Part 11 (1/2)
Here was expert opinion after a second revise, with help of water-marks! In Adas as education; but this was not all Reed continued: ”The lines on the back see, which I cannot read, but if you will take it down to the manuscript-room, they will read it for you”
Adams took the sheet down to the keeper of the ed him to read the lines The keeper, after a few ly said he could not: ”It is scratched with an artist's crayon, very rapidly, with many unusual abbreviations and old forms If any one in Europe can read it, it is the old man at the table yonder, Libri! Take it to him!”
This expert broke down on the alphabet! He could not even judge a ht to co to pay, not even twelve shi+llings, though he thought these experts worth ly he carried his paper to Libri, a total stranger to him, and asked the old man, as deferentially as possible, to tell hinorant person he would have known all about Libri, but his ignorance was vast, and perhaps was for the best Libri looked at the paper, and then looked again, and at last bade him sit down and wait Half an hour passed before he called Adams back and showed him these lines:--
”Or questo credo ben che una elleria Te offende tanto che te offese il core
Perche sei grande nol sei in tua volia; Tu vedi e gia non credi il tuo valore; Passate gia son tutte gelosie; Tu sei di sasso; non hai piu dolore”
As far as Ada, but he added that the abbreviations werewas very ancient; and that the word he read as ”elleria” in the first line was not Italian at all
By this tiot too far beyond one's depth to ask questions If Libri could not read Italian, very clearly Ada, thanked everybody, and having exhausted the experts of the British Museuure and repeated Reed's opinion Woolner snorted: ”Reed's a fool!” he said; ”he knows nothing about it; there ht”
For forty years Ada on his ely for curiosity to see whether any critic or artist would ever stop to look at it None ever did, unless he knew the story Adams himself never wanted to know ht He never cared to learn whether the draas Rafael's, or whether the verse were Rafael's, or whether even the water- the British Museu orth a certain s On that point, also, Adams could offer no opinion, but he was clear that his education had profited by it to that extent--his amusement even more
Art was a superb field for education, but at every turn he npost that ought to direct him to the next station but never did There was no next station All the art of a thousand--or ten thousand--years had brought England to stuff which Palgrave and Woolner brayed in their rowled at, and howled at, and treated in tere Whistler had not yet made his appearance in London, but the others did quite as well What result could a student reach fro with Stopford Brooke, some one asked Adams what impression the Royal Acadeested that it was rather a chaos, which he meant for civility; but Stopford Brooke abruptlywhether chaos were not better than death
Truly the question orth discussion For his own part, Adams inclined to think that neither chaos nor death was an object to hiue in America--neither would help him to a career Both of thelish dilettantebut a wall-paper to unite thelish taste was one degree lish scholarshi+p, but even this question was open to arguht what he was told to buy; now a classical drawing by Rafael or Rubens; noater-color by Girtin or Cotman, if possible unfinished because it was ht theether--on the contrary, they made rather aard spots on the wall as they did on the mind--but because he could afford to buy those, and not others Ten pounds did not go far to buy a Michael Angelo, but was a great deal of mentary, feeble; and the more so because the British mind was constructed in that way--boasted of it, and held it to be true philosophy as well as sound ht to denounce the English as wrong Artistically their ht itself, history, and nature, were scrappy, and ought to be studied so Turning froers The historical school was a playground of traps and pitfalls Fatally one fell into the sink of history--antiquarianism
For one who nourished a natural weakness for as called history, the whole of British literature in the nineteenth century was antiquarianise, for no one except Buckle had tried to link it with ideas, and co failed
Macaulay was the English historian Adareatest admiration for Macaulay, but he felt that any one who should even distantly iht as well i here, for the poet and the historian ought to have different ht to be imitable if it were sound; yet the method was more doubtful than the style He was a dralish ht call it; but one never could quite adlake could be sound for America where passion and poetry were eccentricities Both Froude and Kinglake, when one ent; and perhaps the English ht be a field of scraps, like the refuse about a Staffordshi+re iron-furnace One felt a little natural reluctance to decline and fall like Silas Wegg on the golden dust-heap of British refuse; but if one ree from Oxford and the respect of the Athenaeu, after the war ended,the rest, Dr Palfrey, busy with his ”History of New England” Of all the relics of childhood, Dr
Palfrey was the most sympathetic, and perhaps the more so because he, too, had wandered into the pleasant otten the world in his pursuit of the New England Puritan Although A htly rococo orna as a study for the Monkbarns of Boston Bay, and Dr Palfrey took him seriously, as his clerical education required His as rather an Apologia in the Greek sense; a justification of the ways of God to Man, or, as , of Puritans to other h to require the occasional relief of a contrast or scapegoat When Dr Palfrey happened on the picturesque but unpuritanic figure of Captain John Smith, he felt no call to beautify Smith's picture or to defend hisThe faland scepticisested to Adams, anted to make a position for himself, that an article in the North American Review on Captain John Smith's relations with Pocahontas would attract as lass, as any other stone that could be thrown by a beginner Ada better The task see So he planted himself in the British Museum and patiently worked over all the material he could find, until, at last, after three or four ot it in shape and sent it to Charles Norton, as then editing the North American Mr
Norton very civilly and even kindly accepted it The article appeared in January, 1867
Surely, here was so that tended to stagger a sceptic! In spite of personal wishes, intentions, and prejudices; in spite of civil wars and diplomatic education; in spite of determination to be actual, daily, and practical, Henry Adalish society, dragged on one side into English dilettantism, which of all dilettantism he held the most futile; and, on the other, into American antiquarianism, which of all antiquarianism he held the most foolish This was the result of five years in London Even then he knew it to be a false start He had wholly lost his way If he were ever to ain a new education, in a new place, with a new purpose
CHAPTER XV
DARWINISM (1867-1868)
POLITICS, diplomacy, law, art, and history had opened no outlet for future energy or effort, but a , even in Portland Place, inter is dark and winter evenings are exceedingly long At that ical champion of Daras Sir Charles Lyell, and the Lyells were intiation Sir Charles constantly said of Darhat Palgrave said of Tennyson, that the first time he came to town, Adams should be asked to meet him, but neither of the Ao to them because they were known to dislike intrusion The only Americans ere not allowed to intrude were the half-dozen in the Legation Adain of Species” and his ”Voyage of the Beagle” He was a Darwinist before the letter; a predestined follower of the tide; but he was hardly trained to folloin's evidences Fraght be, but in those days it was doing a great deal of work in a very un-English way, building up so many and such vast theories on such narrow foundations as to shock the conservative, and delight the frivolous The atoy; the ases, and Darwin's Law of Natural Selection, were exa man had to take on trust Neither he nor any one else knew enough to verify thenorance of mathematics, he was particularly helpless; but this never stood in his way The ideas were new and seeeneralization which would finish one's clainner should understand them all, or believe them all, no one could expect, still less exact Henry Adanorance exceeded belief, and onein order to contradict even such triflers as Tyndall and Huxley
By rights, he should have been also a Marxist but soht socialism, and he tried in vain to ; he became a Comteist, within the li but quiet As though the world had not been enough upset in his tier to see it upset more He had his wish, but he lost his hold on the results by trying to understand them
He never tried to understand Darwin; but he still fancied he et the best part of Darwinisy; a science which suited idle h it were history
Every curate in England dabbled in geology and hunted for vestiges of Creation Darwin hunted only for vestiges of Natural Selection, and Ada about Selection, unless perhaps for the indirect a curates He felt, like nine men in ten, an instinctive belief in Evolution, but he felt no h he seized with greediness the new volume on the ”Antiquity of Man” which Sir Charles Lyell published in 1863 in order to support Darwin by wrecking the Garden of Eden Sir Charles next brought out, in 1866, a new edition of his ”Principles,” then the highest text-book of geology; but here the Darwinian doctrine grew in stature Natural Selection led back to Natural Evolution, and at last to Natural Uniformity This was a vast stride Unbroken Evolution under uniform conditions pleased every one--except curates and bishops; it was the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative practical, thoroughly Co syste man who had just helped to waste five or ten thousand million dollars and a million lives, more or less, to enforce unity and uniformity on people who objected to it; the idea was only too seductive in its perfection; it had the charm of art Unity and Uniformity were the whole lishman, preferred to back into it--to reach God a posteriori--rather than start froht only theunity was to unite Any road was good that arrived
Life depended on it One had been, froed hither and thither like a French poodle on a string, following always the strongest pull, between one form of unity or centralization and another The proof that one had acted wisely because of obeying the primordial habit of nature flattered one's self-esteeher seeation to inquire about getting his ”Principles” properly noticed in Aest that he could do it himself if Sir Charles would tell him what to say Youth risks such encounters with the universe before one succumbs to it, yet even he was surprised at Sir Charles's ready assent, and stillhi down to clear the ists about the principles of their profession This was getting on fast; Arthur Pendennis had never gone so far
The geologists were a hardy class, not likely to be , nor did he throay much concern on their account He undertook the task chiefly to educate, not them, but himself, and if Sir Isaac Newton had, like Sir Charles Lyell, asked him to explain for Americans his last edition of the ”Principia,” Adams would have ju such works for a the Ada Sir Isaac for an intelligible reason why the apple fell to the ground He did not know enough to be satisfied with the fact The Law of Gravitation was so-and-so, but as Gravitation? and he would have been thrown quite off his base if Sir Isaac had answered that he did not know
At the very outset Adams struck on Sir Charles's Glacial Theory or theories He was ignorant enough to think that the glacial epoch looked like a chaslacial period were uniforuesses that Sir Charles suggested or borrowed to explain glaciation were proof of nothing, and were quite unsolid as support for so iical uniformity If one were at liberty to be as lax in science as in theology, and to assuht better say so, as the Church did, and not invite attack by appearing weak in evidence Naturally a young norant, could not say this to Sir Charles Lyell or Sir Isaac Newton; but he was forced to state Sir Charles's viehich he thought weak as hypotheses and worthless as proofs Sir Charles himself seemed shy of them Adams hinted his heresies in vain At last he resorted to what he thought the bold experi a sentence in the text, intended to provoke correction ”The introduction [by Louis Agassiz] of this new geological agent seeu him to allow that causes had in fact existed on the earth capable of producing es than would be possible in our own day” The hint produced no effect Sir Charles said not a word; he let the paragraph stand; and Adareat Uniformitarian was strict or lax in his uniformitarian creed; but he doubted
Objections fatal to one mind are futile to another, and as far as concerned the article, the lacial epoch re man's Darwinism Had it been the only one, he would not have fretted about it; but uniformity often worked queerly and someti hiure to illustrate the Law of Natural Selection, Adams asked Sir Charles for the simplest case of uniformity on record Much to his surprise Sir Charles told him that certain forinning to the end of geological tiether too ave up the atte at the end--hiranted that the vertebrates would serve his purpose, he asked Sir Charles to introduce him to the first vertebrate