Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I

THE REAL OFFICE OF POETRY

"'What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye!' asked I, with a doleful and disappointed visage.

"'Mean – why, if God had meant ye to write about Pacifics, He'd ha put ye there – and because He means ye to write aboot London town, He's put ye there – and gien ye an unco sharp taste o' the ways o't; and I'll gie ye anither. Come along wi' me.'

"And he seized me by the arm, and hardly giving me time to put on my hat, marched me out into the streets, and away through Clare Market to St. Giles's.

"It was a foul, chilly, foggy Saturday night. From the butchers' and greengrocers' shops the gas-lights flared and flickered, wild and ghastly, over haggard groups of slip-shod, dirty women, bargaining for scraps of stale meat, and frost-bitten vegetables, wrangling about short weight and bad quality. Fish-stalls and fruit-stalls lined the edge of the greasy pavement, sending up odors as foul as the language of the sellers and buyers. Blood and sewer-water crawled from under doors and out of spouts, and reeked down the gutters among offal, animal and vegetable, in every stage of putrefaction. Foul vapors rose from cow-sheds and slaughter-houses, and the doorways of undrained alleys, where the inhabitants carried the filth out on their shoes from the back yard into the court, and from the court up into the main street; while above hanging like cliffs over the streets – those narrow, brawling torrents of filth, and poverty, and sin – the houses with their teeming load of life were piled up into the dingy choking night. A ghastly, deafening, sickening sight it was. Go, scented Belgravian! and see what London is! and then go to the library which God has given thee – one often fears in vain – and see what science says this London might be!

"'Ay,' he muttered to himself, as he strode along, 'sing awa; get yoursel' wi' child wi' pretty fancies and gran' words, like the rest of the poets, and gang to hell for it.'

"'To hell, Mr. Mackaye?'

"'Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie – a warse ane than ony fiend's' kitchen, or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits – the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures – and kenning it – and not being able to get oot o' it, for the chains o' vanity and self-indulgence. I've warned ye. Now look there – '

"He stopped suddenly before the entrance of a miserable alley:

"'Look! there's not a soul down that yard, but's either beggar, drunkard, thief, or warse. Write aboot that! Say how ye saw the mouth o' hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry – the pawnbroker's shop o' one side and the gin palace at the other – twa monstrous deevils, eating up men and women, and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open and open, and swallow in anither victim and anither. Write aboot that.'

"'What jaws, Mr. Mackaye!'

"'Thae faulding-doors o' the gin shop, goose. Are na they a mair damnable man-devouring idol than ony red-hot statue o' Moloch, or wicker Gogmagog, wherein thae auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at thae barefooted, barebacked hizzies, with their arms roun' the men's necks, and their mouths full o' vitriol and beastly words! Look at that Irishwoman pouring the gin down the babbie's throat! Look at that raff o' a boy gaun out o' the pawnshop, where he's been pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning, into the ginshop, to buy beer poisoned wi' grains o' paradise, and cocculus indicus, and saut, and a' damnable, maddening, thirst-breeding, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in wi' a shawl on her back and cam out wi'out ane! Drunkards frae the breast! – harlots frae the cradle! – damned before they're born! John Calvin had an inkling o' the truth there, I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his reprobation deevil's doctrines!'

"'Well – but – Mr. Mackaye, I know nothing about these poor creatures.'

"'Then ye ought. What do ye ken aboot the Pacific? Which is maist to your business? – thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' the other side o' the warld, or these – these thousands o' barebacked hizzies that play the harlot o' your ain side – made out o' your ain flesh and blude? You a poet! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If ye'll be a poet at a', ye maun be a cockney poet; and while the cockneys be what they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation and mourning and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin ye want to learn the spirit o' a people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning till night; and gin ye'd learn the matter, just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes open, and ye'll no miss it.'"

One other extract, and we will have done with this original but captivating and convincing volume. Alton speaks prophetically of

THE DANGERS THAT ARE LOOMING

"Ay, respectable gentlemen and ladies, I will confess all to you – you shall have, if you enjoy it, a fresh opportunity for indulging that supreme pleasure which the press daily affords you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous. – Is your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have you yourself, honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not as they came to me, as they come to thousands of the working-men, daily and hourly, 'till their torments do, by length of time, become their elements?' What, are we covetous, too? Yes? And if those who have, like you, still covet more what wonder if those who have nothing, covet something? Profligate too? Well, though that imputation as a generality is utterly calumnious, though your amount of respectable animal enjoyment per annum is a hundred times as great as that of the most self-indulgent artisan, yet, if you had ever felt what it is to want, not only every luxury of the senses, but even bread to eat, you would think more mercifully of the man who makes up by rare excesses, and those only of the limited kinds possible to him, for long intervals of dull privation, and says in his madness, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!' We have our sins, and you have yours. Ours may be the more gross and barbaric, but yours are none the less damnable; perhaps all the more so, for being the sleek, subtle, respectable, religious sins they are. You are frantic enough if our part of the press calls you hard names, but you can not see that your part of the press repays it back to us with interest. We see those insults, and feel them bitterly enough; and do not forget them, alas! soon enough, while they pass unheeded by your delicate eyes as trivial truisms. Horrible, unprincipled, villainous, seditious, frantic, blasphemous, are epithets of course when applied to – to how large a portion of the English people, you will some day discover to your astonishment. When will that day come, and how? In thunder, and storm, and garments rolled in blood? Or like the dew on the mown grass, and the clear shining of the sunlight after April rain?"

BURKE AND THE PAINTER BARRY

Burke delighted in lending a helping hand to genius struggling against adversity; and many who were wasting their powers in obscurity were led by his assistance to the paths of eminence. Barry, the painter, was among those to whom he had shown great kindness; he found pleasure in the society of that eccentric being. A long time had passed without his having seen him, when one day they met accidentally in the street. The greeting was cordial, and Barry invited his friend to dine with him the next day. Burke arrived at the appointed hour, and the door was opened by Dame Ursula, as she was called. She at first denied her master, but when Burke mentioned his name, Barry, who had overheard it, came running down stairs. He was in his usual attire; his thin gray hair was all disheveled; an old and soiled green shade and a pair of mounted spectacles assisted his sight; the color of his linen was rather equivocal, but was evidently not fresh from the bleach-green; his outward garment was a kind of careless roquelaire. He gave Burke a most hearty welcome, and led him into the apartment which served him for kitchen, parlor, studio, and gallery; it was, however, so filled with smoke that its contents remained a profound mystery, and Burke was almost blinded and nearly suffocated. Barry expressed the utmost surprise, and appeared utterly at a loss to account for the state of the atmosphere. Burke, however, without endeavoring to explain the mystery on philosophical principles, at once brought the whole blame of the annoyance home to Barry – as it came out that he had removed the stove from its wonted situation by the chimney-piece, and drawn it into the very middle of the room. He had mounted it on an old dripping-pan, to defend the carpet from the burning ashes; he had in vain called in the assistance of the bellows, no blaze would come – but volumes of smoke were puffed out ever and anon, as if to show that the fire could do something if it pleased. Burke persuaded Barry to reinstate the stove in its own locality, and helped him to replace it; this done and the windows opened, they got rid of the smoke, and the fire soon looked out cheerfully enough on them, as if nothing had happened. Barry invited Burke to the upper rooms to look at his pictures. As he went on from one to the other, he applied the sponge and water with which he was supplied, to wash away the dust which obscured them. Burke was delighted with them, and with Barry's history of each, and his dissertation as he pointed out its particular beauties. He then brought him to look at his bedroom; its walls were hung with unframed pictures, which had also to be freed from the thick covering of dust before they could be admired; these, like the others, were noble specimens of art. In a recess near the fire-place the rough stump-bedstead stood, with its coverlet of coarse rug.

"That is my bed," said the artist; "you see I use no curtains; they are most unwholesome, and I breathe as freely and sleep as soundly as if I lay upon down and snored under velvet. Look there," said he, as he pointed to a broad shelf high above the bed, "that I consider my chef-d'œuvre; I think I have been more than a match for them; I have outdone them at last."

Mr. Burke asked of whom it was he spoke.

"The rats," replied he, "the nefarious rats, who robbed me of every thing in the larder. But now all is safe; I keep my food beyond their reach. I may now defy all the rats in the parish."

Barry had no clock, so depended on the cravings of his stomach to regulate his meals. By this unerring guide, which might have shamed the most correct regulator in a watchmaker's shop, he perceived that it was time for dinner; but forgot that he had invited Burke to partake of it, till reminded by a hint.

"I declare, my dear friend, I had totally forgotten, I beg your pardon – it quite escaped my memory; but if you'll just sit down here and blow the fire, I'll get a nice beef-steak in a minute."

Burke applied all his energies to the bellows, and had a nice clear fire when Barry returned with the steak rolled up in cabbage-leaves, which he drew from his pocket; from the same receptacle he produced a parcel of potatoes; a bottle of port was under each arm, and each hand held a fresh French-roll. A gridiron was placed on the fire, and Burke was deputed to act as cook while Barry performed the part of butler. While he laid the cloth the old woman boiled the potatoes, and at five o'clock, all being duly prepared, the friends sat down to their repast. Burke's first essay in cookery was miraculously successful, for the steak was done to admiration, and of course greatly relished by the cook. As soon as dinner was dispatched the friends chatted away over their two bottles of port till nine o'clock. Burke was often heard to say that this was one of the most amusing and delightful days he had ever spent.

[From Hogg's Instructor.]

THE IRON RING.

A TALE OF GERMAN ROBBERS AND GERMAN STUDENTS

"I am inclined to side with our friend," said the venerable pastor, "and I would rather not see you so skeptical, Justus. I have known, in my own experience, several remarkable instances of presentiments; indeed, on one occasion, I and those who were with me, all save one, greatly profited by the strange prophetic apprehension of one of our party. Would we had listened to him sooner! But it was not so to be."

"Come, tell us the story, dear grandfather," said Justus; "it will doubtless edify our guest; and, as for me, I do not object to be mystified now and then."

"Justus, Justus, lay aside that scoffing mask. You put it on, I know, to look like another Mephistopheles, but you don't succeed."

"Don't I?" returned Justus, with a smile. "Well, grandfather, that ought to be a comfort to you."

"No, you don't, so you may as well give up trying. But come, if you would really like to hear the story" (the fact was, that the good man was anxious to tell it, and feared to lose the opportunity), "I shall be happy to please you. I think, however, we shall be better out of doors. Let us go and take our wine under the great plane-tree. You had as well bring your chair with you, my young friend" (this was addressed to me), "for the bench is somewhat hard. And Trinchen, my girl, put glasses on a tray, and some bottles of wine in a pail, and bring them out to us under the great plane-tree. And you, Justus, my boy, be kind enough to transport thither this big chair of mine, like a dutiful grandson and a stout, as you are."

We were soon established in the pleasant shade. The pastor took an easy posture in his chair, when, after many efforts, Justus had coaxed it into touching the ground with all its four legs at once; I straddled across the seat of mine, and, placing my arms on the back, reposed the bowl of my long pipe on the ground; and Justus, with his cigar in his mouth – the twentieth, or thereby, that day – threw himself down on the turf at a convenient distance from the wine-pail, prepared to replenish our glasses, as need might be. Noble glasses they were, tall and green, with stalks to be grasped, not fingered.

"It is now nearly sixty years ago," began the pastor, when our arrangements were complete, "a long time – a long time, indeed, to bear the staff of one's pilgrimage. I was then in my third year at the university, and was something like what you are now, Justus – a merry, idle, and thoughtless student, but not a very bad boy either."

"Thank you, grandfather," said Justus; "however, that accounts for your being the man you are at your years."

"No, it does not," said the old man, smiling; "but let me tell my story, my boy, without interrupting me – at least, unless you have something better to say than that. As I was saying, I was in my third year, and, of course, I had many acquaintances. I had, however, only two friends. One was a countryman of yours, young gentleman, and his name was Macdonald. The name of the other was Laurenberg."

"Why, that was my grandmother's name!" said Justus.

"Laurenberg was your grandmother's brother," continued the pastor, "and the event I am about to relate to you was the means of my becoming acquainted with her. But has any one ever told you his fate, Justus?"

"No," said Justus, "I never before even heard of him."

"That is not wonderful, my boy; for, since his sister was taken from me, there has been no one but me to remember my poor Laurenberg. But, as I was saying, these two were my only friends. That summer, when the vacation came, we three resolved to make a pedestrian tour together. (Fill our glasses, Justus.) So, after some discussion, we decided on visiting the great Thuringian Forest, and one fine morning off we set. Just as we got beyond the town, Macdonald said, 'My dear brothers, let us return; this expedition will bring us no good.' 'You would almost make one think you were a prophet,' said Laurenberg, with mock gravity. 'And what if I be?' cried the other, quickly. 'Why, then, don't be a prophet of evil – that is to say, unless you can not help it. Come, my dear fellow.' 'I tell you,' interrupted Macdonald, 'that, if we go on, one of us will never see Göttingen again – and Laurenberg, my beloved Laurenberg, it is you who will be that one. You will never return, unless you return now. I tell you this, for I know it.' 'Oh, nonsense,' said the other; 'pray, how do you know it?' It seemed to me that Macdonald slightly shuddered at the question, but he went on as if not heeding it: 'He of us three who first left the house, is destined never to enter it again, and that was the reason why I tried to get out before you. You, Laurenberg, in your folly, ran past me, and it is thus on you that the lot has fallen. Laugh if you will; if you had let me go before you, I would have said nothing; but as it is, I say, laugh if you will, and call me a dreamer, or what you please, only return, my friends, return. Let us go back.' 'Let us go on. Forward!' cried Laurenberg; 'I do not laugh at you, my brother, but I think you are scarcely reasonable; for either you have truly foreseen what is to happen, or you have not. If you have, then what is to happen will happen, and we can not avoid it; if you have not, why, then it will not happen, and that is all. Either you foresee truly my destiny – ' He was going on, but Macdonald interrupted him: 'It is with such reasoning that men lose themselves in this world – and in the next,' he added, after a pause. 'Oho! dear schoolfox,' returned the other, 'we have not undertaken our march to chop logic and wind metaphysics, but, on the contrary, to be merry and enjoy ourselves. So,' and he sung,

'There wander'd three Burschen along by the Rhine;
At the door of a wine-house, they knocked and went in,
Landlady, have you got good beer and wine?'

'Laurenberg, your gayety is oppressive,' interrupted Macdonald; 'why sing that song? You know there is death in it.' 'It is true,' replied Laurenberg, somewhat gravely, 'the poor little daughter of the landlady lies in her coffin. Another stave, then, if you like it better, and so on he went with that stupid song."

'Up, brothers! up! enjoy your life!'

"Stupid!" cried Justus, rising suddenly on his elbow; "stupid, did you say, grandfather?"

"Well, my boy, I think it stupid now, though at your age, perhaps, I thought differently. But there," continued the pastor, "I was sure of it; I never can keep both my pipe and my story going at the same time. Give me a light, Justus. Thank you. Those matches are a great invention. In our time, it was all flint, and steel, and trouble. Now, fill our glasses, and then I shall go on again."

Justus obeyed, and his worthy relative thus proceeded:

"Notwithstanding all his singing, Laurenberg was evidently more impressed by our companion's words than he was willing to own; and, as for me, I was much struck with them, for your countryman, young stranger, was no common man. But all that soon wore off. Even Macdonald seemed to forget his own forebodings. We marched on right cheerfully. That night we stopped at Heiligenstadt, very tired, for it was a long way for lads so little used to walking as we were."

"Did you put up at the Post, grandfather?" asked Justus. "It is a capital inn, and the landlady is both pretty and civil. I staid there when I went from Cassel to Halle."