Part 16 (1/2)
Dana's book [”Two Years Before the Mast”] is a cla.s.sic because it took no thought of being a cla.s.sic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails--mainsail, main royal, foresail--play the princ.i.p.al parts.
There is no book depicting life on the sea to compare with it. Lately I have again tried to find the secret of its charm. In the first place, it is a plain, unvarnished tale, no attempt at fine writing in it. All is action from cover to cover. It is full of thrilling, dramatic scenes. In fact, it is almost a perpetual drama in which the sea, the winds, the storms, the sails, and the sailors play their parts. Each sail, from the smallest to the greatest, has its own character and its own part to play; sometimes many of them, sometimes few are upon the stage at once. Occasionally all the canvas was piled on at once, and then what a sight the s.h.i.+p was to behold! Scudding under bare poles was dramatic also.
The life on board s.h.i.+p in those times--its humor, its tedium, its dangers, its hards.h.i.+ps--was never before so vividly portrayed. The tyranny and cruelty of sea-captains, the absolute despotism of that little world of the s.h.i.+p's deck, stand out in strong relief. Dana had a memory like a phonographic record. Unless he took copious notes on this journey, it is incredible how he could have made it so complete, so specific is the life of each day. The reader craves more light on one point--the size of the s.h.i.+p, her length and tonnage. In setting out on the homeward journey they took aboard a dozen sheep, four bullocks, a dozen or more pigs, three or four dozen of poultry, thousands of dressed and cured hides, as well as fodder and feed for the cattle and poultry and pigs. The vessel seemed elastic; they could always find room for a few thousand more hides, if the need arose. The hides were folded up like the leaves of a book, and they invented curious machinery to press in a hundred hides where one could not be forced by hand. By this means the forty thousand hides were easily disposed of as part of the home cargo.
The s.h.i.+p becomes a living being to the sailors. The Alert was so loaded, her cargo so _steved_ in, that she was stiff as a man in a strait-jacket. But the old sailors said: ”Stand by. You'll see her work herself loose in a week or two, and then she'll walk up to Cape Horn like a race-horse.”
It is curious how the sailors can't work together without a song. ”A song is as necessary to a sailor as the drum and fife are to the soldier. They can't pull in time, or pull with a will, without it.”
Some songs were much more effective than others. ”Two or three songs would be tried, one after the other, with no effect--not an inch could be got upon the tackles, when a new song struck up seemed to hit the humor of the moment and drove the tackles two blocks at once. 'Heave round, hearty!' 'Captain gone ash.o.r.e!' and the like, might do for common pulls, but in an emergency, when we wanted a heavy, raise-the-dead pull, which would start the beams of the s.h.i.+p, there was nothing like 'Time for us to go!' 'Round the corner,' or 'Hurrah!
Hurrah! my hearty bullies!'”
The mind of the professional critic, like the professional logical mind, becomes possessed of certain rules which it adheres to on all occasions. There is a well-known legal mind in this country which is typical. A recent political opponent of the man says:
His is the type of mind which would have sided with King John against granting the Magna Charta; the type of mind which would have opposed the ratification of the Const.i.tution of the United States because he would have found so many holes in it. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Monroe Doctrine on the ground that it was dangerous. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation on the ground of taking away property without due process of law. His is the type of mind which would have opposed Cleveland's Venezuela message to England on the ground that it was unprecedented.
His is the type of mind which did its best in 1912 to oppose Theodore Roosevelt's effort to make the Republican Party progressive.
Such a mind would have no use for Roosevelt, for instance, because Roosevelt was not bound by precedents, but made precedents of his own.
The typical critical mind, such as Arnold's, would deny the t.i.tle of philosopher to a man who has no constructive talent, who could not build up his own philosophy into a system. He would deny another the t.i.tle of poet because his verse has not the Miltonic qualities of simplicity, of sensuousness, of pa.s.sion. Emerson was not a great man of letters, Arnold said, because he had not the genius and instinct for style; his prose had not the requisite wholeness of good tissue.
Emerson's prose is certainly not Arnold's prose, but at its best it is just as effective.
It is a good idea of Santayana that ”the function of poetry is to emotionalize philosophy.”
How absurd, even repulsive, is the argument of ”Paradise Lost”! yet here is great poetry, not in the matter, but in the manner.
”Though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen.”
”To shun delights and live laborious days.”
Common ideas, but what dignity in the expression!
Criticism is easy. When a writer has nothing else to do, he can criticize some other writer. But to create and originate is not so easy. One may say that appreciation is easy also. How many persons appreciate good literature who cannot produce it!
The rash and the audacious are not the same. Audacity means boldness, but to be rash often means to be imprudent or foolhardy. When a little dog attacks a big dog, as so often happens, his boldness becomes rashness. When Charles Kingsley attacked Newman, his boldness turned out to be rashness.
Little wonder that in his essay on ”Books” Emerson recommends Thomas a Kempis's ”Imitation of Christ.” Subst.i.tute the word Nature for G.o.d and Christ and much of it will sound very Emersonian. Emerson was a kind of New England Thomas a Kempis. His spirit and att.i.tude of mind were essentially the same, only directed to Nature and the modern world.
Humble yourself, keep yourself in the background, and let the over-soul speak. ”I desire no consolation which taketh from me compunction.” ”I love no contemplation which leads to pride.” ”For all that which is high is not holy, nor everything that is sweet, good.”
”I had rather feel contrition, than be skilled in the definition of it.” ”All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written.” How Emersonian all this sounds!
In a fat volume of forty thousand quotations from the literature of all times and countries, compiled by some patient and industrious person, at least half of it is not worth the paper on which it is printed. There seem to be more quotations in it from Shakespeare than from any other poet, which is as it should be. There seem to be more from Emerson than from any other American poet, which again is as it should be. Those from the great names of antiquity--the Bible, Sadi, Cicero, aeschylus, Euripides, Aristotle, and others--are all worth while, and the quotations from Bacon, Newton, Addison, Locke, Chaucer, Johnson, Carlyle, Huxley, Tennyson, Goethe are welcome. But the quotations from women writers and poets,--Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Jean Ingelow, and others,--what are they worth? Who would expect anything profound from J. G. Holland or Chapin, O. W. Holmes, or Alger, or Alcott, or Helps, or d.i.c.kens, or Lewes, or Froude, or Lowell? I certainly should not.