University of Virginia Library

1. CHARCOAL SKETCHES;
OR,
SCENES IN A METROPOLIS.

OLYMPUS PUMP;
OR, THE POETIC TEMPERAMENT.

It is said that poetry is on the decline, and that as man
surrounds himself with artificial comforts, and devotes
his energies to purposes of practical utility, the sphere of
imagination becomes circumscribed, and the worship of
the Muses is neglected. We are somewhat disposed to
assent to this conclusion; the more from having remarked
the fact that the true poetic temperament is not so frequently
met with as it was a few years since, and that
the outward marks of genius daily become more rare.
Where the indications no longer exist, or where they
gradually disappear, it is but fair to conclude that the
thing itself is perishing. There are, it is true, many delightful
versifiers at the present moment, but we fear that
though they display partial evidences of inspiration upon
paper, the scintillations are deceptive. Their conduct
seldom exhibits sufficient proof that they are touched
with the celestial fire, to justify the public in regarding
them as the genuine article. Judging from the rules
formerly considered absolute upon this point, it is altogether
preposterous for your happy, well-behaved, well-dressed,
smoothly-shaved gentleman, who pays his debts,

and submits quietly to the laws framed for the government
of the uninspired part of society, to arrogate to
himself a place in the first rank of the sons of genius,
whatever may be his merits with the gray goose quill.
There is something defective about him. The divine
afflatus has been denied, and though he may flap his
wings, and soar as high as the house-tops, no one can
think him capable of cleaving the clouds, and of playing
hide and seek among the stars. Even if he were to do
so, the spectator would either believe that his eyes deceived
him, or that the successful flight was accidental,
and owing rather to a temporary density of the atmosphere
than to a strength of pinion.

The true poetic temperament of the old school is a gift
as fatal, as that of being able to sing a good song is to a
youth with whom the exercise of the vocal organ is not
a profession. It was—and to a certain extent is—an
axiom, that an analogy almost perfect exists between the
poet and the dolphin. To exhibit their beautiful hues they
must both be on the broad road to destruction. We are
fully aware that it has been supposed by sceptical spirits
that there is some confusion of cause and effect in arriving
at this conclusion,—that there is no sufficient reason
that genius should be a bad citizen. The existence of
an irresistible impulse to break the shackles of conventionalism
has been doubted by the heterodox. They declare
that a disposition to do so is felt by most men, and
that aberrations are indulged in, partly from a principle
of imitation, because certain shining lights have thought
proper to render themselves as conspicuous for their eccentricities
as for their genius, and chiefly from a belief
that society expects such wanderings, and regards them
with lenity. But analysis is not our forte, even if we
were disposed to cavil at such convenient things as

lumping generalities. Your inquiring philosophers are
troublesome fellows, and while we content ourselves
with the bare fact, let them seek rerum cognoscere
causas.

It is, however, a satisfaction to know that the full-blooded
merino is not yet quite extinct. Olympus Pump
is the personification of the temperament of which we
speak. Had there been a little less of the divine essence
of poesy mingled with the clay of which he is composed,
it would have been better for him. The crockery of his
moral constitution would have been the more adapted to
the household uses of this kitchen world. But Pump
delights in being the pure porcelain, and would scorn the
admixture of that base alloy, which, while it might render
him more useful, would diminish his ornamental qualities.
He proudly feels that he was intended to be a
mantel embellishment to bear bouquets, not a mere
utensil for the scullery; and that he is not now fulfilling
his destiny, arises solely from the envy and uncharitableness
of those gross and malignant spirits with which the
world abounds. Occupied continually in his mental
laboratory, fabricating articles which he finds unsaleable,
and sometimes stimulating his faculties with draughts
of Scheidam, the “true Hippocrene,” he slips from
station to station, like a child tumbling down stairs; and
now, having arrived at the lowest round of fortune's ladder,
he believes it was envy that tugged at his coat tails,
and caused his descent, and that the human race are a
vast band of conspirators. There are no Mæcenases in
these modern times to help those who will not help themselves;
no, not even a Capel Lofft, to cheer the Pumps
of the nineteenth century. No kindly arm toils at the
handle: and if he flows, each Pump must pump for
himself. Such, at least, is the conclusion at which Olympus

has arrived, and he has melancholy reasons for believing
that in his instance he is correct. Thus, while
his mind is clothing its varied fancies in rich attire, and
his exulting spirit is gambolling and luxuriating in the
clover and timothy of imagination's wide domain, or
drinking fairy Champagne and eating canvass-back ducks
in air-drawn palaces, his outward man is too frequently
enduring the sad reverse of these unreal delights. He
may often be seen, when the weather is cold, leaning his
back against a post on the sunny side of the street; his
hands, for lack of coin, filling his roomy pockets; his
curious toes peeping out at crannies to see the world;
an indulgence extended to them by few but the Pump
family; and his elbows and knees following the example
of his lower extremities. Distress, deep thought, or
some other potent cause has transplanted the roses from
the garden of his cheek to that no longer sterile promontory
his nose, while his chin shows just such a stubble
as would be invaluable for the polishing brush of a boot-black.

But luckily the poetic temperament has its compensations.
When not too much depressed, Olympus Pump has
a world of his own within his cranium; a world which
should be a model for that without,—a world in which
there is nothing to do, and every thing to get for the asking.
If in his periods of intellectual abstraction, the
external atmosphere should nip his frame, the high price
of coal affects him not. In the palace of the mind, fuel
costs nothing, and he can there toast himself brown free
of expense. Does he desire a tea-party?—the guests
are in his noddle at his call, willing to stay, or ready to
depart, at his command, without “standing on the order
of their going;” and the imagined tables groan with
viands which wealth might exhaust itself to procure.

Does he require sweet music?—the poetic fancy can
perform an opera, or manufacture hosts of Frank Johnsons
in the twinkling of an eye; and the celestial creatures,
who waltz and galope in the spacious salons of his
brain-pan, are endowed with loveliness which reality
can never parallel.

With such advantages, Pump, much as he grumbles,
would not exchange the coruscations of his genius, which
flicker and flare like the aurora borealis, for a “whole
wilderness” of comfort, if it were necessary that he should
entertain dull, plodding thoughts, and make himself
“generally useful.” Can he not, while he warms his
fingers at the fire of imagination, darm his stockings and
patch his clothes with the needle of his wit; wash his
linen and his countenance in the waters of Helicon; and,
sitting on the peak of Parnassus, devour imaginary fried
oysters with Apollo and the Muses?

But either “wool gathering” is not very profitable, or
else the envy of which Pump complains is stronger
than ever; for not long since, after much poetic idleness,
and a protracted frolic, he was seen, in the witching time
of night, sitting on a stall in the new market house, for
the very sufficient reason that he did not exactly know
where else lodging proportioned to the state of his fiscal
department could be found. He spoke:

“How blue! how darkly, deeply, beautifully blue!—
not me myself, but the expanse of ether. The stars
wink through the curtain of the air, like a fond mother
to her drowsy child, as much as to say hush-a-by-baby
to a wearied world. In the moon's mild rays even the
crags of care like sweet rock-candy shine. Night is a
Carthagenian Hannibal to sorrow, melting its Alpine
steeps, whilst buried hope pops up revived and cracks
its rosy shins. Day may serve to light sordid man to

his labours; it may be serviceable to let calabashes and
squashes see how to grow; but the poetic soul sparkles
beneath the stars. Genius never feels its oats until
after sunset; twilight applies the spanner to the fireplug
of fancy to give its bubbling fountains way; and mid-night
lifts the sluices for the cataracts of the heart, and
cries, `Pass on the water!' Yes, and economically considered,
night is this world's Spanish cloak; for no matter
how dilapidated or festooned one's apparel may be,
the loops and windows cannot be discovered, and we
look as elegant and as beautiful as get out. Ah!” continued
Pump, as he gracefully reclined upon the stall,
“it's really astonishing how rich I am in the idea line
to-night. But it's no use. I've got no pencil—not even
a piece of chalk to write 'em on my hat for my next
poem. It's a great pity ideas are so much of the soap-bubble
order, that you can't tie 'em up in a pocket handkerchief,
like a half peck of potatoes, or string 'em on a
stick like catfish. I often have the most beautiful notions
scampering through my head with the grace, but alas!
the swiftness too, of kittens—especially just before I get
asleep—but they're all lost for the want of a trap; an
intellectual figgery four. I wish we could find out the
way of sprinkling salt on their tails, and make 'em wait
till we want to use 'em. Why can't some of the meaner
souls invent an idea catcher for the use of genius? I'm
sure they'd find it profitable, for I wouldn't mind owing
a man twenty dollars for one myself. Oh, for an idea
catcher!”

Owen Glendower failed in calling up spirits, but the
eloquence of Pump was more efficacious. In the heavy
shadow of a neighbouring pile of goods a dark mass appeared
to detach itself, as if a portion of the gloom had
suddenly become animated. It stepped forth in the

likeness of a man, mysteriously wrapped up, whose eyes
glared fiercely, and with a sinister aspect, as he advanced
towards the poet. Pump stared in silence—he felt like
an idea, and as if the catcher were close at hand, ready to
pounce upon it. “Catching the idea” for once seemed a
disagreeable operation. The parties confronted each other
for a time without saying a word. A cloud hurrying
across the moon lent additional terror to the scene, and
the unknown, to Pump's astonished vision, appeared to
swell to a supernatural size. The stranger, at last,
waved his arm, hemmed thrice, and in the deep, decisive
tones of one used to command, said:

“It's not a new case—it's been decided frequent.
It's clearly agin the ordination made and provided, and
it's likewise agin the act”—

“Ah me! what act?” ejaculated the astonished
Pump.

“To fetch yourself to anchor on the stalls. It isn't
what the law considers pooty behaviour, and no gemman
would be cotched at it. To put the case, now,
would it be genteel for a man to set on the table at
dinner-time? Loafing on the stalls is jist as bad as
rolling among the dishes.”

“Oh, is that all? I'm immersed in poetic conceptions;
I'm holding sweet communion with my own desolate
affections. Leave me, leave me to the luxuriance of
imagination; suffer me, as it were, to stray through the
glittering realms of fancy.”

“What! on a mutton butcher's shambles? Bless you,
I can't think of it for a moment. My notions is rigid,
and if I was to find my own daddy here, I'd rouse him
out. You must tortle off, as fast as you kin. If your
tongue wasn't so thick, I'd say you must mosey; but
moseying is only to be done when a gemman's half shot;

when they're gone cases, we don't expect 'em to do
more nor tortle.”

“Excuse me—I don't see that it makes much difference
to you whether I am qualified to mosey, or am
only capable of the more dignified method of locomotion,
which you call to tortle. But don't disturb me. The
moon has resuscitated my fancy, and I feel as if I would
shortly compose an ode to Nox and Erebus.”

“Compose what's owed to Messrs. Nox and Erebus!
Yes, I thought you were one of that sort what makes
compositions when they owe any thing. Precious little
Nox and Erebus will get out of you. But come, hop
the twig!” So saying, the relentless guardian of the
night seized the hapless Pump by the collar, and began to
remove him.

“Now, don't—don't be gross and muscular. I'm an
oppressed man, with no friend but my coat, and both
my coat and myself are remarkable for fragility of constitution.
We are free souls, vibrating on the breath of
the circumambient atmosphere, and by long companionship,
our sympathies are so perfect, that if you pull hard
you'll produce a pair of catastrophes; while you tear the
one, you'll discombobberate the nerves of the other.”

“Well, I'm be blamed!” said the watch, recoiling,
“did you ever hear the likes of that? Why, aunty, ain't
you a noncompusser?”

“I'm a poet, and it's my fate not to be understood
either by the world in general, or by Charleys in particular.
The one knocks us down, and the others
take us up. Between the two, we are knocked about
like a ball, until we become unravelled, and perish.”

“I don't want to play shinney with you, no how—
why don't you go home?”

“The bottle is empty; the bill unpaid; landlords are

vulgar realities—mere matters of fact—and very apt to
vituperate.”

“Well, it's easy enough to work, get money, fill the
bottle, and pay the gemman what you owes him.”

“I tell you again you can't understand the poetic soul.
It cannot endure the scorn and contumelies of the earthly.
It cannot submit to toil under a taskmaster, and when
weaving silver tissues of romance, be told to jump about
spry and 'tend the shop. Nor, when it meets congenial
spirits, can it leave the festive board, because the door is
to be locked at ten o'clock, and there isn't any dead latch
to it. The delicate excesses into which it leads us, to
repair the exhaustion of hard thought, compel us to
sojourn long in bed, and even that is registered by fip-and-levy
boobies as a sin. At the present moment, I am
falling a victim to these manifold oppressions of the unintellectual.”

“Under the circumstances, then, what do you say to
being tuck up?”

“Is it optional?”

“I don't know; but it's fineable, and that's as good.”

“Then I decline the honour.”

“No, you don't. I only axed out of manners. You
must rise up, William Riley, and come along with me,
as the song says.”

“I suppose I must, whether I like the figure or not.
Alack, and alas for the poetic temperament! Must the
æolian harp of genius be so rudely swept by a Charley—
must that harp, as I may say, play mere banjo jigs, when
it should only respond in Lydian measures to the southern
breezes of palpitating imagination? To what base
uses”—

“Hurrah! Keep a toddling—pull foot and away!”

Olympus obeyed; for who can control his fate?