LETTER XI.
Your very kind letter of the 1st inst., conveying to
me the unhoped for, but welcome intelligence, that you
have decided to enlist me among your corps of contributors,
was duly received. I know not how, adequately, to
express to you, the deep gratitude of my heart, for this
decision; for I feel that it was given rather through your
kind generosity, than through any merit which my unfledged
pen could lay claim to. I shall, therefore, do
my best to show you how deeply I appreciate your goodness,
and resolve that my “Needles” shall be always
sharp withal, that you shall never have cause to regret
your decision in my favor.
My simple goose quill already begins to feel its dignity,
held in an authoress's fingers! It bristles its snowy mane
and curves its polished neek with the pride of an Arabian
courser. It realizes its importance. It feels that it is
possible that one day it may be knocked off at an auction
of “rare curiosities,” for not less than ten golden
eagles, as authors' stump pens have been before to-day.
My inkstand, which is a lion couchant, with the ink in
his ears, seems to raise his majestic head with unwonted
dignity as he yields it to the thirsty pen. The very
paper is eloquent in its spotless robes, and seems to say:
“Remember thou art an authoress, and be careful what
you trace upon me, for thy words may be immortal!”
Oh, the sweet, trembling, timid, happy feeling of authorship!
How the heart bounds at the sight of our
first
thoughts, which we know (yet hardly realize it) have
been made visible to the eyes of other in type! We
think little of seeing our own ideas
written; but
printed,
they create sensations indescribable, half delight, half
awe, a mingled state of bliss and fear, that none who
have not been “in print,” can ever experience.
I suppose the young merchant, who, for the first time,
sees his name heading his showy advertisement in the
morning paper, or gazes from the opposite side of the
way upon it painted upon his sign in gold letters, upon a
blue ground, experiences pleasure, novel and strange.
But this emotion is not to be compared with that of the
author, who, for the first time, sees the copy of the deep,
hitherto unspoken, unconfided thoughts of his soul legible
in type to every eye! His thoughts thus made public,
are more than a mere painted name, they are a part of
himself, a ray of the outgoings of his spirit! It is like
beholding himself with an introverted mirror! Therefore,
the poet loves his verses, after has subsided his first awe
and surprise at beholding them in print, (which a little
time before he had found dwelling in the bottom of his
soul's deep being,) loves them as a man, with all his faults,
loves himself!
Who then will laugh at the dullest rhymer for being
enamored with his own verses? We might as well laugh
at him for loving himself. He thinks his verses as good
as his talk, and what man was ever persuaded that he
did not talk well; or else all bad talkers would be forever
silent! When we can convince a poor talker that
he
is a poor talker, then will appear the Eighth wonder,
viz: a poor poet convinced that he is a poor poet. His
poetry, like his conversation, is himself, and himself
like China on the “Celestial” map, is the centre of the
universe.
Now from what I have said, good Mr. —, you will
be fairly persuaded that, write I ever so stupidly, it will
be useless in you or anybody else, to attempt to impress
upon my mind a healthy sense of stupidity. This is,
therefore, throwing down the gauntlet to you and the
critics, (if such a little bird as I be worthy of their aim,)
not to make the attempt to enlighten my intellectual
twilight. I have to thank some friendly pen for a letter
addressed to me in your columns; although it appears to
come from a juvenile author, it is, nevertheless, worthy
of my attentive recognition, as an evidence that some
warm heart seeks to express its approving sense of my
brief literary attempts. I have also seen a pretty poem,
addressed to me, which, albeit, something bold and
school-boyish in its audacity, yet it is frank and hearty in
its tone, and the writer merits my thanks for his kind
wishes. Speaking of poetry, reminds me how little true
poetry there is written now-a-days. Some one has said
that there are fifteen hundred papers printed in the
Union; in most of these, weekly, appear one or more pieces
of original poetry, say twelve hundred perpetrations
rhythmical, per week, which multiplied by 52, the number
of weeks in a year, would give the amazing number
of 60,000 pieces of original poetry, printed in our newspaper
columns in a year! Of these not more than sixty
annually are worth preserving or republishing, that is,
one in a thousand! What a despairing computation!
I am half afraid that, by daring to have made it, I shall
be the innocent cause of driving some hundreds of these
ambitious poets to running themselves through the heart
with their steel pens, or taking ink inwardly.
I have been recently looking over the “Male and Female
Poets of America,” and I cannot lay my finger on
a score of poems of which I could unhesitatingly say,
“That is imperishable!” Most of the poems of our book
poets, like the editorials of editors, have fulfilled their
destiny when once in print. Longfellow has written two
pieces, his Psalm of Life, and the noble verses in which
the Union is finely metaphored as a builded ship of oak
and iron, which will weather all time. Bryant's Thanatopsis,
(if he will revise and strengthen by condensing it
here and there,) will never cease to be admired so long
as men are born to die. Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, it
seems to me, holds in suspension the elements of undying
life. Simms in the South is a noble poet. One or
more songs of the lyric poet, Morris, and two or three
of Willis's sacred pieces, are imperishable so long as
nature and veneration remain the same as they now are
in the human breast. Besides these, I can find none
that give promise of surviving the ages to come! We
have written a great deal for the nineteenth century,
but scarcely any thing for the twenty-fifth! What is
literary immortality? Do our poets know what it means,
that each expects it? It is the thoughts of one or two
individual men surviving the oblivion of 800,000,000
of men, their contemporaries. For of every generation
of 800,000,000 of men in all ages past, but two or three
have left their names or works to us! It is but a twenty
minutes' task to enumerate all the immortal writers of
all nations, from Moses to Chaucer. They are hardly
as many for 3000 years as appear in the monthly published
list of letters in a city newspaper! They are
one
living man to a hundred millions dead! Who, then,
shall dare to prophesy for his productions, or for his
name, immortality? Who shall be so vain as to take
offence when it is questioned if after the 800,000,000
now on earth have been two thousand years dead, he
himself, or aught that he has written, though he be
embalmed in Griswold's “Doomsday Book,” shall be
remembered! Immortality! Perpetuity of memory in
the hearts of the myriads of the mighty future! For
whose single brow, now on earth, shall the men of the
year 6000 wreath the laureled crown? Whose name,
of those millions of men who walk the city streets to-day,
shall the youths and maidens to be born twelve
hundred years hence, have familiarly on their lips, as
we have the names of Homer, of Virgil, of Shakespeare,
of Milton, of David? Immortality! How few understand
thy meaning when they speak of thee! You will
see, dear Mr. —, that I have very little hopes of being
immortalized through my pen! I confess the chances
are against me, 800,000,000 to 1. You have, therefore,
the unique satisfaction of having a contributor who never
expects to be quoted by the
literati of the year 6000,
A. M. There is an immortality, however, which all may
gain—which springs from the heart, not from the intellect—which
looks to the approbation of angels, and not
of men—to a world that shall exist when the last year
of the last century of this earth shall have closed forever
upon all human hopes, compared with which immortality,
that of this world is but an echo.
The colonel has just laid on my table Ticknor's Spanish
Literature, and Emerson's “Nature.” I shall,
therefore, feast for the next three days. If I find any
thing that strikes me as valuable in either of these
books, you shall have the benefit of my reading.
I have heard rifles or shot-guns cracking all the morning
in the forest over by the tarn, and therefore judge
the game to be abundant. To-morrow I am going deer-hunting!
I don't mean to be so cruel as to kill (for I
can shoot, Mr. —, and hit too!) the pretty white-breasted
does, or the majestic stag, with his proud, antlered
head tossing in the air! Yet, I am all curiosity
to witness a hunt.
