The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1864

To show how readily we associate feelings with different orders of sound, let us suppose we are passing the night somewhere, where a stranger, utterly unknown to us, occupies a room from which we can hear the sound of his footsteps. Suppose that through the tranquil hours of the night we hear his measured tread falling in equally accented and monotonous spondees, it is certain that a quick imagination will at once associate this deliberate tread with the state of mind in the unknown from which it will believe it to proceed, and will immediately suggest that the stranger is maturing some great design of heavy import to his future peace.

Should the character of the spondaic tread suddenly change, should the footsteps become rapid, eager, and broken, we look upon the term of meditation and doubt as over, the resolve as definitely fixed, and the unknown as restlessly longing for the hour of its fulfilment.

When we hear steps resembling dactyls, anapaests, and choriambs thrown hurriedly together, broken by irregular pauses, we begin to build a whole romance on the steps of the stranger; we infer from them moments of grave deliberation; the languor consequent upon overwrought thought; renewed effort; resolve; alternations of passion; hope struggling with despair; until all at last seems merged in impatient longing for the hour of anticipated victory.

Nor has the imagination been alone in its strange workings; it has whispered, as it always does, its secrets to the heart, and succeeded in arousing its ever-ready affections, so that we cannot help feeling a degree of interest in the unknown, whose emotions we have followed through the night, reading their history in his alternating footsteps: for sounds impress themselves immediately upon the feelings, exciting, not abstract or antagonistic thought, but uniting humanity in concrete feeling. (See vol. i.)

As the imagination necessarily associates different feelings with different orders of Rhythm, it is the task of the Poet to select those in the closest conformity with the emotions he is struggling to excite. It is positively certain that we not only naturally and intuitively associate distinctive feelings with different orders of rhythmical sounds, but that varied emotions are awakened by them. Some rhythms inspire calmness, some sublime and stately courage, some energy and aggressive force, some stir the spirit to the most daring deeds, some, as in our maddening Tarantulas, produce a restless excitement through the whole nervous system, some excite mere joyousness, some whisper love through every fibre of the heart, and some lead us in their holy calm and unbroken order to the throne of God. Why is this? We need not look in the region of the understanding for the philosophy of that which is to be found only in the living tide of basic emotions. The pleasure we receive from Rhythm is a feeling. Alternate accentuation and non-accentuation are facts in the living organism of the universe; this may be expressed, not explained. There is an order in the living succession of musical sounds or poetic emotions, which order is expressed by the words 'equality and proportion.' These things are. What more can be said? Do comparisons help us? the waves in the eternal ocean of vitality—the shuttle strokes of the ever-moving loom of creation! Let us take it as it is, and rejoice in it. We cannot tell you why we live—let us be glad that our life is music through every heart-throb!

Rhythm is a species of natural but inarticulate language, in which the thought is never disengaged from the feeling; in language its aim should be to awaken the feeling properly attached to the thought it modulates; it should be the tune of the thought of the Poet. To write a love song in alexandrines, an idyl in hexameters, would be to incarnate the shy spirit of a girl in the brawny frame of a Hercules, to incase the loving soul of a Juliet in a gauntleted Minerva. Genius and deep sympathy with human nature can alone guide the Poet aright in this delicate and difficult path; it lies too near the core of our unconscious being to be susceptible of the trim regularity of rule—he must trust his own intuitions while he studies with care what has already been successfully done by our best poets. We may however remark in passing that if the rhythm be abruptly broken without a corresponding break in the flow of thought or feeling, the reader will be confused, because the outward form has fallen into contradiction with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the intellect alone will never touch the heart. Rhythm may proceed with regularity, yet that regularity be so relieved from monotony and so modified in its actual effects, that however regular may be the structure of parts, what is composed of them may be infinitely various. Milton's exquisite poem, 'Comus,' is an example of perfect rhythm with ceaseless intricacy and great variety. It would indeed be a fatal mistake to suppose that proportion cannot be susceptible of great variety, since the whole meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and proportional correspondence of variable properties.

The appreciation of rhythm is universal, pertaining to no region, race, nor era, in especial. Even those who have never thought about it, feel order to be the law of life and happiness, and in the marking of the proportioned flow of time and the regular accentuation of its determinate portions find a perpetual source of healthful pleasure.

If we will but think of it, we will be astonished how many ideas already analyzed we may find exhibited through rhythm. We may have: similarity, variety, identity, repetition, adaptation, symmetry, proportion, fitness, melody, harmony, order, and unity; in addition to the varied feelings of which it becomes the symbolic utterance. The Greeks placed rhythms in the hands of a god, thus testifying to their knowledge of their range and power.

Wordsworth asserts that

'More pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical compositions than in prose.'

The reason of this seems to be that the bright beams forever raying from the Divine Sun of unity and order, shine through the measured beat of the rhythm, and are always felt as life and peace, even when their golden light is broken by the wild and drifting clouds of human woe, or seen athwart the surging and blinding mists of mortal anguish.

Rhythm lurks in the inmost heart of language, accenting our words that their enunciation may be clear and distinct; lengthening and shortening the time of our syllables that they may be expressive, emotional, and musical. Let the orator as well as the poet study its capabilities; it has more power over the sympathies of the masses than the most labored thought.

Although through the quantitive arrangement and determinate accentuation of syllabic sound, rhythm may be exquisitely manifested through language, yet in music alone does it attain its full power and wonderful complexity. For the tones are not thoughts, but feelings, and yield themselves implicitly to the loving hand which would reunite them and form them into higher unities. These passionate tones, always seeking for and surging into each other, are plastic pearls on the string of rhythm, whose proportions may be indefinitely varied at the will of the fond hand which would wreathe them into strands of symmetrical beauty; while words, the vehicles of antagonistic thought, frequently refuse to conform to the requisitions of feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of their known and fixed value. Like irregular beads of uncut coral, they protrude their individualities in jagged spikes and unsightly thorns, breaking often the unity of the whole, and painfully wounding the sense of order.

The true poet overcomes these difficulties. When, in the hands of a master, they are forced to bend under the onward and impetuous sweep of the passionate rhythm, compelled to sing the tune of the overpowering emotions—the chords of the spirit quiver in response. The heart recognizes the organic law of its own life: the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising again in ever-renewed exertion, to sink again in ever-new repose; feeling seems clothing itself with living form, while the divine attribute, Order, marks for the ear, as it links in mystic Unity, the flying footsteps of that forever invisible element by which all mortal being is conditioned and limited: Time!

'There is no architect
Can build as the Muse can;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan.

'She lays her beams in music,
In music every one,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun.

'That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But for the love of happy souls
Outlive the newest stars.'

    Emerson.

'OUR ARTICLE.'

'John,' said I to my husband, as he came home from business, and settled into an armchair for half an hour's rest before dinner, 'I think of writing an article for The Continental Monthly.'

'Humph!' said my husband.

Now 'humph' bears different interpretations; it may argue assent, indifference, disgust, disapprobation—in all cases it is aggressive; but this 'humph' seemed to be a combination of at least three of the above-mentioned frames of mind.

Natural indignation was about taking full possession of me, but reflection stepped in, and I preserved a discreet silence. The truth is, no man should be assailed by a new idea before he has dined, and I, having had three years' opportunity of studying man nature, met my deserts when the above answer was given. So I still looked amiable, and behaved very prettily till dinner was over, and then John, having subsided into dressing gown, slippers, easy chair, and good nature, I remarked again:

'John, I think of writing an article for The Continental Monthly.'

'How shall you begin it?' said he.

'Well, I haven't exactly settled on a beginning yet, but—'

'Exactly! I supposed so!' remarked this barbarian.

Unfortunately, he knew my weak point, for hadn't he been allowed to see a desk full of magnificent middles, only wanting a beginning and an end, and a publisher, and some readers, to place me in the front ranks of our modern essayists, side by side with 'Spare Hours,' and the 'Country Parson,' and 'Gail Hamilton?'

The fact is, I have always been brimming over with brilliant ideas on all sorts of subjects, which never would arrange themselves or be arranged under any given head, but presented a series of remarkable literary fragments, jotted down on stray bits of paper, in old account books and diaries, and even, on one or two occasions, when seized by a sudden inspiration, on a smooth stone, taken from the brook, a fair sheet of birch bark, and the front of a pew in a white-painted country church. Having been subject to these inspirational attacks for many years, I had decided to take them in hand, and, if they must come, derive some benefit from them. An idea suggested itself. Claude Lorraine, it is said, never put the figures in his landscapes, but left that work for some brother artist. Now I could bring together material for an article; the inspiration, the picturing should be mine, but John should put in the figures. In other words, he should polish it, write the introduction and the finis, and send it out to the public, as the work of 'my wife and I.'

Then a question occurred: how should we divide the honors, supposing such an article should really find its way into print? Would there not be material for a standard quarrel in the fact that neither could claim sole proprietorship? What would be John's sensation, should any one say to him: 'Mr. –, I have just been reading your wife's last article; capital thing!' and, vice versa, imagine the same thing said of me. Could I preserve amiability under such circumstances, and would not the result be, a divorce in a year, and a furious lawsuit as to the ownership of the copyright? John certainly is magnanimous, I thought, but no one cares for divided honors, and there is that middle-aged relation of his, with a figure like a vinegar cruet, and a voice as acid as its contents, who never comes here for a day without doing her best to set us by the ears, and who, in the beginning of our married life, when we did not understand each other quite so well as now, sometimes succeeded, to her intense satisfaction.

How she would go about among all the friends and relations, pulling the poor articles to pieces, giving all the fine bits to John and the rubbish to me, and hinting generally that my pretensions to authorship were all very well, but that every one knew John did the work and I looked out for the credit.

Here I paused. I had been successfully engaged in the pursuit of trouble, and had conjured up so irritating a picture, that actually a small tear had left its source, and was running over the bridge of my nose!

'John,' I said, 'notwithstanding that I never did know how to begin anything in an effective way, I am still determined to write, and you must help me.'

Then I opened my heart to him, and told him my plan, and the imagined tribulation it had given me in the last ten minutes.

'There are too many writers already, Helen,' he said; 'every man who cannot see his way clear through life—every woman who fancies herself misunderstood and unappreciated, worries out a book or poem or a set of essays, to picture their individual wrongs and sufferings, and bores every publisher of every magazine and paper of which they have ever heard, till he is tormented into printing, or dies of manuscript on the brain. I tell you, Helen, we do our share in aggravating the people we meet daily, without tormenting an innocent man, 'who never did us any harm;' and I for one, don't want an extra sin on my conscience. Moreover, I am afraid it would spoil you, should you happen to succeed. Have you forgotten your old friend Angelina Hobbs? One article ruined her for life. Until that poem got into print and was favorably noticed, she was as sensible as ordinary girls, and never imagined herself a genius. Since then, there is not an 'ism' in America that she has not taken up and run into the ground; I have met her in every stage, from the coat and pantaloons of the Bloomer ten years ago to the hoopless old maid I saw yesterday going into Dodworth's Hall with the last spiritual paper and a spirit photograph in her hand. Not a literary man or woman do I know, who has not some crotchet in his or her brain, and who does not in some way violate the harmonies of life at least once an hour. Be content as you are: be satisfied to live without seeing yourself in The Continental Monthly, or any other monthly under the sun!'

'John,' I said, 'I am surprised, I am astonished at the view you take of the case. I don't desire that publishers should be tormented into their graves; and if they are all as fat and rosy as the two we met the other day, I think you can dismiss all fears on that score. Moreover, I believe the world to be better for every book that is written, however insignificant it may be. The days of the corsairs and giaours, romantic robbers, and devout murderers, are over: our young ladies and our servant girls see no fascination in the pages of 'Fatherless Fanny,' 'The Foundling,' or 'The Mysteries of Slabtown.' Arthur's stories and ten thousand others of the same class have taken their place, and commonplace as they may often be, have brought a healthier influence into action. No book written with an honest heart is lost; no poem or essay, however poor, fails to reach some mark. The printed page that to you or me looks so barren and poor, may carry to some soul a message of healing; may to some eyes have the light of heaven about it. And to how many aimless lives, writing has given a purpose which otherwise never might have entered it! John, I believe in writing, and this baby shall be taught to put his ideas into shape as soon as he is taught anything! I never wish him to settle down in the belief that he is a genius and can live on the fact; but he shall write if he can, and publish too, if any one will do it for him. If not, we will have a private printing press of our own, and get up an original library for our descendants.'

'A genuine woman's answer,' said John; 'only one point in it touching upon my argument.' Here the baby opened his blue eyes wide. 'There!' said John; 'just for the present your life has a purpose, and we can dispense with writing, at least till that fellow is asleep again. When you have disposed of him, we will find out how many aims it is necessary for one woman to have, and what arrangement of them it is best to make.'

The baby stayed awake obstinately, but I was reconciled to the fact, for our discussion might have become hot, and the writing ended for that evening quite as effectually as the baby had done it.

Night came again, and this time John opened the subject, by placing before me a large package of foolscap, and a new gold pen.

'I have brought some paper for you to spoil, Helen,' he said, 'for I foresaw how it would end. Do your best, and I will do mine in the matter of beginnings. I cannot write easily, you know, but I can suggest and dictate, when you wish it; and you have been my amanuensis for a year and more, so it will all seem very natural.'

He looked down, as he spoke, at the scarred right hand and its missing fingers, carried away eighteen months before by a rebel bullet, and a little shade passed over his face.

'No, John,' I said, 'don't look there now; look at my two hands waiting to do the work of that, and tell me if two are not better than one. We will write an article which shall astonish the critics, and bring letters from all the magazines, begging us to become special contributors at once; and we will not quarrel as to who shall have the glory, but make it a joint matter. And now I am ready to begin, and propose to speak upon a subject which I wonder greatly no one has taken up in detail before. Your words last evening brought out some dormant ideas. 'We do our share in aggravating the people we meet daily,' you said, and I have been reflecting upon the matter ever since, till now I am prepared to give my opinions to the world.'

So saying, I arranged the table properly, took out some sheets of the smooth, white paper, filled my pen, and waited for the dawning of an idea. To which it came first, I shall not tell you. The results are before you: which part is John's, which mine, you will never learn from us. It will be of no avail for you to write to the editors, for they don't know either, and will not be told. It will be a useful exercise for you to dissect the article, and set apart the masculine from the feminine portions. The critics will for once be quite at a loss how to abuse it, probably. I foresee a general distraction in the minds of our readers, and already hear ourselves classed as among one of the trials which I select as the title of 'Our Article.'

SOME OF THE AGGRAVATIONS OF LIVING

Two thirds of life in the aggregate are made up of aggravations. They begin with our beginning, and only cease with our ending; perhaps, if good Calvinists speak the truth, not even then, for, according to their belief, the souls in torment look always upon the blessed in heaven, and this surely is the most horrible species of aggravation ever devised by man or fiend.

From the time when the air first fills the lungs and the infant screams at the new sensation, to the day when fingers press down the resisting lids and straighten the stiffening limbs, we are forced to meet and to bear all manner of aggravations in nine tenths of our daily life.