The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

‘Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from the shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

‘But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other a Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them—the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be—struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

‘Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations: but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities: and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.’

The second of these spirits accompanies Scrooge to a scene that is well worth seeing, and the like of which many of our readers have doubtless often encountered—a regular Christmas frolic; in the present instance at the residence of his nephew, who has a sister, a lovely, plump damsel, with a lace tucker: she was pretty, exceedingly pretty. ‘With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed, as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!’ Is not the following a most glowing sketch of a well known pastime?

‘But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman’s buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch any body else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there; he would have made a feint endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding: and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blindman being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.’

The Ghost of Christmas to Come is the third spirit. It is a stately figure, surrounded in black and impenetrable drapery. It leads Scrooge into the heart of the city, and he hears his acquaintance talking jestingly of one departed; into the Exchange, and he sees another standing against his peculiar pillar; into a haunt of infamy, where wretches are dividing the spoils and hoardings of the dead; into a wretched room, where a corpse lies shrouded, whose face Scrooge dares not uncover; into dwellings made miserable by the grasping avarice of those who had wealth they could not use; into his nephew’s house, shorn of its comforts, where the inmates, care-worn and weary, are wringing their hands with distress; into poor Bob Cratchit’s abode, made cheerless by death; and lastly, into a sad churchyard, where, on the stone of a neglected grave, is inscribed his own name! He implores the spirit to say whether these shadows may not be changed by an altered life. Its trembling hand seems to give consent. He pleads earnestly for a more decisive sign, and while he does so, the phantom dwindles down into a bed-post, and Scrooge sits upright in his bed. Who cannot imagine the conclusion? It is broad day. He looks out of the window: the bells are ringing; the people are going to church; all proclaim it as Christmas Day. The future is yet before him, and he is resolved to make the most of it. The prize turkey is got in haste from the neighboring poulterer’s, and sent by a cab to Bob Cratchit’s; and Scrooge hastens off to his nephew’s to dinner, where he finds the vision of the spirit realized. Scrooge from that hour is another and a better man. We have in conclusion but three words to say to every reader of the Knickerbocker who may peruse our notice of this production: Read the Work.

Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor Through Europe and the East. Between the years 1824 and 1840. By P. D. Holthaus, Journeyman Tailor, from Werdohl, in Westphalia. Translated from the third German edition, by William Howitt. J. Winchester: ‘New World’ Press.

An air of great simplicity and truth pervades this wander-book of the German schneider. Mr. Howitt tells us, that when in the autumn of 1840 he returned to his native village, a great reputation preceded him, and all came, eager to see the brave traveller, and to listen to the relation of his adventures. He never sought purposely to turn conversation upon the subject of his travels, nor to impress an idea of his own importance; but when he was drawn into discourse, it was speedily found that he had noted and deeply impressed on his mind every thing with a truly admirable interest, and an acute spirit of observation, for one of his rank and education; that he had not merely passed through the countries, but had gleaned valuable matter on his journey; various things which he had brought with him testified this interest, such as different kinds of coin, engravings, plans of cities, etc. We have found, on an examination necessarily cursory, the commendatory remarks of the Berlin Gesellschafter upon this work to be well deserved: ‘We see in the individual expressions almost every where the evidence of its being the production of immediate observation. There prevails through the whole a noble simplicity and singleness of purpose, a genuinely German sound mode of thinking; here and there is not wanting a humorous and pithy remark. The author sees in every place nature and men without spectacles, and thence it arises that we acquire from his book a more living and actual view of foreign countries, especially of Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, than was the case from the travelled labors of many a learned and celebrated man. Frequently, nay almost always, it is a fact, that the learned are destitute of the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the real life of the people, while it is exactly here that the greatest peculiarity of the manners and customs of foreigners is to be found. Our honest hand-worker lived among the people, and therefore possessed the best means to describe them in graphic characters.’ There is something very forcible and comprehensive in the subjoined passage from the author’s preface. It is indeed a sort of compendium of the most interesting portion of the writer’s journeyings:

‘From my youth up, it was my most living desire to see the world. When I heard or read of foreign lands, I became sad at heart, and thought: ‘Wert thou but of years that thou couldst travel!’ Now are all the wishes of my youth fulfilled. I have made the attempt by land and water, and that in three quarters of the world. I have wandered several times through Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Wallachia; I was a long time in Budapest and Constantinople; and undertook, with the money which I had saved there, a pilgrimage through Egypt to the Holy Land. I kneeled at the Birth-Place and the Sepulchre of the Saviour; stood in adoration on the holy Mount Zion, on Tabor, Golgotha, and the Mount of Olives; bathed in Jordan; washed myself in the Lake of Gennesareth; looked in vain around me on the Dead Sea for living objects; was in the workshop of St. Joseph; and in many other holy places of which the sacred Scriptures make mention. Thence I returned to Constantinople, and betook myself through Athens, where I worked nearly a year, and thence through Italy, France, and Belgium, homeward to my Fatherland.’

The first German edition of fifteen hundred copies of the work was at once exhausted; a second speedily followed; a third was soon announced; and the fourth is doubtless ere this before a wide class of German readers. We cheerfully commend the book to the public acceptance.

Benthamiana: or Select Extracts from the Works of Jeremy Bentham. With an Outline Opinion on the Principal Subjects discussed in his Works. In one volume, pp. 446. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.

This work contains a copious selection of those passages in the works of Jeremy Bentham which appear to be chiefly distinguished for merit of a simply rhetorical character; which, appearing often in the midst of long and arduous processes of reasoning, or in the course of elaborate descriptions of minute practical arrangements, demanding from an active mind severe thought and unflagging attention, have scarcely had their due weight with the general reader, nor secured their just meed of admiration. He was singularly careless, writes his editor, in distributing his pleasing illustrations of playfulness, or pathos, or epigrammatic expression. His ‘mission’ he considered to be that of an instructor and improver; and the flowers which, equally with more substantial things, were the produce of his vigorous intellect, he looked upon as scarcely worthy of passing attention, and deserving of no more notice than to be permitted to grow wherever the more valued objects of his labors left them a little room. The volume comprehends a vast variety of sound opinion, and able though brief argument upon themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of Bentham’s writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: ‘Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but from the conservation of too many necessary ones in a sentence; as a workman may be overladen not only with rubbish, which is of no use for him to carry, but with materials the most useful and necessary, when heaped up in loads too heavy for him at once.’ A useful hint this, to unpractised writers.

The Correspondence between Burns and Clarinda. With a Memoir of Mrs. M’Lehose, (Clarinda.) Arranged and edited by her Grandson, W. C. M’Lehose. In one volume, pp. 293. New-York: R. P. Bixby and Company.

We have no doubt that the contents of this well-executed little volume are altogether authentic; full particulars relative to the custody and authenticity of the correspondence and the state of preservation of the original manuscripts being given in the preface. But we are very sorry to say so much against the book as this fact implies. It would be far better for the reputation of the immortal Bard of Scotland, if some hereditary friend, chary of his undying fame, were to come before the public with a pamphlet disproving entirely the agency of Burns in this correspondence. To those who are acquainted with previous records in the private history of the world-renowned poet, it is painful to convict him, out of his own mouth, of duplicity in matters of the heart; of insincerity in the profession of simultaneous passion for various lovers; and of other acts which are alike indefensible and disreputable. We must needs marvel too that the ‘Clarinda’ of the correspondence should have been doomed by a near descendant to the exposure inseparable from the revelations of this volume. That the treatment which she received at the hands of one whose duty it was to ‘love, cherish, and protect’ her, was equally undeserved and inexcusable, we can well believe; but that the ‘platonic attachment,’ which sprung up in a night, like the gourd of Jonah, and gradually waxed to ‘passion at fever-heat,’ was justified by these facts, or sanctioned by propriety, or that its history in detail is calculated to elevate the character of woman, or exercise a healthful moral influence, we have just as little reason to doubt. There is a sprinkling of verse in an appendix, which Burns was good enough to praise. It is of that kind ‘which neither gods nor men permit;’ and is conclusive, not of Burns’s judgment, but of his ‘tender’ sycophancy.

EDITOR’S TABLE

Some ‘Sentiments’ on Sonnets, with sundry Specimens.—Thanks to our ever-welcome correspondent, ‘T. W. P.’ for his pleasant, pertinent and improving sentiments on sonnets. Arriving at too late an hour for a place among our guests at the table d’ hôte, perhaps he will not object to sit at our humble side-table, and converse familiarly with the reader; since, as honest Sancho remarked of the Duke, ‘Wherever he sits, there will be the first place.’ Our friend has a fruitful theme. How many borrowed prose-passages have we seen, with their original brightness dimmed or deflected in a sorry sonnet! Nine in ten of our modern examples in this kind, when one comes to analyze them, will be found to consist of stolen ideas, combined with what Southey would call ‘bubble, and bladder, and tympany.’ But perpend the subjoined: ‘Ever since the fatal days of Petrarch and Guido Cavalianti, mankind have suffered more or less from the chronic infliction of Sonnets. With them indeed the complaint was constitutional, and came in the natural way; under so mild and gentle a form withal, that little danger was to be apprehended for Italian temperaments, except a degree of languor, general debility, and a disagreeable singing in the ears. It was only when it worked its way into English blood, that the virus assumed its most baneful character. Shakspeare, among other illustrious victims, was afflicted by it in his youth, but seems to have recovered during his residence in the metropolis. Possibly the favor of the royal hand might have proved more beneficial than that of the Earl of Southampton. Perhaps he was touched for it by Elizabeth, as Johnson was by Queen Anne for the scrofula. However that may be, we know very well that the disorder is now rooted among us, and that every week produces decided cases of Sonnets, sometimes so severe as to be intolerable. In this condition of the mental health of our country, since the evil cannot be cured, it were a work at once philanthropical and patriotic, so to modify it and regulate its attacks, that it may settle down into a moderate degree of annoyance, like the lighter afflictions of mild measles and mumps. We can always calculate upon the duration of each ‘fytte,’ as none ever exceeds the fourteenth spasm. When the just dozen-and-two convulsions are past, the danger is over, and the offensive matter may be removed by a newspaper, or discharged into some appropriate magazine. There is good reason for designating the complaint as a periodical one.

We intend, one of these days, provided our remarks attract sufficient attention, to publish a volume upon this subject. We have the materiel by us and about us; and as soon as we can make arrangements with Mr. Poh for a puff in the ‘North-American Review,’ or the ‘Southern Literary Messenger,’ we shall broach the affair to Mr. Fields, the enterprising publisher. We have moreover desired Mr. Whipple to write to his friend Mr. Macaulay in England, who will doubtless be proud to foster American letters by a hoist in the ‘Edinburgh.’ There is only one other thing absolutely requisite for the success of the book, and that is the appearance of this article in the Knickerbocker. Befriend me then with your fine taste, renowned Herr Diedrich! and give me room. I shall not dive deeply into the matter now; but for the good of my young countrymen, the labor of whose brains is incompatible with a fruitful development of whiskers, I wish to put forth a page of advice that may save them a world of fatigue. It is common with those who are far gone in this tuneful disorder to set up late o’ nights and tipple coffee. Under my new system, I will engage that they may retire to bed on mulled-punch nightly, at eleven, and yet effect all that they now perform with the greatest injury to their eyes and complexions. But pocas pallabras—enough of this preface: will not the thing speak for itself? There needs no farther introduction for these brief extracts from the aforesaid work:

THE EASIEST WAY OF DISCHARGING A SONNET

A Sonnet (as before stated) consists of fourteen and no more spasms. They are calm, deliberate twinges, however, and upon a homœopathical principle, the great object should be to get over each one in the calmest possible manner; idem cum eodem. The thing cannot be treated too coolly, for its very essence is dull deliberation. The name sonnet is probably derived, through the Italian sonno, from the Latin word for sleep, in allusion to its lethargic quality. The best mode of encouraging the efflux of the peccant humor is for the patient to have a cigar in his mouth. The narcotic fumes of tobacco are highly favorable to its ejection. The first step then is the selection of rhymes. Fourteen of these in their proper order should be written perpendicularly on the right hand of a smooth sheet of white paper. When this is done, it is necessary to read them over, up and down, several times, until some general idea of a subject or a title suggests itself. Great care must be taken, in the selection of rhymes, to get as original ones as possible, and such as shall strike the eye. Still greater should be the precaution not to choose such incongruous rhymes as may not easily be welded together or amalgamated into one whole by the mercury of fancy. For instance, it would be well to avoid coupling such words as moon and spoon, breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and stove; hope and soap; all which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously. Here the artist, the man of true science, will discover himself. Shelley affords a good choice of rhymes; chasm and spasm; rift and drift; ravine and savin, are useful conjunctions. If you have a ravine, it will be very easy to stick in a savin, but you must avoid a spavin, or your verse may halt for it. This we call being artistical. Benissimo! then. Having fixed upon your subject, all you have to do is to fill up the lines to match the ends, and this, in one evening’s practice, will become as easy, the same thing in fact, as the filling up of the blank form of an ordinary receipt.

But the most expeditious and surest way of procuring a good Sonnet is the Division of Labor System. This has often been unconsciously practised by modern poets, but it has never been explicitly set forth till now. Every body knows that even in the fabrication of so small a thing as a needle, the process is facilitated by dividing it among a number of hands; as to one the eye, to another the point, to one the grinding, to another the polishing. In the same way, to render a sonnet pointed and sharp, to polish it and insure it against cutting the thread of its argument, the work should be performed by two or more. Every sonnet, in short, ought to be a translation. I do not say a translation from the German or any other jargon, but a translation from English—from one man’s into another man’s English. It is absurd for one workman to do both rhyming and thinking. In this go-ahead age and country, that were a palpable waste of time. Take any ‘matter-ful’ author, cut out a juicy slice of his thought, and make that your material. Trim it, compress it, turn it and twist it upside down and inside out, vary it any way but the author’s own, and you will be likely to effect a speedy and wholesome operation. What a saving of time is here! Who will be silly enough to manufacture his own thinkings into verse when the world is so full of excellent stuff as yet unwrought in the great mine of letters? Let us not burn up our own native forests while we can fetch coals from Newcastle. What a pleasant prospect for readers too! A man may be sure then, that a sonnet shall contain a thought. He will not be gulled into experiments upon decent-looking, respectable dross and plausible inanity. He shall not dig hungrily for an idea, and be filled with volumes of wind. With the fourteenth pang his anxiety shall be over, and he shall drop asleep satisfied; tandem dormitum dimittitur.

Not to anticipate farther our forthcoming book, nor to forestall the critics in any more extracts, we shall lay before the reader two or three samples of work done according to this system. Carlyle has furnished our raw material. His pages are so full of poetry that little time need be expended in selecting a fit piece for working up. See now if these be not sonnets which Bowles might have been proud to claim. Each one is warranted to contain a thought; an hour or so would suffice for the completion of half a dozen such. Observe too, that little deviation is necessary from the original, the words falling naturally into both rhythm and rhyme. We commence with a few translations from Carlyle. The initial specimen is taken from Herr Teufelsdröckh’s remarks on Bonaparte. This is the passage:

‘The man (Napoleon) was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it, and preached through the cannon’s throat this great doctrine: La carrière ouverte aux talens; ‘The Tools to him that can handle them.’ ••• Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom notwithstanding the peaceful Sower will follow, and as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.’

    Sartor Resartus: Book ii., Chap. viii.

SONNET I.—NAPOLEON

Napoleon was a Missionary merely,
Who through the cannon’s throat this truth expressed,
Unconsciously, divinely and sincerely,
The Tools to him that handles ’em the best.
Madly enough, indeed, the man did preach,
Amid much rant, as all Enthusiasts do,
And yet with as articulate a speech
As the strange case, perhaps, allowed him to.
Or call him a Backwoodsman, if you will;
Who, forced to fell unpenetrated woods,
And doomed innumerable wolves to kill,
Got drunk sometimes, and stole his neighbor’s goods;
Whom will the Sower follow ne’ertheless,
And as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.

Or let us try the following description of the Hotel de Ville in the French Revolution:

‘O evening sun of July! how at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar officers; and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel de Ville. Babel-tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles endless in front of an Electoral Committee.’

    French Revolution: Book v., Chap. vii.

SONNET II.—THE HOTEL DE VILLE

O evening sun of most serene July!
How at this hour thy slant refulgence pours
On reapers working in the open sky,
And women spinning at their cottage doors,
On ships far out upon the silent main,
On gay Versailles, where through the light quadrille
Hussars are leading forth a high-rouged train,
And on the hell-porch-like Hotel de Ville.
Not Babel’s tower with all its million tongues,
Save Bedlam too therewith had added been,
To mingle burning brains with roaring lungs,
Could feebly imitate that dreadful din;
One endless forest of distracted steel
Bristling around that mad Hotel de Ville!

Or to return to Professor Teufeldröckh’s vast chaos of ideas. Let us try another passage therefrom:

‘It struck me much as I sat beside the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled through all changes of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of history. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the midday when Cæsar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry; this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, unnamed, unseen.’

    Sartor Resartus: Book II., Chap. iii.

SONNET III.—ETERNITY OF NATURE

One silent noonday, as I sat beside
The gurgling flow of Kuhbach’s little river,
Methought how, even as I saw it glide,
That stream had flowed and gurgled on forever.
Yes, on the day when Joshua passed the flood