair. 
 The elbows that dance and the ankles that gleam. 
 As she bends at her washing-tub there by the stream. 
 Disdaining to see me, so what ctm I say 
 
 But, ah, welladay! 
 
 I met her last night when the moon was at full, 
 
 Alas and alack ! 
 Bewitchingly hooded with mufflers of wool ; 
 Her cloak of gray duffle she wore to a chann, 
 So boldly I otTered the maiden my arm, 
 But she coolly responded, " You take the back track ! " 
 
 Alas and alack! 
 
 Though I 'm but a blacksmith and Hugo a lord, 
 Sing hey, nouny nonny ! 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 129 
 
 Though I 've but a hammer and he has a sword. 
 When he leans from his destrier Phebe to greet, 
 I could smash him to cinders before her white feet. 
 For lords have no business with maidens so bonny, 
 Sing hey, nonny nonny ! 
 
 I 've given up Margery, given up Maud, 
 
 Ah, welladay, Phebe ! 
 But the snow of your bosom by love is unthawed ; 
 The hues of my life are all fading, I guess. 
 As the calico fades in the suds that you press : 
 You are scouring the heart of your languishing G. B., 
 
 Ah, welladay, Phebe ! 
 
 The Gannet. I remember those ballads, with a 
 curious antique flavor about tliem ; but I am best ac- 
 quainted with Boker's sonnets. I don't think tliej have 
 been appreciated as they deserve; but tlien, there are 
 hardly twelve sonnets in the English language which can 
 be called popular. Take one of Keats, three of Words- 
 worth, three of Milton, possibly Blanco White's one, and 
 four or five of Shakespeare, and you have nearly all that 
 are familiarly known. I '11 try my hand at an imitation 
 of Boker's grave, sustained measure. {Writes.) 
 
 The Ancient. No one of our authors is so isolated 
 as he, and it is a double disadvantage. Wlien Philadel- 
 phia ceased to be a literary centre, which happened very 
 suddenly and unexpectedly, the tone of society there 
 seemed to change. Instead of tlie open satisfaction of 
 Boston in her brilliant circle of authors, or the passive 
 indifference of our New York, there is almost a positive 
 depreciation of home talent in Philadelphia. Boker is 
 6* I 
 
130 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 most disparaged in his native city, and most appreciated 
 in New England. There is always less of petty eilvy 
 where the range of culture is highest. 
 
 ZoiLUS. No, there is not less, granting the culture to 
 be higher ; there is only more tact and policy in express- 
 ing it. 
 
 The Gannet. Listen to Boker's 999th. sonnet, dic- 
 tated through me! {Reads) 
 
 I charge not with degrees of excellence 
 
 That fair revolt which rested on thy name. 
 
 Nor burden with uncompreheiided blame 
 
 The speech, Avhich still eludes my swooning sense, 
 
 Though this poor rhyme at least were some defence 
 
 Against thy chill suspicion : yet, if Fame 
 
 Lift up and burnish what is now my shame, 
 
 'T would mitigate a passion so intense. 
 
 This trampled verse awhile my heart relieves 
 
 From stringent pain, that cleft me as I turned 
 
 Away from beauty, graciously displayed ; 
 
 And still one dominant emotion cleaves 
 
 The clouds, whereon thy passing lustre burned. 
 
 And leaves behind it gulfs of blacker shade. 
 
 Galahad. How could you echo the tone and atmos- 
 phere of a sonnet, without adding one particle of sense? 
 
 The Ganxet. Attribute it to my empty head, if you 
 please. I really cannot explain how these imitations 
 arise in my mind. In the " trance condition," you know, 
 one is void of all active consciousness. 
 
 Zoi'Lus. If you go on indulging such an idea, you 
 ■will end by becoming a professional medium. 
 
DIVERSIONS OE THE ECHO CLUB. 131 
 
 The Gannet. Well, — at least I '11 dictate to the 
 world better verse than has ever yet come, in that way, 
 from the unfortunate dead poets. 
 
 Galahad. Could you equal Demosthenes ? 
 
 The Ancient. Tor the sake of Human Reason let 
 us drop that subject ! There are some aberrations which 
 dishearten us, and it is best simply to turn our backs 
 on them. Tor my part, I crave music. Zoilus, give us 
 Herrick's "Julia," before the stirrup-cup! 
 
NIGHT THE SEVENTH. 
 
 HIS night the Gannet led the way to the more 
 earnest conversation, by returning to a point 
 touched by the Ancient at their fifth meeting. 
 He said, " I should like to know wherein the 
 period of fermentation, which precedes the appearance 
 of an important era in Hterature, and the period of sub- 
 sidence, or decadence, which follows it, diifer from each 
 otlier." 
 
 ZoiLUS. H'm ! that 's rather a tough problem to be 
 solved at a moment's warning. I should guess that the 
 diiference is something like that between the first and 
 second childhood of an individual. In the first case, tlie 
 faults are natural, heedless, graceful, and always suggest- 
 ive of sometliing to be developed ; in the latter, tlicy are 
 helpless repetitions, which point only towards the past. 
 
 Galahad. Are you not taking the correspondence 
 for granted ? Is it exactly justified by the history of any 
 great era in literature ? 
 
 The Ancient. Not entirely. But there is surely an 
 irregular groping for new modes of thouglit and new 
 forms of expression, in advance ; and a struggle, after 
 the masters of the age have gone, to keep up their pitch 
 of achievement. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 133 
 
 The Gannet. Very well; you are near enough in 
 accord to consider my next question. In which period 
 are we living at present? The Ancient says that we 
 have had the heroes and the epigonoi, and that there will 
 be many fallow years : T, on the contrar}^ feel very sure 
 that we are approaching another great era ; and the con- 
 fusion of which he spoke the other night is an addi- 
 tional proof of it. 
 
 The Ancient. If you remember, I disclaimed any 
 power of prediction. 
 
 The Gannet. So you did ; but I insist that the rea- 
 sons you gave are just as powerful against your conclu- 
 sions, unless you can show us that the phenomena of our 
 day are those whicli invariably characterize a period of 
 decadence. I have been reflecting upon the subject with 
 more earnestness than is usual to me. , In our modern 
 literature I do not find echoes of any other than the 
 masters who are still living and producing, especially 
 Browning, Longfellow, and Tennyson ; the faint reflec- 
 tions of Poe seem to have ceased ; and the chief cliarac- 
 teristic of this day, so far as the younger authors are 
 concerned, is a straining after novel eifects, new cos- 
 tumes for old thoughts, if you please, but certainly 
 something very different from a mere repetition of forms 
 of style which already exist. That there is confusion, an 
 absence of pure, clearly outlined ideals of art, I am will- 
 ing to admit. I accept the premises, but challenge the 
 inferences, 
 
 Galahad. I am only too ready to agree with you. 
 
 The Ancient. What I wish is, that we should try 
 to comprehend the literary aspects of our time. If we 
 
134 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 can turn our modem habit of introversion away from our 
 individual selves, and give it more of an objective char- 
 acter (though this sounds rather paradoxical), it will be a 
 gain in every way. A period of decadence is not neces- 
 sarily characterized by repetition ; it may manifest itself 
 in exactly such straining for effect as the Gannet admits. 
 Poe, for instance, or Heine, or Browning, makes a new 
 manner successful ; what more natural, then, than that 
 an inferior poet should say to himself, " Tlie manner is 
 everything; I will invent one for myself! " I find some- 
 thing too much of this prevalent, and it does not inspire 
 me with hope. 
 
 ZoiLUS. But the costume of the thought, as of the 
 man, is really more important than the body it hides. And 
 I insist that manner is more than symmetry, or even 
 strength, as the French have been shrewd enough to 
 discover. We are moving towards an equal brilliancy 
 of style, only most of us are zigzagging on all sides of 
 the true path. But we sliall find it, and then, look out 
 for a shining age of literature ! 
 
 The Gannet {to The Ancient). You were speaking 
 of the introversion which is such a characteristic of 
 modern thought. Can a writer avoid it, without show- 
 ing, in tlie very effort, that he possesses it ? 
 
 The Ancient. I doubt it. Goethe tried the experi- 
 ment, and did not fairly succeed. It seems to me that 
 the cliaractcr of an author is relative to the liighcst cul- 
 ture of liis generation. I have never fovnid that there 
 was much development without self-study ; for the true 
 artist must know the exact measure of his qualities, in 
 order to use them in his one true way. This is a law as 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 135 
 
 applicable to Shakespeare as to you ; but lie may choose 
 to conceal the process, and you may choose to betray it. 
 For a poet to speculate upon his own nature, in his 
 poems, is a modern fashion, which originated with 
 Wordsworth. To us it seems an over-consciousness ; 
 yet it may seem the height of naive candor, and therefore 
 a delightful characteristic, to the critics of two centuries 
 hence. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Well, upon my word. Ancient, you are the 
 most bewildering of guides ! You talk of eternal laws, 
 you refer to positive systems, but when we come to apply 
 them, there is nothing permanent, nothing settled, only a 
 labyrinth of perhapses and may-seems. What are we to 
 do? 
 
 The Gannet {offering the hat). To draw your name, 
 and write. 
 
 ZoiLUS {drawing). Julia Ward Howe: and I feel no 
 mission within me ! I shall miserably fail. 
 
 The Gannet. Jean Ingelow : I need no mission. 
 
 Galahad. The saints help me ! Walt Whitman. 
 , The Ancient. Buchanan Read : / must call on the 
 Pope, to judge from the last poem of his which I have 
 read. There are but one or two more slips in the hat : 
 whom have we ? Piatt, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller ! 
 Galahad, I suggest that you return our yawping cosmos, 
 and take Piatt in his stead ; then let us add John Hay, 
 and we shall have all the latest names together for our 
 next and final night of diversions. 
 
 The Gannet. I second your proposal. It will sepa- 
 rate the last and most curious phenomena in poetry from 
 those which preceded them. Perhaps we may be able 
 to guess what they portend. 
 
136 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Galahad {changhig the name). I am so grateful for 
 the permission, tliat I will write two ; adding to the imi- 
 tation of Piatt that of the author of " A Woman's Poems," 
 in whose poetical fortunes, I imagine, he feels more inter- 
 est tliau even in his own. I am attracted bj her poems 
 as the Gannet is attracted by Mrs. Stoddard's, though the 
 two are wholly unlike. In " The Woman " I also see in- 
 dications of a struggle between thought and language, a 
 reluctance to catch the flying Psyche by the wings, and 
 hold her until every w^avering outline is clear. Women- 
 poets generally stand in too much awe of their own con- 
 ceptions. 
 
 ZoiLUS {solemnly). I am possessed! Procul, pro- 
 cul, — or at least be silent. {Whites.) 
 
 {All write steadily, and finish their tasks nearly at the same 
 time.) 
 
 The Chorus. You came up so nearly neck and neck, 
 that only we who timed you can decide. The Gannet 
 first. 
 
 The Gannet. Then hearken to Jean Ingclow. 
 {Reads.) 
 
 THE SHRIMP-GATHERERS. 
 
 Scarlet spaces of sand and ocean, 
 
 Gulls that circle antl winds that blow ; 
 
 Baskets and boats and men in motion. 
 Sailing and scattering to and fro. 
 
 Girls arc waiting, their wimples adorning 
 "With crimson sprinkles the broad gray flood; 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 137 
 
 And down the beach the blush of the morning 
 Shines reflected from moisture and mud. 
 
 Broad from the yard the sail hangs limpy ; 
 
 Lightly the steersman whistles a lay ; 
 Pull with a will, for the nets are shrimpy, 
 
 Pull with a whistle, our hearts are gay ! 
 
 Tuppence a quart ; there are more than fifty ! 
 
 Coffee is certain, and beer galore : 
 Coats are corduroy, minds are thrifty, 
 
 "Won't we go it on sea and shore ! 
 
 See, behind, how the hills are freckled 
 
 With low white huts, where the lasses bide ! 
 
 See, before, how the sea is speckled 
 
 With sloops and schooners that wait the tide ! 
 
 Yarmouth fishers may rail and roister, 
 Tyne-side boys may shout, " Give way ! " 
 
 Let them dredge for the lobster and oyster. 
 Pink and sweet are our shrimps to-day ! 
 
 Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle. 
 
 Such are the sea-fruits lasses love : 
 Ho ! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle. 
 
 And the shutterless cottages gleam above ! 
 
 The Choeus. A very courteous echo. The Ancient 
 ■was next. 
 
 The Ancient. I think if Buchanan Eead had confined 
 himself to those short, sweet, graceful lyrics by which he 
 first became known, he would have attained a better suc- 
 cess. It is singular, by the by, that his art does not color 
 
138 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Lis poetry, as in Hossetti's case ; no one could guess that 
 he is also a painter. But I remember that Washington 
 Allston is a similar iustauce. Read's best poems are 
 those which have a pastoral character, and I have turned 
 to them for his characteristic manner. {Reads.) 
 
 A SYLVAN SCENE. 
 
 The moon, a reaper of the ripened stars, 
 Held out her silver sickle in the Avest ; 
 
 I leaned against the shadowy pasture-bars, 
 A hermit, with a burden in my breast. 
 
 The lilies leaned beside me as I stood ; 
 
 The lilied heifers gleamed beneath the shed ; 
 And spirits from the high ancestral wood 
 
 Cast their articulate benisons on my head. 
 
 The twilight oriole sang her valentine 
 
 From pendulous nests above the stable-sill. 
 
 And Uke a beggar, asking alms and wine, 
 Came the importunate murmur of the mill. 
 
 Love threw his flying shuttle through my woof, 
 And made the web a pattern I abhorred ; 
 
 Wherefore alone I sang, and far aloof, 
 
 My melting melodies, mightier than the sword. 
 
 The white-sleeved mowers, coming slowly home, 
 "With scythes like rainbows on their shoulders hung, 
 
 Suiflt'd not, in passing me, the scent of Rome, 
 Nor licard the nmsic trickling from my tongue. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 139 
 
 The milkmaid, following, delayed her step, 
 
 Still singing as she left the stable-yard : 
 'T was "Sheridan's Ride" she sang: I turned and wep', 
 
 For woman's homage soothes the suffering bard ! 
 
 Gk\LAHAD. Why did n't you take Read's " Drifting " ? 
 
 The Ancient. It is a beautiful poem, but would 
 betray itself in any imitation. My object was to catch 
 his especial poetic dialect. 
 
 The Chorus. Now, Zoilus. 
 
 ZoiLus. I have followed exactly the Ancient's plan, 
 but with the disadvantage of not having read Mrs. 
 Howe's " Passion Flowers " lately ; so I was forced to 
 take whatever features were accessible, from her prose as 
 well as verse. (Reads.) 
 
 THE COMING RACE. 
 
 When with crisped fingers I have tried to part 
 
 The petals which compose 
 The azure flower of high aesthetic art, 
 
 More firmly did they close. 
 
 Yet woman is not undeveloped man, — 
 
 So singeth Tennyson : 
 Desire, that ever Duty's feet outran, 
 
 Begins, but sees not done. 
 
 Our life is full of passionate dismay 
 
 At larger schemes grown small ; 
 
 That which thou doest, do this very day. 
 Then art thou known of all. 
 
140 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The thing that was ungerms the thing to be ; 
 
 Before reflects Behind ; 
 So blends our moral trigonometry 
 
 "With spheroids of the mind. 
 
 Time shall transfigure many a paradox. 
 
 Now crushed with hoofs of scorn. 
 
 When in the beauty of the hollyhocks 
 The Coming Man is born. 
 
 His hand the new Evangels then shall hold. 
 
 That make earth epicene. 
 And on his shoulder, coifled with chrismal gold. 
 
 The Coming AYoman lean ! 
 
 The Gaj^net. 0, she should not lean on his shoul- 
 der ! That is a dependent attitude. 
 
 ZoiLus. I know ; but there is the exigency of an im- 
 mediate rhyme, and " epicene " is a word which I could 
 not sacrifice. 
 
 The Anciext. You have bit upon one of the vices 
 of our literary class, — the superficial refinement w-hich 
 vents itself on words and phrases. I have seen expres- 
 sions of both love and grief which were too elegant for 
 passion. The strong thought always finds the best 
 speech, but as its total form : it does not pause to prink 
 itself by the w^ay, or to study its face in a glass. I beg 
 pardon, Zoilus ; I am not speaking of, hnt/roni, you. 
 
 ZoiLUS. As the sinner furnishes more texts than the 
 saint. 
 
 The Chorus. Let us not keep Galahad waiting. 
 
 Galahad. I promised two, but have only finished 
 the firtit. The Gannct must keep mc company ; for we 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 141 
 
 were iiigli forgetting William Winter, and he must be 
 entertained before our board is cleared for the last com- 
 ers. 1 dare say we shall remember others; indeed, I 
 can think of several who ought to please the Ancient, for 
 tliey simply give us their ideas without any manner at 
 all. 
 
 The Ancient. Sarcasm from Galahad is sarcasm in- 
 deed ! I am assailed on all sides, to-night. But let us 
 have Piatt ; we have all looked through his " Western 
 Windows." 
 
 Galahad.' {Reads.) 
 
 THE OLD FENCE-RAIL. 
 
 It lies and rots by the roadside, 
 
 Among the withering weeds ; 
 The blackberry -vines run o'er it, 
 
 And the thistles drop their seeds. 
 
 Below, the Miami murmurs; 
 
 He flows as he always flowed ; 
 And the people, eastward and westward. 
 
 Travel the National Road. 
 
 At times a maiden's glances 
 
 Gild it Avith tints of dawn. 
 But the school-boy snorts with his nostrils. 
 
 Kicks it, and hastens on. 
 
 Above it the pioneer's chimney. 
 
 Lonely and rickety, leans ; 
 Beside it the pioneer's garden 
 
 Is a wildering growth of greens. 
 
142 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 It was split by the stahvart settler, 
 
 One of the ancient race. 
 And the hands of his to\v-haired children 
 
 Lifted it into its place. 
 
 Years after the gawky lover 
 
 Sat on it, dangling his heels, 
 "While his girl forgot her milking. 
 
 And the pen, with its hungry squeals. 
 
 Ah, the rail has its own romances, 
 The scenes and changes of years: 
 
 I pause whenever I see it. 
 And drop on it several tears. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Don't you all feel, "witli me, that our imita- 
 tions become more and more difficult as we take the 
 younger authors who give us sentiment, fancy, pure 
 luetres, — in short, very agreeable and meritorious work, 
 — but who neither conquer us by their daring nor pro- 
 voke us by offending our tastes ? 
 
 The Ancient. We foresaw this, the first evening, 
 you will remember. There are many excellent poets, 
 who cannot be amusingly travestied, — Collins, or Gold- 
 smith, for example. I was just deliberating whether to 
 suggest the names of two women who have written very 
 good poems, Lucy Larcom and she who calls lierself " H. 
 H." Tlie former has rhetoric and rhythm, and uses both 
 quite independently ; her " Hannah Binding Shoes '' 
 struck an original vein, which I wisli she had gone on 
 f[uarryiug. But her finest poem, " Tlie Rose Enthroned," 
 could only l)c ajipreciated by about one per cent of her 
 readers. " U. 11." shows delicacy and purity of senti- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 143 
 
 merit, yet her verse is not precisely song. Her ear fails 
 to catch the rarer music which lurks behind metrical cor- 
 rectness. I don't well see how either could be imitated ; 
 so we will leave the Gannet and Galahad to their second 
 task. 
 
 The Gannet {looking up). What you have been say- 
 ing also applies to my present model. Just the best 
 poems in his " Witness " are so simple, so sweetly and 
 smoothly finished, so marked by pure taste and delicate 
 fancy, that a good travesty would have the air of a seri- 
 ous imitation. 
 
 ZoiLUS {to the Ancient). However we may disagree, 
 I heartily join you in relishing a marked individuality in 
 poetry. 
 
 The Ancient. When it is honest, when it frankly 
 expresses tlie individual nature, not too much restricted 
 by the conventionalisms of the day, nor yielding too in- 
 dolently to the influences of other minds. It is a notable 
 characteristic of nearly all our younger poets, that they 
 wander, as if at random, over such a wide field, before 
 selecting their separate paths. One cause of this, I should 
 guess, is the seduction exercised by that refinement in 
 form, that richness and variety of metrical eifect, which 
 marks our modern poetry. Twenty years ago, our only 
 criticism almost ignored the idea in a poem ; it concerned 
 itself with words, lines, or stanzas, italicizing every agree- 
 able little touch of fancy, as a guide to the reader. Leigh 
 Hunt made this fashion popular ; Poe imitated him ; and 
 our young authors were taught to believe in detached 
 beauties of expression, instead of pure and symmetrical 
 conceptions. Take the earlier poems of Stoddard, Read, 
 
144 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Aldricli, Bayard Taylor, and others, and you cannot fail 
 to see how they were led astray. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Then, I suppose, their genuine poetical qual- 
 ity is tested by the extent to which they have emanci- 
 pated tliemselves from those early influences, and dis- 
 covered their proper individualities ? 
 
 The Ancient. Most certainly ; and if you had grown 
 up with the generation, as I have (being very little older), 
 you would see, as I do now, how each is strugghng out 
 of the general wilderness. Boker had not far to go ; he 
 grew up under the broad wings of the old English drama- 
 tists. Stoddard first struck his highest performance in 
 "The Fisher and Charon," and Stedman in his "Alec- 
 tryon," though both are still best known by their lighter 
 lyrics. Aldrich seems now to be aware of his native grace 
 and delicacy of fancy, and Howells of the sportive, light- 
 some element, wliich the Weltschnerz of youth for a time 
 suppressed. In his "Pastorals," Bayard Taylor seems 
 inclined to seek for the substance of poetry, rather than 
 the flash and glitter of its rhetorical drapery. Piatt is 
 turning more and more to that which lies nearest bim : 
 in short, without pretending to decide how far each is 
 successful, I tliink that each, now, is attendhig seriously 
 to his own special work. 
 
 ZoiLUS. How much longer do you give them, to reach 
 their highest planes of performance ? 
 
 The Ancient. All their lives; and I refer you to 
 Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, and Wliittier, as instances 
 of continuous development. If our American atmospliere, 
 as you said the other night, retards the growth of literary 
 men, you cannot deny that it wonderfully prolongs the 
 period of their growth. 
 
DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 145 
 
 The Gannet. Here have Galahad and myself been 
 "Waiting with our manuscripts, knowing that you two can 
 never agree, but hoping that each might exhaust the 
 other. 
 
 ZoiLUS. This from you, for wliom there is neither 
 time, space, nor place, when you get fairly started ! But 
 who are you now ? 
 
 The Gannet. William Winter, at your service. 
 {Reads.) 
 
 LOVE'S DIET. 
 
 There be who crave the flavors rich 
 
 Of boneless turkey and of beef; 
 There be who seek the relish which 
 
 To palsied palates brings relief: 
 But I, in love's most patient hush. 
 Partake with thee of simple mush. 
 
 The pheasant seems so bright of wing, 
 Because 't is wedded with expense ; 
 
 The rarer Strasburg pasties bring 
 But fleet enjoyment to the sense; 
 
 Yet common things, that seem too nigh. 
 
 Both purse and heart may satisfy. 
 
 'T is sweet to browse on dishes rare, 
 When those who give them can affbrd : 
 
 Sweeter this unpretending fare, 
 When thou art seated at the board, 
 
 With spoony fingers tounfold 
 
 The yielding mush's mass of gold. 
 
 7 J 
 
146 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Thou pour'st the milk that Avhiter seems 
 
 Than is the orbit of thy brow, 
 And I indulge with lamb -like dreams, 
 
 And many a Avhite and harmless vow ; 
 I only wish that there could be 
 One bowl, not two, for thee and me. 
 
 ZoiLUS. I "was not expecting even so much success. 
 
 The Gannet. Galahad was generous, to give me the 
 lighter task. It Tvould have quite bewildered me to im- 
 itate " A Woman's Poems," because their chief charac- 
 teristic is a ps3Thological one. If we had taken that 
 wonderful volume of the songstresses of the " South- 
 Land," now — 
 
 ZoiLUS. That reminds me of a graceful Southern 
 singer, who is like a bard alone in tlie desert, — Paul H. 
 Hayne. Talk of our lack of sympathy and encourage- 
 ment, here, in New York ! What mate has he, for hun- 
 dreds of miles around liim ? Why, there is not even the 
 challenge of a rival lance ; he must ride arouud the lonely- 
 lists, with neither antagonist to prove his mettle, uor 
 queen to crown him for success. 
 
 The Ancient. An author must have an audience, 
 liowever thin. We are told that Poetry is its own ex- 
 ceeding great reward : very well : but what if you sing 
 your song into the air and never find it again in the 
 heart of a friend? Genius. without sympathetic recogni- 
 tion is like a kindled fire without fiue or draught; it 
 smoulders miserably away instead of leaping, sparkling, 
 and giving cheer. I have seen some parts of the country 
 where a man of sensitive, poetical nature would surely 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 147 
 
 die, if he could not escape. We ought to be very tender 
 towards all honest efforts in literature. 
 
 Galahad. The "Woman" whom I have imitated 
 needs only the encounter of kind, yet positive minds, to 
 give her dreams what they still lack, — a distinct reality. 
 I have purposely tried to exaggerate her principal fault, 
 for it was the only thing I could do. {Reads.) 
 
 THE PLASTER CAST. 
 
 The white thought sleeps in it enshrined, 
 
 Though mean and cheap the substance seems, 
 
 As sleep conceptions in the mind. 
 Hardened, and unreleased by dreams. 
 
 A parrot only ! yet the child 
 
 Stares with untutored, dim surprise. 
 And fain would know what secret mild 
 
 Is ambushed in those moveless eyes. 
 
 His cherry from the painted beak 
 
 Falls, when his gentle hand would give. 
 
 So early some return we seek 
 
 From that which only seems to live. 
 
 Ah, let us even these symbols guard. 
 Nor shatter them with curious touch; 
 
 For, should we break ideals hard, 
 
 The fragments would not move us much. 
 
 ZoiLUS. You have fairly bewildered me, Galahad. I 
 thought there was an actual idea in the verses, but it 
 slips from my hand like an eel. 
 
148 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 The Axcient. It would better answer for the trav- 
 esty of a school which has a limited popularity at present, 
 but to which "A Woman" does not belong. 
 
 Galahad. AVhat school ? I know of none such. 
 
 The Axciext. The most active members would no 
 doubt be much astonished if I were to tell them of it ; 
 but it is a kind of school, nevertheless. I think it must 
 have originated as long ago as the days of The Dial, and 
 has not yet wholly gone out of fashion with a rather large 
 class of readers. You will find plenty of specimens in 
 newspapers of a mixed religious and literary character, 
 and now and then in the magazines. 
 
 The Chorus. Give us its peculiarities. 
 
 The Ancient. First, great gravity, if not solemnity 
 of tone ; a rhythm, sometimes weak, sometimes hard, but 
 usually halting ; obscurity and incoherence of thought, 
 and a perpetual reference to abstract morality. 
 
 ZoiiLUs. Don't describe, but iuiitate. 
 
 The Ancient. I could give you a stanza, by way of 
 illustration. Furnish me with a subject, — anything you 
 please. (ZoiLUS writes.) The Fifth Wheel! that will 
 answer; for the poets of tliis school always begin far 
 away from their themes. The first stanza might run 
 thus : — 
 
 From sunshine and from moral truth 
 Let Life be woven athwart thy breast! 
 
 The rapid cycles of thy youth 
 But letter Duty's solemn quest. 
 
 Omnes. Go on ! 
 
 The Ancient. Now I may got a little nearer to 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 149 
 
 the subject, though I don't clearly see how. {After a 
 pause.) 
 
 Vibration gives but faint assent 
 
 To that which in thee seems complete. 
 
 But time evolves the Incident 
 
 Behind the dust-driven chariot's feet. 
 
 Be well provided ! Overplus 
 
 Is Life's stern law, none can evade ; 
 
 Thon to the goal shalt hasten thus, 
 
 When selfish natures' wheels are stayed. 
 
 Zoi'Lus. Great Jove ! to think that I never discovered 
 the undying Laura Matilda in this prim disguise ! It is 
 the languishing creature grown older, with a high-necked 
 dress, a linen collar, and all her curls brushed smooth ! 
 Ancient, you have purged mine eyes from visual film; 
 this boon wipes out all remembrance of our strife. 
 
 Omnes. Enough for to-night ! [Exeunt. 
 
NIGHT THE EIGHTH. 
 
 {All the members -prompihj on hand.) 
 
 HE CHOllUS. Ho\7 niucli does any author 
 distinctly know of himself, or the quality of 
 his works ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Not much. 
 
 Galahad. Everything ! 
 
 The Gannet. Only Avhat makes a hit, and what 
 does n't. 
 
 The Ancient. It depends on wlio and what the 
 autlior is : you will find both extremes represented. 
 
 The Chorus. Yourselves, for instance ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. To be frank, I think I have more merit than 
 luck. But when I come to contrast the degrees of 
 jiopularity with the cliaracter of the performance, I am 
 ])uzzled. 
 
 Galahad. Popularity has nothing to do with it. I 
 know that some of my qualities are genuine, while other 
 necessary ones are weakly represented. Our talk, the 
 last night, satisfied me that I have not yet found the one 
 best direction ; but, on the other hand, one dare not force 
 one's own development, and I think I see whither I am 
 tendinir. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 151 
 
 The Gannet. Do you want to see wliere you stand 
 now, or very nearly the spot ? 
 Galahad. Show me if you can ? 
 
 (The Gannet takes a sheet of pa'per and writes}) 
 
 ZoiLTjs {to The Ancient). Do you think that a poet 
 is generally a correct judge of his own works ? 
 
 The Ancient. Please, don't repeat that dismal plati- 
 tude ! A genuine poet is always the best judge of his 
 own works, simply because he has an ideal standard by 
 which he measures whatever he does. He may not be 
 able to guess what will be most popular ; he may attach 
 an exorbitant value to that which is born of some occult 
 individual mood, in which few others can ever share ; but 
 in regard to the quality of the calm, ripened product of 
 his brain he cannot be mistaken ! To admit that he can 
 be, substitutes chance for law in the poetic art, and brings 
 us down to the vulgar idea of a wayward and accidental 
 inspiration, instead of conscious growth followed by con- 
 scious achievement. 
 
 ZoiLUS. You astonish me. 
 
 The Ancient. Then be glad; it is a sign that you 
 are not poetically blasL 
 
 Galahad. Never ! One can never be that. 
 
 The Gannet. Wait till you hear how your theorbo 
 sounds in my ears. What I have attempted is a serious, 
 not a comical, echo of your style. 
 
 Omnes. Give it to us ! 
 
 The Gannet. Keep Galahad's hands off me till I 
 have finished. {Reads.) 
 
152 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 THE TWO LIVES. 
 
 Down in the dL41 I wandered, 
 The loneliest of our dells, 
 
 Where grow the lowland lilies, 
 Dropping their foam-white bells, 
 
 And the brook among the grasses 
 Toys with its sand and shells. 
 
 Fair were the meads and thickets, 
 And sumptuous grew the trees. 
 
 And the folding hills of harvest 
 
 Were lulled with the fanning breeze, 
 
 But I heai'd, beyond the valley. 
 The roar of the plunging seas. 
 
 The birds and the vernal grasses, 
 They wooed me sweetly and long. 
 
 But the magic of ocean called me, 
 Murmuring vast and strong; 
 
 Plerc was the ilute-like cadence, 
 There was the world-wide song! 
 
 " Lie in the wood's embraces, 
 Sleep in the dcU's repose! " 
 
 " Float on the limitless azure, 
 Flecked with its foamy snows! " 
 
 Such were the changing voices, 
 Heard at the twilight's close. 
 
 Free with the winds and waters, 
 Nestled in shade and dcw: 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 153 
 
 Bliss in the soft green shelter, 
 
 Fame on the boundless blue ; 
 "Which shall I yield forever? 
 
 Which forever pursue? 
 
 Ow^Y.'s, {clapping their hands) . Galaliad! Galahad! 
 
 Galahad {with a melancholy air). It is worse than 
 the most savage criticism. 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 develop- 
 ment. 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 sunnuer heat of your 
 mind. 
 
 Galahad. I understand you, and don't mean to be 
 discouraged. But Zoilus is fully avenged now. 
 
 ZoiiLus. I '11 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 
 7* 
 
154 DIVERSIONS or THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 all made a very positive impression in England ; ho"w^ do 
 you account for it, Ancient ? 
 
 The Ancient. I can only guess at an explanation, 
 apart from the merits wliicli three of them certainly pos- 
 sess. While the average literary culture in England was 
 perhaps never so high as now, the prevalent style of writ- 
 ing was never so conventional. The sensational school, 
 which has been so popular here as well as there, is begin- 
 ning to fatigue the majority of readers, yet it still spoils 
 their enjoyment of simple, honest work ; so, every new 
 a])pearance 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 discijilcs 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, be- 
 cause they are not understood ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. 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, luUf-Emersonian apprehension of tiie old 
 Greek idea of physical life, which nuiny take to be wholly 
 new on account of the singular form iu which it is pre- 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 155 
 
 sented. I will even admit that the elements of a jfine 
 poet exist in him, in a state of chaos. It is curious that 
 while liB proclaims his human sympathies to he without 
 bounds, his intellectual sympathies should be so narrow. 
 There never was a man at once so arrogant, and so ten- 
 der 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 ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Take Joaquin Miller, and give Walt Whit- 
 man to the Ancient. Choose of these two, Galahad ! 
 
 Galahad {opening the paper). Bret Harte. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Then Hay remains to me. 
 
 i^rhey all write steadili/ for half an hour.) 
 
 The Gannet. Our last is our most difficult task ; for 
 we have to give the local flavor of the poetry, as well as 
 its peculiar form and tone. 
 
 ZoiLUS. I should like to know how much of that local 
 flavor is genuine. I am suspicious of Bret Harte's Cali- 
 fornia dialect : some features of it are evidently English, 
 and very suggestive of Dickens. Hay's is nearer the real 
 thing. Miller's scenery and accessories also inspire me 
 with doubt. Now, much of the value of this genre poetry 
 (as I should call it) depends upon its fidelity to nature. 
 
156 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Sham slang and sham barbarism are worse than sham 
 refinement and luxury. 
 
 The Ancient. Harte's use of " which " as au exple- 
 tive is certainly an English peculiarity, which he may have 
 heard it in some individual miner, but which it is not a 
 feature of California slang. So, when Higgles says " O, 
 if you please, I 'm Higgles," it is an English girl who 
 speaks. Aside from a few little details of this kind, 
 Harte's sketclies and poems are truly and admirably col- 
 ored. He deserves his success, for he has separated him- 
 self by a broad gulf from all the literary buffoonery of this 
 day, which is sometimes grotesque and always inane. 
 But he is picturesque^ and tlie coarsest humor of iiis char- 
 acters rests on a pure human pathos. 
 
 Galahad. Somehow, the use of a vulgar dialect in 
 poetry is always unpleasant to me ; it is like a grinning 
 mask over a beautiful face. And yet, how charming is 
 *' 'Zekel's Courtship " ! 
 
 The Ancient. Lowell has done all that is possible 
 with the New England dialect. He has now and then 
 steeped it in an odor of poetry which it never before 
 exhaled and perhaps never may again. Compare it, for 
 instance, with the Scotch of Burns, where every elision 
 makes the word sweeter on the tongue, and where the 
 words which are its special property are nearly always 
 musical. The New England changes are generally on the 
 side of roughness and clumsiness. With becomes an ugly 
 'M, instead of the soft Scotch wV ; have hardens into A<?p, 
 instead of flowing into hae ; and got coarsens into gut^ 
 instead of the cpiaint sharpness of y^^. It is the very op- 
 posite of the mellow broadness of the Scotch; it sacrifices 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 157 
 
 the vowels and aggravates the consonants; its raciest 
 qualities hint of prevarication and noncomrnital, and its 
 sentiment is grotesque even when it is frank and touch- 
 ing. Yet Lowell's genius sometimes so completely trans- 
 figures this harsh material, that one's ear forgets it and 
 hears only the finer music of his thought, 
 
 ZoiLUS. Shall we read ? I suggest that we take tlie 
 authors, to-night, in the order of their appearance. Walt 
 Whitman leads. 
 
 The Ancient. {Reads.) 
 
 CAMERADOS. 
 
 Everywhere, everywhere, following me ; 
 
 Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me 
 with the elbows ; 
 
 Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder -kettle ; 
 
 Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges ; 
 
 Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit ; 
 
 Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepres- 
 sible ; 
 
 Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scour- 
 ing Paumanok ; 
 
 What can I do to restrain them ? Nothing, verily nothing. 
 
 Everywhere, everywhere, crying aloud for me ; 
 
 Crying, I hear ; and I satisfy them out of my nature ; 
 
 And he that comes at the end of the feast shall find something 
 over. 
 
 Whatever they w\ant I give ; though it be something else, they 
 shall have it. 
 
 Drunkard, leper, Tammanyite, small-pox and cholera patient, 
 shoddy, and codfish millionnaire, 
 
158 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And the beautiful young men, and tlie beautiful young women, 
 
 all the same, 
 Crowding, hundreds of thousands, cosmical multitudes. 
 Buss me and hang on my hips and lean up to my shoulders, 
 Everywhere listening to my yawp and glad whenever they 
 
 hear it ; 
 Everywhere saying, say it, "Walt, we believe it : 
 Everywhere, everywhere. 
 
 ZoiLTJS. By Jove, Ancient ! you could soon develop 
 into a Kosmos. 
 
 The Ancient. It would uot be difficult, so far as the 
 form is concerned. The immortal Tupper, iu his rivalry 
 with Solomon, substituted semi-rhythmical prose lines 
 for verse ; but Walt, being thoroughly iu earnest, often 
 makes bis lines wholly rhythmical. I confess I enjoy his 
 decameters and hecatameters. 
 
 The Chorus. Bret Harte was the next appearance, 
 after a very long interval. You will have to do your 
 best, Galahad. 
 
 Galahad. A superficial imitation is easy enough, but 
 I shall certainly fail to reproduce his subtile wit aud 
 pathos. {Reads.) 
 
 TRUTHFUL JAMES'S SONG OF THE SHIRT. 
 
 "Which his name it was Sam ; 
 
 He had sluiced for a while 
 Up at Murderer's Dam, 
 
 Till he got a good pile, 
 Aud the heft of each dollar. 
 
 Two thousand or more. 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 159 
 
 He' d put in the Chollar, 
 For lie seed it was ore 
 That rims thick up and down^ without ceilin' or floor. 
 
 And, says he, it 's a game 
 
 That 's got but one stake ; 
 If I put up that same. 
 
 It '11 bust me or make. 
 At fifty the foot 
 
 I 've entered my pile. 
 And the whole derned cahoot 
 
 I 'II let soak for a while, 
 And jest loaf around here, — say, Jim, will you smile ? 
 
 Tom Fakes was the chum, 
 
 Down in Frisco, of Sam ; 
 And one mornin' there come 
 
 This here telegram : 
 " You can sell for five hundred. 
 
 Come down by the train ! " 
 Sam By-Joed and By-Thundered, — 
 
 'T was whistlin' quite plain. 
 And down to Dutch Flat rushed with might and with main. 
 
 He had no time to sarch, 
 
 But he grabbed up a shirt 
 That showed bilin' and starch, 
 
 And a coat with less dirt. 
 He jumped on the step 
 
 As the train shoved away, 
 And likewise was swep', 
 All galliant and gay, 
 ^Round the edge of the mounting and down to'rds the Bay. 
 
 Seven minutes, to pass 
 Through the hole by the Flat ! 
 
IGO DIVERSIONS- OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 Says he, I 'm an ass 
 
 If I can't shift in that ! 
 But the train behind time. 
 
 Only three was enough, — 
 It came pat as a rhyme — 
 
 He was stripped to the huff 
 When they jumped from the tunnel to daylight ! 'T was rough. 
 
 What else ? Here 's to you ! 
 
 Which he sold of his feet 
 At five hundred, 't is true. 
 
 And the same I repeat : 
 But acquaintances, friends, 
 
 They likes to divert. 
 And the tale never ends 
 
 Of Sam and his shirt. 
 And to stop it from goin' he 'd give all his dirt! 
 
 ZoiLUS. You were right to take a merely comical inci- 
 deut. You could n't possibly have echoed llie strong 
 feeling which underlies the surface slang of such a poem 
 as " Jim," which I consider Harle's masterpiece in his 
 special veia. 
 
 Galahad. He never could have written that if he 
 had been only a humorist. His hiter work shows that 
 he is a genuine poet. 
 
 The Ancient. Yes, that special vein is like many in 
 the Nevada mines, rich on the surface, narrowing as it 
 goes down, pinched off by the primitive strata, opening 
 again unexiiectcdly into a pocket, but never to be fully 
 depended upon, liarte's instincts are too true not to see 
 this : I believe he will do still better, and therefore prob- 
 ably less popular work. 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 161 
 
 The Gannet. Now, Zoilus, give us Hay, and let me 
 close with a war-whoop ! 
 
 Zoilus. I 'm not quite sure of my Pike dialect, but I 
 fancy the tone is rough enough to satisfy you. [Reads.) 
 
 BIG BILL. 
 
 There 's them that eats till they 're hustiii' 
 
 And them that drinks till they 're blind. 
 And them that 's snufflin' and spooney. 
 
 But the best of all, to my mind, 
 (And I 've been around in my time, hoys. 
 
 And cavorted with any you like,) 
 Was Big Bill, that lived in the slashes. 
 
 We called him Big Bill o' Pike. 
 
 If he put his hand to his howie 
 
 Or scratched the scruff of his neck. 
 You could only tell by waitin' 
 
 To see if you bled a peck : 
 And the way he fired, 't was lovely ! 
 
 Nobody knowed which was dead. 
 Till Big Bill grinned, and the stiff 'un 
 
 Tumbled over onto his head ! 
 
 At school he killed his master ; 
 
 Courtin', he killed seven more : 
 And the hearse was always a-waitin' 
 
 A little ways from his door. 
 There was n't much growth in the county, 
 
 As the census returns will show, 
 But we had Big Bill we was proud of. 
 
 And that was enough to grow. 
 
 K 
 
162 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 And TioAv Big Bill is an angel, — 
 
 Damn nie, it makes me cry ! 
 Jist ■when he was rampin' the roughest, 
 
 The poor fellow had to die. 
 A thievin' and sneakin' Yankee 
 
 Got the start on our hlessed Bill, 
 And there 's no one to do our killin' 
 
 And nobody left to kill ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. Hay's realism, in those ballads, is of the 
 grimmest kind. It is like the old Dance of Death, in 
 a new form. I have been greatly amused by the actual 
 fury which his " Little Breeches " and " Jim JBludso " 
 have aroused in some sectarian quarters. To read the 
 attacks, one would suppose that Christianity was threat- 
 ened by the declaration that angels may interpose to save 
 children, or that a man, ignorant or regardless of ordi- 
 nary morality, may redeem his soul by the noblest sacri- 
 fice. Really, it seems to me, that to diminish the range 
 of individual damnation renders many good people un- 
 happy. 
 
 The Ancient. Hay has made his name known in 
 the most legitimate way, — by representing phenomena 
 of common Western life which he has observed. He 
 might have faintly echoed Shelley or Tennyson for a 
 decade, and accomplished notliiug. Tliose ballads are 
 not, strictly speaking, poetry ; but it is impossible that 
 tliey should not give him a tendency to base his better 
 ])ocuis on the realities of our American life. 
 
 The Chorus. Let us hear tlic Gannet's war-whooji ! 
 
 The G annex. There is nothiug easier than to exag- 
 gerate exaggeration. {Reads.) 
 
DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 163 
 
 THE FATE OE THE FRONTIERSMAN. 
 
 That whiskey -jug ! For, dry or wet, 
 My tale will need its help, you bet ! 
 
 We made for the desert, she and I, 
 
 Though life was loathsome, and love a lie, 
 
 And she gazed on me with her glorious eye. 
 
 But all the same, — I let her die ! 
 
 For why ? — there was barely water for one 
 
 In the small canteen, and of provender, none ! 
 
 A splendid snake, with an emerald scale. 
 
 Slid before us along the trail, 
 
 "With a famished parrot pecking its head ; 
 
 And, seizing a huge and dark brown rock 
 
 In her dark brown haiids, as you crush a crock. 
 
 With the dark brown rock she crushed it dead. 
 
 But ere her teeth in its flesh could meet, 
 
 I laid her as dead as the snake at my feet, 
 
 And grabbed the snake for myself to eat. 
 
 The plain stretched wide, from side to side, 
 
 As bare and blistered and cracked and dried 
 
 As a moccasin sole of buffalo hide, 
 
 And my throat grew hot, as I walked the trail. 
 
 My blood in a sizzle, my muscles dry, 
 
 A crimson glare in my glorious eye. 
 
 And I felt my sinews wither and fail. 
 
 Like one who has lavished, for fifty nights. 
 
 His pile in a hell of gambling delights, 
 
 And is kicked at dawn from bottle and bed. 
 
 And sent to the gidches without a red. 
 
164 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 There was no penguin to pick or pluck. 
 
 No armadillo's throat to be stuck. 
 
 Not even a bilberry's ball of blue 
 
 To slush my tongue with its indigo dew. 
 
 And the dry brown palm-trees rattled and roared 
 
 Like the swish and swizzle of Walker's sword. 
 
 I was nigh nibbed out ; when, far away, 
 
 A shanty baked in the furnace of day, 
 
 And I petered ou, for an hour or more, 
 
 Till I dro])ped, like a mangy hound, at the door. 
 
 No soul to be seen ; but a basin stood 
 
 On the bench, with a mess of dubious food. 
 
 Stringy and doughy and lumpy and thick. 
 
 As the clay ere llame has turned it to brick. 
 
 I gobbled it up with a furious fire, 
 
 A prairie squall of hungry desire, 
 
 And strength came back ; when, lo ! a scream 
 
 Closed my stomach and burst my dream. 
 
 She stood before me, as lithe and tall 
 
 As a musqueet-bush on the Pimos wall, 
 
 Fierce as the Zuni panther's leap. 
 
 Fair as the slim Apache sheep. 
 
 A lariat draped her broad brown hips, 
 
 As she stood and glared with parted lips, 
 
 "While piercing stitches and maddening shoots 
 
 Ran through my body, from brain to boots. 
 
 1 would have clasped her, but, ere I could. 
 
 She Hung back her hair's tempestuous hood. 
 
 And screamed, in a voice like a tiger-cat's : 
 
 " You 've gone and ett up my pizcn for rats ! " . 
 
 My blood grew limp and my hair grew hard 
 
 As the steely tail of the desert pard : 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 165 
 
 I sank at her feet, convulsed and pale. 
 And kissed in anguish her brown toe-nail. 
 You may rip the cloud from the frescoed sky, 
 Or tear the man from his place in the moon, 
 Fur from the buzzard and plumes from the coon, 
 But you can't tear me from the truth I cry, 
 That life is loathsome and love a lie. 
 She lifted me up to her bare brown face, 
 She cracked my ribs in her brown embrace, 
 And there in the shanty, side by side. 
 Each on the other's bosom died. 
 
 She 's now the mistress of Buffalo Bill, 
 
 And pure as the heart of a lily still ; 
 
 "While I 'vc killed all who have cared for me, 
 
 And I 'm just as lonely as I can be. 
 
 So, pass the whiskey, — we '11 have a spree ! 
 
 Omnes. The real thing ! 
 
 ZoiLUS. You've beaten us all, but no -wonder! 
 Mucli of Joaquin Miller's verse is itself a travesty of 
 poetry. Ancient, you talk about high ideals of literary 
 art, and all that sort of thiug: can you tell me what 
 Rossetti and the rest of the English critics mean, in 
 hailing this man as the great American poet? 
 
 The Ancient. One thing, of course, they cannot 
 see, — the thorough spuriousness of his characters, with 
 tiieir costumes, scenery, and all other accessories. Why, 
 he takes Lara and the Giaour, puts tliem in a fantastic, 
 impossible country called " Arizona " or " California," and 
 describes them with a rhythm borrowed from Swinburne 
 and a frenzy all his own, — and we are called upon to 
 
166 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 
 
 accept tins as something original and grand ! The amazed 
 admiration of a class in England, and the gushing grati- 
 tude of one in America, form, together, a spectacle over 
 ■which the pure, serene gods must bend in convulsions of 
 inextinguishable laughter. 
 
 ZoiLUS. Give me your hand ! As Thackeray* said, let 
 us swear eternal friendship ! You have often provoked 
 me by persistently mollifying my judgments of authors; 
 but, if you had done so iu this casCj I could not have 
 forgiven you. Joaquin Miller, and he alone, would prove 
 the decadence of our literature : he is an Indianized copy 
 of Byron, made up of shrieks and war-paint, and the life 
 he describes is too brutal, selfish, and insane ever to have 
 existed anywhere, A few fine lines or couplets, or an 
 occasional glittering bit of descri])tion, are not enough to 
 make him a genius, or even an unusual talent. 
 
 The Gannet. But the matei-ial — not his, the true, 
 Arizonian material — is good, and he has shown shrewd- 
 ness in selecting it. He is clever, in some ways, or he 
 never could have made so much capital in England. His 
 temporary success here is only an echo of his success tliere. 
 
 ZoiLUS. If he were a young fellow of twenty, I 
 should say, wait; but his is not the exaggeration of 
 youth, it is the affectation of manhood. 
 
 Galahad. If anybody ever seriously said, "Alas!" 
 I sliould say it now. I have picked up many a grain of 
 good counsel in the midst of our fun, and the fun itself 
 lias become an agreeable stimulus which I shall miss. 
 \Vc must not give up our habit wholly. 
 
 ZoiLUS. There is no end of intellectual and poetic 
 gyiunastics, which we may try. I propose that we close 
 
DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 167 
 
 with a grand satirical American " Walpurgis-Niglit," 
 modelled on Goethe's Intermezzo in Faust. $ 
 
 TuE Gannet. That is a good idea, but how shall we 
 carry it out ? 
 
 ZoiLUS. Let each write a stanza or two, satirizing 
 some literary school, author, magazine, or newspaper, 
 throw it into the hat, and then take another, as long as 
 we can keep up the game. When all are exhausted, give 
 the hat to the Ancient and let him read the whole collec- 
 tion of squibs, in tlie order in which they turn up, 
 
 Omnes {eagerltj). Accepted! 
 
 [Here, I am compelled to state, my liberty as a reporter 
 ceases. The plan was carried out, and 1 think it was not 
 entirely unsuccessful. But our mirth was partly at the 
 expense of others : many of the stanzas were only lively 
 and good-humored, but many others thrust out a sharp 
 sting in the last line. As I was not an accomplice, I was 
 perfectly willing that they should all be given to the 
 public. Zoilus did not seriously object; but the other 
 lliree were peremptory in their prohibition. Even the 
 Gannet ccyifesscd that he was not courageous enough to 
 run tlie risk of making half a dozen permanent enemies 
 by shafts of four lines apiece : he knew how largely the 
 element of personal profit and reputation enters into 
 American literary life, and how touchy a sensitiveness it 
 develops. There was no denying this, for they related 
 many instances to prove it. I yielded, of course, although 
 it was a disappointment to me. After having tlms en- 
 tered authorship by a side-door, as it were, I find the 
 field very pleasant ; and I withdraw now, since there is 
 no alternative, with reluctance. — The Nameless Re- 
 porter.] 
 
THE BATTLE OF THE BAEDS. 
 
 [At the opening of the Fair of the American Institute, in 
 New York, on the 7th of September, 1871, an original poem 
 of some length was recited by Walt AVhitman. At that time 
 Bret Harte's and Colonel John Hay's admirable dialect ballads 
 wei-e read by everybody, and the sudden popularity which 
 Joaquin Miller had obtained in England, a few months pre- 
 vious, made him the subject of much newspaper remark. The 
 fact that these four authors, notwithstaudiug the very difFereut 
 quality of their work, were then specially prominent in public 
 interest, suggested travesties which should reprcscut tlicm as 
 rivals, each claimiug ascendency over the others. The greater 
 part of Walt Whitnuiu's [)roductiou was published in the " New 
 York Tribune " on the 8th of September, in the report of the 
 opening of the Fair; and on the same day, the four following 
 imitations, without the connecting prose passages, were seut to 
 that paper. The latter were added by the editor thei^iu charge, 
 and probably coutributed even more to the amusement of the 
 public than tlie poems themselves. The rare liberality — nay, in 
 a literary seusc, generosity — which the editor exhibited would be 
 uuiversally appreciated, if it were proper to mention his name] 
 
 E have never regretted so much as yesterday 
 the limited capacity of our eight pages wliicli 
 compelled us to omit sonic portions of Mr. 
 Whitman's remarkable poem. It was perhaps 
 ilie most remarkable wiiicli lias ever been delivered before 
 ail Industrial Assembly, and we arc assured by the offi- 
 
THE BATTLE OE THE BARDS. 169 
 
 cers of tlie Signal Service that it is not probable that an- 
 other such disturbance of the elements will take place this 
 century. It is this consideration which induces us to 
 print the following choice extract which was yesterday 
 ransomed, at great expense, from the hands of the Celtic 
 lady who sweeps out the office. The Niglit Editor has 
 been severely censured for slaughtering this exquisite 
 morceau, and compared to the base Judean who threw a 
 pearl away richer than all his agate. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Who was it sang of the procreant urge, recounted sextillions of 
 
 subjects ? 
 Who but myself, the Kosmos, yawping abroad, concerned not 
 
 at all about either the effect or the answer ; 
 Straddling the Continent, gathering into my hairy bosom the 
 
 growths, whatever they were, and nothing slighted, 
 
 nothing forgotten ? 
 Allezl I am the One, the only One, and this is my Chant 
 
 Democratique. 
 Where is he that heard not, and she that heard not, and they 
 
 that heard not, before and during and after ? 
 All is wholesome and clean, and all is the effluent strain, impec- 
 cable, sweet, of the clasper of comrades. 
 If there were anything else, I woidd sing it ; 
 But there is nothing, no jot or tittle, or least little scraping of 
 
 subject or matter : 
 No, there is nothing at all, and all of you know it. 
 
 [We make room for further portions of our report of the 
 opening of the Institute, which were crowded out yesterday.] 
 8 
 
170 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 
 
 T\lien Mr. Whitman's voice liad died away among the 
 patent pumps and corn-cutters whicli cumbered tlic vast 
 amphitheatre, a slight but elegantly formed gentleman 
 lounged forward from among the refrigerators, and said 
 in a voice of singular sweetness, — 
 
 "Air this a free fight?" 
 
 His face was tlie face of Raphael and his boots were 
 tlie boots of Cinderella. Ilis black curls fell damply over 
 a liigb, pale brow, but vrere not materially injured by the 
 fall. An enormous diamond, the dying gift of Pinky the 
 Bilk, whom lie had tenderly shot in church one day at 
 Sandy Bar for being a half-second out of time on the 
 Aniens, glittered on his lady-like finger. By one of those 
 cynical contrasts of the frontier, his garb was by Poole, 
 but his mustache was dyed by Day and Martin. 
 
 "I've lieerd," he continued, putting his hand behind 
 his hip, " that this was a trial trip of song-sharps. Ef so, 
 I '11 jest chip in. I 'm from Roaring Camp, near Skunk's 
 Misery, and my name is — well, you know that, if you 
 know anytliing." He read with exquisite expression the 
 following : — 
 
 "Who? Well — coinin' so sudJcnt, 
 
 I 'm hardly ready to say. 
 I know: but I 'd rather you would n't 
 
 Put it to me just that way. 
 Not that my stripe is modest ; 
 
 That was rubbed off long ago : 
 And I have been questioned the oddest 
 
 And I 'm not altogether slow. 
 
 Come, — set up to this here tabic ! 
 You ! — bring us two more beci-s ! 
 
THE BATTLE OF THE BAEDS. 171 
 
 Could n't I put it as a fable, 
 
 Sich as a boy often hears ? 
 You know every gard'ner mulcbes 
 
 Round some partic'lar tree : 
 Men read, in the deepest gulches, 
 
 And so — they 've found out me ! 
 
 'T was cuttin' a queer sort o' capers. 
 
 So the folks out there said ; 
 But I ask you to look in the papers. 
 
 And see what stuff 's most read. 
 Why, Jim, the very way I met you 
 
 People knows, far and near, — 
 Knows from my tellin', — and yet you 
 
 Ask me who 's first ! It 's queer. 
 
 Hang it ! what 's the use o' beatin' 
 
 Round the bush in this here way ? 
 And you doiu' all the treatin', 
 
 And me with nothing to say ! 
 Here 's to us ! — this way I can show it. 
 
 If you have n't already guessed : 
 We 're drinkin' the health o' the poet 
 
 That 's flattened out all the rest ! 
 
 Here a long, lank, farmer-looking man, with travel- 
 stained garments of Kentucky jeans, a weather-beaten 
 face, rough with two days of grizzled beard, enormous 
 brown hands and wrists protruding from the short coat- 
 sleeves, and a general air of melancholy and tobacco 
 about him, came slouching up to the platform, and taknig 
 off his tattered fur cap, said to the President, — 
 
 " Good morning, Jedge 1 I drapped in to take a hand 
 
172 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 
 
 'long o' the other poets, but ef ye ain't got no better stock 
 nor this, I reckon I '11 skeet back to Spunky Pint. Wliy, 
 Jedge ! my little Gabe — he's at school at Hell's Bend 
 in Magoopin Co. — dogg on my skin ef he can't sing tlie 
 socks otf'n that thar httle Ganibolier." 
 
 " Confine yourself to your own poetry," said the chair^ 
 man, austerely ; and the Pike sadly shook the hay-seed 
 from his long iron-gray hair, and read these rhymes, in a 
 snuffling tone curiously at variance with their libertine 
 tendency : — 
 
 You fello\Ys East may sing as you please, 
 
 And tickle the scalps of all concerned ; 
 You may cant away with Canthaiides, 
 
 Rip with Euripides, and be derned ! 
 But to find the real high-pressure style, 
 
 And travel the stavingcst road to glory. 
 You must go out AVest for a thousand mile. 
 
 And never stop till you pass Peory. 
 
 We don't prance round iu white kid gloves, 
 
 Smelliu' of grease and sassyfrack : 
 Our vittles ain't honey and turlle-doves, 
 
 And when we kiss, it 's a reg'lar smack. 
 We take things rough, but wc swaller 'em whole ; 
 
 "We don't pretend to be simperin' pious ; 
 And what we are tit for, blast my soul ! 
 
 If you want to know, come out and try us ! 
 
 These here United States, they say, 
 
 Is owiu' the world an outfit of verse : ~^,^ 
 
 Pike County '11 iix it, any day. 
 
 And who goes furder "11 fare the worse. 
 
THE BATTLE OP THE BARDS. 173 
 
 There 's a man lives out on tte peraira thar, 
 In an old shebang, as I 've heard tootin'. 
 
 And if hisn don't go through your hide and har, 
 It 's my opinion there '11 be some shootin'. 
 
 A wild war-whoop resounded through the building, 
 and a wilder apparition burst upon the scene. He was 
 dressed from head to foot in buckskin dyed a fiery red ; 
 strings of silver bells tinkled about him ; his face was 
 painted in broad alternate bands of green, yellow, and 
 crimson ; a long scalp-lock, stiffened with eagle- s feathers, 
 reached half-way to the ceiling. [Mr, Shanks ordered 
 this report to be strong. I hope this will suit. — Re- 
 PORTEE,.] In a voice loud enough to drown the whistle of 
 ten locomotives, he read in a strange runic chant the fol- 
 lowing poem, from a manuscript signed Joaquin, written 
 in letters of blood on the tanned hide of a Camanche 
 princess : — 
 
 l^ar on the hot Apache plain 
 
 I sinched the girth and I buckled the rein : 
 
 The glorious girl behind me sang, 
 
 But I sprang to the saddle without a pang. 
 
 And gave the spur to my wild mustang, 
 
 And a coil of the loose riata's fold 
 
 Over his flanks like a serpent rolled. 
 
 As his hoofs went forward, and forward, and on. 
 
 Till the plain, and the hills, and the girl, were goue. 
 
 The forests of cactus stabbed and stung, 
 
 The sun beat down on my skinless tongue, 
 
 The dust was thick in my simmering mouth. 
 
 And a whirlwind of flame came out of the South, 
 
 From the dry bananas, whose fiery hair 
 
174 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 
 
 Singed the monkeys and parroquets there. 
 
 I crashed through the fianie, I dashed o'er the sand. 
 
 Bearing my songs in my red right hand. 
 
 Bearing the songs of the "Western land, 
 
 Tender and glowing and fierce and grand. 
 
 Take them and read them and yield me the crown 
 
 Which the old Sierras on me cast down 
 
 From peaks untrodden, of gorgeous glare. 
 
 Cast down upon me and bade me wear ! 
 
 And whoso denies it he shall he 
 
 Struck, and despised, and spit on, by me, 
 
 Asa loathsome snake, as a venomous thing, 
 
 Y\t but to swelter and crawl and sting. 
 
 And build his cell in the rotten, rank 
 
 Recess of a noisome toadstool bank. 
 
 While I, like a hawk in the splendid sky, 
 
 Scream revenge as I wheel on high, 
 
 And the sound of my screaming shall never die ! 
 
 Obituary. — Ananias Longbow, of our City Depart- 
 ment, yesterday fell or was thrown from the tliird-story 
 windows of The Tribune building. No cause is as- 
 signed for the rash act. 
 
 ^ 
 
 -" 'm^ 
 
A EEYIEW 
 
 [Published in the " New York Tribune," December 4, 1875.] 
 
 THE INN ALBUM. 
 
 Osgood & Co. 
 
 By Robert Browning. James R. 
 
 HAT 's tills? A book? 16mo. — Osgood's 
 page, 
 Pair, clear, Olympian-typed, and save a scant 
 0' the margin, stiff i' the hurried binding, 
 good ! 
 Intituled how ? " The Inn Album, Robert Brown- 
 ing, Author y Why should lie not say, as well. 
 The Hotel Register ? — cis-Atlantic term ! 
 Nay, an he should, the action might purvey 
 To lower compreliensions : so not he ! 
 Reflect, 't is Browning! — he neglects, prepense. 
 All forms of form : what he gives must we take. 
 Sweet, bitter, sour, absinthean, adipose. 
 Conglomerate, jellied, potted, salt, or dried. 
 As the mood holds him ; ours is not to choose ! 
 Well (here huge sighs be heard !) commending us 
 To Heaven's high mercy, let us read ! 
 
176 A HE VIEW. 
 
 — Three liours : 
 The end is readied ; but who begins review, 
 Torgetful o' beginning, with the end ? 
 Turn back ! — why, here 's a hue supplies us witli 
 Curt comment on the whole, though travesty, — 
 Hail, calm obliquity/, lugubrious ]plot ! — 
 Yea, since obliquity the straight path is, 
 And Passion worships as her patron saint 
 Tiie Holy Vitus, and from Language fall 
 The rusty chains of rhythm and harmony, 
 Why not exclaim, ''Hail, sham obliquitij ! '^ 
 Too hard, you murmur, sweet submissive minds ?- 
 But take a bite o' the original pie ! Set teeth, 
 'Ware cherry-stones, and if a herring-spine 
 Stick crosswise i' the throat, go gulp, shed tdars. 
 But blame not us ! So runs the opening : — 
 
 " That oblong book 's the Album ; hand it here ! 
 Exactly ! page on page of gratitude 
 For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view ! 
 I praise these poets : they leave margin-space ; 
 Each stanza seems to gather skirts around, 
 And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine, 
 Modest and maidhkc ; lubber prose o'ersprawls 
 And straddling stops the path from left to right. 
 Since I want space to do my ciplier-work, 
 "Which poem spares a corner? "What comes first ?* 
 ' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
 (Open the window, we burn daylight, boy !) 
 Or see — succinctcr beauty, brief and bold — 
 ' If a fellow can dine On ruiup steaks and port wine 
 lie needs not desjmir Of dininy well here — ' 
 
A EEVIEW. 177 
 
 * Here ! ' I myself could find a better rhyme. 
 That bard 's a Browning ; he neglects the form ! 
 But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense ! " 
 
 T/iis bard 's a Browning ! — there 's no doubt of that : 
 
 But, ah, ye gods, t/ie sense ! Are we so sure 
 
 If sense be sense unto our common-sense. 
 
 Low sense to higher, high to low, no sense 
 
 All sense to those, all sense no sense to these ? 
 
 That 's wliere your poet tells ! — and you 've no right 
 
 (Insensate sense with sensuous thought being mixed) 
 
 To ask analysis ! How can else review, 
 
 Save in the dialect of his verse, be writ ? 
 
 So write we : (would we might foresee the end ! ) 
 
 So has he taught us, i' " The Ring and The Book," 
 
 I)e gustibus, concerning taste, 7ion est 
 
 There 's no — disputing, dlspiitandum (Ha ! 
 
 'T is not so difficult) — and we submit. 
 
 Iling prompter's bell ! — let to strange music rise . 
 The curtain : here 's a country inn's best room ; 
 The persons, two, have gambled all night through. 
 And now 't is morning. One 's "a polished snob," 
 Young, rich, yet with rough base of manliness 
 (We learn this afterward) ; the elder man, 
 A lord, the meanest scoundrel ever lived 
 (So we shall find), "refinement every inch 
 Erom brow to boot-end." Ciphers he in book, — 
 No paper else ! — and, stead of snob's loss, finds 
 Himself fhe loser by ten tliousand pounds ! 
 Much dialogue ensues, — the substance this: 
 Snob offers to forgive the debt, keep mum ; 
 
 8* L 
 
178 A REVIEW. 
 
 With insult lord refuses, penniless 
 
 And overbearing; "■father s apron still 
 
 Sticks out from son's court-vesture; still silk purse 
 
 Roughs finger with some bristle sow-ear born ! " 
 
 So speaketK he, " refinement every inch," 
 
 Et cetera. Well, they pay the tavern bill, 
 
 Walk toward the station, lord intent to catch 
 
 The morning train to town, while snob remains 
 
 To seek a neighbor cousin, possible wife. 
 
 To ordinary persons liere were end. 
 
 Not so to Browning-persons ; wait a bit, 
 
 And you '11 perceive the red-clawed Tragic's hawk 
 
 Pounce on the thoughtless chick of Commonplace, 
 
 I' midst o' dunghill-blessedness ! 
 
 As the two 
 Sighted tlie station, train unwhistled yet, 
 A gate invites : what fool such swinging seat. 
 Albeit -sliarp edge to gluteal want o' pad, 
 Disdaineth ? Thereupon tliey perch, and then 
 !Muc1» dialogue ensues, — the upshot this : 
 Lord met, four years ago, admired, betrayed 
 A parson's daugliter, tamely wedded now 
 And lost to him, — his chance of life no less 
 A loss : the apple ripe to hand wilhheld 
 Dr()])s and the swine dewur: he sees it now. 
 Snob met, four years ago, admired and loved, 
 And then renounced, the stateliest of her sex, 
 A lord befooled, then married, — so the tale : 
 l\)»ir years — a parson's daughter. — was 't the same ? 
 Unmarried I, says lord ; 't is not the same. 
 
A REVIEW. 179 
 
 I 
 
 (But 't was the same of course : tlie reader sees 
 Cat's-whiskers where tjie meal is seeming smooth. 
 And tadpole-tails i' the mud ;) so talking, train 
 Whisks past, no second till the afternoon. 
 And lord goes back to tavern, snob strides off 
 To visit aunt and cousin. 
 
 Second scene : 
 (Hail, calm obliquity, lugubrious plot ! ) 
 Enter the cousin in, the inn's best room. 
 With female friend, arrived by train ! This friend — 
 " Superb one," Browning says, and we know whom ! — 
 Summoned by cousin on the snob to hold. 
 Privately, judgment; should she wed or not ? 
 Much dialogue ensues, — no substance now, 
 Mere beating round the bush, but one grows pale. 
 The other wonders, — reader, haply, thinks 
 The Devil 's to pay when all together meet ! 
 
 Superb one left alone, comes back my lord, 
 
 "^ Seeing not first the lady watching elm 
 At window, takes the "Inn Album," opens page. 
 And (Heaven knows wliy !) reads once again : 
 ■^' Hail, calm acclioitij, salubrious spot ! " 
 
 r- Thereat, explosions : with " black-blooded brow " 
 Tlie lady fronts him, — hate, defiance, rage. 
 Burn, spit, hiss, boil, and bubble in her speech. 
 Tlien he, in tiirn, " refinement every inch 
 From brow to boot-end," answers thus : — 
 
 "So, I it was allured you — only I — 
 I, and ndnc other — to this spectacle — 
 
180 A REVIEW. 
 
 Your triumph, my despair — you woman fiend 
 
 That front me ! Well, I have my wish, then ! See 
 
 The low wide brow oppressed by sweeps of hair 
 
 Darker and darker as they coil and swathe 
 
 The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black. 
 
 Not asleep now ! not pin-points dwarfed beneath 
 
 Either great bridging eyebrow — poor blank beads — 
 
 Babies, I 've pleased to pity in my time : 
 
 How they protrude and glow immense with bate ! 
 
 The long triumphant nose attains — retains 
 
 Just the perfection ; and there 's scarlet-skein 
 
 ]\Iy ancient enemy, her lip and lip. 
 
 Sense-free, sense-frighting lips clenched cold and bold 
 
 Because of chin, that based resolved beneath ! 
 
 Then the columnar neck completes the whole 
 
 Greek-sculpture-baffling body ! Do I see ? 
 
 Can I observe ? You wait next word to come ? 
 
 Well, wait and want ! since no one blight I bid 
 
 Consume one least perfection. Each and all. 
 
 As they are rightly shocking now to me. 
 
 So may they still continue ! Value them ? 
 
 Ay, as the vender knows the money-worth 
 
 Of his Greek statue, fools aspire to buy. 
 
 And he to see the back of! Let us laugh ! 
 
 You have absolved me from my sin at least ! 
 
 You stand stout, strong, in the rude health of hate, 
 
 No toiu-h of the tame timid nullity 
 
 My cowardice, forsooth, has practised on ! 
 
 Ay, while you seemed to hint some line lifth act 
 
 Of tragedy should freeze blood, cud the farce, 
 
 I never doubted all was joke. I kept, 
 
 ;May be, an eye alert on jjaragraplis. 
 
 Newspaper notice — let no inquest slip. 
 
A REVIEW. 181 
 
 Accident, disappearance : sound and safe 
 "Were you, my victim, not of mind to die ! " 
 
 Answer to this brutality (when we 
 
 Think who and what the two, abominable !) 
 
 Youclisafes slie, — story of lier wedded life. 
 
 Husband a country curate, stupidly 
 
 Yet most devoutly saving stupid souls, 
 
 Whose interests she, this goddess in the flesh. 
 
 Endures in ennui killing heart and brain. 
 
 Life grown a hell, save for defiant pride 
 
 To answer him, — yea, wild, illogical. 
 
 She moves us somewhat. Hearken now to him. 
 
 Who thus speaks, after insult : — 
 
 " God forgives ; 
 Forgive you, delegate of God, brought near 
 As never priest could bring him to this soul 
 That prays you both — forgive me ! I abase — 
 Know myself mad and monstrous utterly 
 In all I did that moment ; but as God 
 Gives me this knowledge — heart to feel and tongue 
 To testify — so be you gracious too ! 
 Judge no man by the solitary work 
 Of — well, they do say and I can believe — 
 The devil in him : his, the moment, — mine 
 The life — your life ! 
 
 He names her name again. 
 You were just — merciful as just, you were 
 In giving me no respite : punishment 
 Followed oifending. Sane and sound once more. 
 The patient thanks decision, promptitude, 
 Which flung him prone and fastened him from hurt 
 
182 A EEYIEW. 
 
 Haply to others, surely to liiraself. 
 
 I wake aud would not you had spared one pang. 
 
 All 's well that ends well ! " 
 
 And so ou, for the space of iiiuety lines. 
 
 The brute and blackguard mouths his lyric love. 
 
 Falls on his knees, abases to the dust 
 
 His liaughtv selfishness. To which relapse 
 
 Tliis much (much else omitted) is the pith 
 
 Of her reply : — 
 
 " You are the Adversary ! 
 
 Your fate is of your choosiug: have your choice! 
 
 Wander the world, — God has some end to serve. 
 
 Ere he suppress you ! He waits : I endure, 
 
 But interpose no finger-tip, forsooth. 
 
 To stop your ])assage to the pit. Enough 
 
 That I am stahle, uninvolved by you 
 
 In the rush downward : free I gaze and fixed ; 
 
 Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike 
 
 My crowned contempt. You kneel ? Prostrate yourself 
 
 To earth, and would the whole world saw you there ! " 
 
 A step : a voice " All right ! " outside ; the snob 
 
 Comes back a-sudden, pushes wide the door. 
 
 Sees knccler, kneeled-to, deeply breathes an " Ah-h ! " 
 
 — True melodrama ! Take this inir-r-rse of gold. 
 
 Me hated rival : in another l-l-land 
 
 T will make thee r-r-rich ! You 're wrong, my eager 
 
 f-f-friend, 
 Dead out o' reckoning ! What says the snob, 
 Wliom scattered evidence of nianlincss 
 Made sccni a nuiu ? No explanation souglit. 
 
A REVIEW. 183 
 
 He belches bile and gall, stirs gutter-filth. 
 
 Names " bag and baggage," " friend-and-goddess love," 
 
 Insults, bespatters, rages. She, between. 
 
 Soothes him, defies the other ; then this last. 
 
 His knees still dusty from the abject prayer. 
 
 Again is devil. (Hark ye, here 's the dodge 
 
 To cook original passion : what men do 
 
 Don't let them do, and what they never do 
 
 Do : none can guess what next shall hap i' the tale ; 
 
 Passion is incoherent, and you 've still 
 
 Nature to fall upon.) This Album-book — 
 
 Hail, sham obliquity, lugubrious plot ! 
 
 Is wellnigh read ; you end the tangle, smash ! 
 
 Here 's Browning's recipe ; take heaps o' hate. 
 
 Take boundless love, hydraulic-pressed, in bales, 
 
 Distilments keen of baseness and of pride. 
 
 And innocence and cunning, — mix 'em well. 
 
 And put a body round 'em ! Add the more 
 
 O' this, or that, you have another, — stay ! 
 
 The sex don't count ; make female of the male, 
 
 Male female, all the better ; let them meet. 
 
 Talk, love, hate, cross, till satisfied — then, kill ! 
 
 So here : lord, finding situation tough 
 
 (Between two fires, hate and a horsewhip-threat). 
 
 Writes i' the Album, goes without and waits. 
 
 Superb One, having read, takes hand of snob. 
 
 Accepts his love till death ; then lord comes back. 
 
 What did he write ? " Refinement every inch 
 
 Erom brow to boot-end," 't was a threat to tell 
 
 The country curate of his wife's disgrace, — 
 
 He, the disgracer ! Snob gets wild at that. 
 
 Screams, jumps, and clutches 
 
184 A EEVIEW. 
 
 All at once we sec 
 One character dead — but how, we don't quite know. 
 Then she, Superb One, whites in Album, dies 
 By force of will, (no hint of instrument !) 
 Leaving the snob alone and much surprised. 
 Cousin is heard without ; but ere the door 
 Opens, the story closes. Only this remains. 
 The last conundrum, hardly guessable 
 By tlie unbrownmged mind. Since what it means, 
 If aught the meaning, means some other thing 
 And that thing something else, but this not that. 
 Nor that the other, — we adopt the lines 
 As most expressing what we fail express. 
 Our solemn verdict, handkerchief and all. 
 Upon the book : we quote, with grateful heart : — 
 
 " All 's ended and all 's overl Verdict found 
 ' Not guilty ' — prisoner forthwith set free. 
 Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard! 
 Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe, 
 At last appeased, benignant ! ' This young man — 
 llem — has the young man s foibles but no fault, 
 lie 's virgin soil — a friend must cultivate. 
 I think no ^ilant called " love " grows wild — a friend 
 May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit ! ' 
 Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief — 
 She '11 want to hide her face with presently ! 
 Good by then ! ' Cignofedel, cigno fedel, 
 Addio ! ' Now, was ever such mistake — 
 Ever such ibobsli ugly omen ? Pshaw ! 
 "NVagncr beside ! ' J mo tc solo, tc 
 Solo amai !' That 's worth fifty such! 
 But, nuini, the grave face at the open door ! " 
 
A REVIEW. 
 
 185 
 
 The meaning ask you, O ingenuous soul ? 
 Why, were there such for you, what then were left 
 To puzzle brain witli, pump conjecture dry. 
 And prove you little where the poet 's great ? 
 Great must he be, you therefore little : — go ! 
 The curtain falls, the candles are snuffed out : 
 E/id, damned obliquity^ lugubrious 'plot ! 
 
PAEADISE DISCOYEEED. 
 
 AN EPIC, 
 
 F Pork and Beans, wliicli from the primal East, 
 Bejoud tlie Indian Monnt, ^liere early tricks 
 Her purfled scarf old Titlion's paramour. 
 And Arimaspean giants, famed of old. 
 Ravaged the Scythian plains, the nations bore 
 Westward to Celtic and the Saxon fields, 
 And thence o'er dangers of the glistering seas 
 To bloom, transplanted, on New England soil, 
 I sing : and thou, who givest ample food 
 To palates sated with Parisian feasts, 
 Apician god, whether thy feet be stayed 
 In markets vast, beside the minted lamb. 
 Or from the fumes of savory coppers tak'st 
 Dcliglit of boiling beef, commend my song, 
 And raise it to tliat lieiglit of argument 
 "Wliicli makes the theme, full humble though it be, 
 Cirander than strains of old Maconides. 
 Eor I upon tliat famous dish was nurst, 
 Scoffed at crcwhilc, whose now acknowledged woi*tlr 
 The round world echoes, — wlicncc increase of use, 
 
PARADISE DISCOVERED. 187 
 
 And pseans louder than the orby clang 
 Of shields at Radamont or Mandragore, 
 Or where Biscayan bulwarks front the wave 
 Trebonian, or of Syrtis by Cyrene 
 Borasmian thunders : nor no lesser joy. 
 Though silent, cheek distent with pungent weed, 
 Peel Siasconset's fishers, homeward blown 
 Erom broad Hyannis and the shoaling sands. 
 When all the air, from every chimney-flue. 
 Breathes odors of the Dish ; and each his own 
 With practised nostril from the steamy twine 
 Untangles. Hail ! thou bright, warm effluence ! 
 Hail, wedded nourishment ! — 
 
 {Cetera desunt, owing to the precipitate flight of the indignant 
 Muse.) 
 
 Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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