Poems

RECENT LITERATURE.

By BRET HARTE. Boston : James R. Osgood and Company, late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.

OF all the immortals, Popularity is the most capricious, and of all the tastes for which there is no accounting hers is the most unaccountable. Reckless of the deliberations of criticism, which, if she were wise, she would wait for and scrupulously heed, she seizes upon a certain poem, whose movement and tinkle please her, and makes it the universal favorite. This choice is so often wholly independent of merit, that Popularity is most mystifying when she devotes to favor something really good, and the reflecting mind straightway suspects her of not knowing that it is good. Considering whom and what she has taken to her heart heretofore, the reflecting mind doubts if she knows that in Mr. Bret Harte she has bestowed her smiles upon a real poet, that she has turned her beautiful eyes upon one worthy of her nobler sister, Fame. So the reflecting mind, darkling in its own conceit. How many of all those who carry “The Heathen Chinee” about in their pocket-books, or know it by heart, perfectly feel its delicious humor, its exquisite sarcasm, its potent force of characterization ? Not all, we may venture to say ; not many, we are tempted to add, if we may guess from the imbecile efforts which have been made to illustrate it, and from the fact that it has actually been set to music ! Nevertheless, its subtile excellence remains established, nor can any clumsy preference harm it, nor the yet more dangerous desire of the poet himself to repeat it

Not that it is perfect in its way : without proof that the misuse of the pronoun which is good Pike as well as good Cockney, the poem is so far inartistic, and its fault extends to other dialect pieces of this book. It is by no means the most perfect of Mr. Harte’s things, as Popularity may be surprised to learn, though it is undoubtedly one of the best. “The Society upon the Stanislaus” has as quaint a humor, but it is not so generally relishable, and is more adapted to the learned palate, having a lesson of peculiar virtue for all scientific congresses, namely, —

This, also, is the plain language of Truthful James, who is reporting

and who tells how, when Mr. Brown had reconstructed from some fossil bones

Mr. Jones claimed the remains for those of his mule ; whereupon Mr. Brown apologized :

and Truthful James continues : —

From these lines the reader perceives that Truthful James can be perfectly true to himself without his erring which ; though here also is an ideal region, and

illuminates impossible conditions. Of course so much probability can be exacted as to leave little art; but without enough there is equally little art ; — though in spite of its deficiency from the latter cause, the censor who has made out his case often feels something treacherously fascinating in the performance condemned, and turns upon himself and enjoys it. The poems " Jim,” “ Chiquila,” " Dow’s Flat,” “ Cicely,'’and “ Penelope ” are all more artistic than those given in Truthful James’s plain language; yet we are not sure we like them better, though we believe they will wear better. It strikes us that their humor is in no wise dependent upon their grotesqueness, whereas that of both the other pieces is so in some degree. They represent real persons and actual states to finer effect than these, and as a group of character-paintings, vigorously and clearly done, they have very great value. As we noticed in his volume of prose sketches, Mr. Harte seems here to write only for his own sex’s sympathy ; almost the sole trace of a new country in his art being that it is apparently exercised entirely for a masculine community. We will not say it is worse for this reason ; and, in the face of all the ladies who read the “ Atlantic,” we dare not say it is better.

We think that, on the whole, “ Jim ” is the most finished and consistent of the pieces in dialect. In this the rude dramatic monologue of the miner, who never transcends himself in method or material of speech, suffices to possess us of all the tenderness there is in the friendship of such rough hearts, and the climax, —which is so apt to be the anti-climax, —in which it appears that Jim is not only not dead, but is then and there spoken to, is the truth itself. Many readers are already familiar with the poem, but for the sake of others, and for the purpose of illustrating our idea, we give it here : —

“‘JIM.’

Next to this for preservation of the artistic proprieties is " Penelope,” and then“Chiquita,” — in which we rejoice also because of its excellent modern use of hexameters, — and then “Dow’s Flat.”

It is Dow himself who is all the time depicting his own character to the stranger passing through the Flat, and telling how when he had dug forty feet for water, and had gone out one day with the intention of shooting himself if he did not strike water, he struck gold,—enough to make him rich :

The touch of pathos, which is seldom wanting in Mr. Harte’s better things, comes in when we are told how in the midst of Dow’s had luck his wife and children arrived at the Flat : —

The power of telling a whole story, or of representing an entire state of things in a very few words, which is shown in those we have italicized, is one of Mr. Harte’s most notable traits, and it is not at all dependent upon “dialect.” It appears with delightful effect in “ Her Letter,” where the young lady, translated from “Poverty Flat” to New York Fashionable society, writing to her California lover, reminds him of a ball at the Flat: —

Here the peculiar character of life at Poverty Flat is caught and forever fixed by the stroke of genius. “ Her Letter ” is charming throughout, and “The Return of Belisarius ” is excellent. Thoroughly and very admirably good, also, is “John Burns of Gettysburg,” which, if another had written it, would have alone sufficed to make him known. But all Mr. Harte’s American poetry has to struggle for life against his Californian poetry. In the latter direction, if we may judge from the “ Reply to her Letter ” and other plain language from Truthful James, — published since this collection was made, — he gives signs of exhaustion, and wreaks himself upon his erratic pronoun beyond sufferance. This is not altogether regretable, for his genius has shown itself quite equal to the task of delighting us all in English of perfect saneness and sobriety. We do not mean to imply that it was not well to have written the dialect poems ; on the contrary, we cannot well fancy our doing without them, now they have been given us ; but we feel that their range is narrow, and that their popularity forms a temptation to produce them after the best motive has ceased, which is adverse to the interests of literature. We feel, moreover, that the man who has written them can do things vastly better, things universally valuable.

It ought to be praise to Mr. Harte that there is so much of this sort of promise in his volume ; at least, a poet of his performance need not be damned by it. The fact remains in any case, and the fact of inequality also ; and there are some observable carelessnesses. Shenstone, not Herrick, wrote

which is travestied in the first of the “ Parodies,” and the concluding lines of the first and second stanzas of the far-off imitation of Spenser are not alexandrines, as they should be. Of other imitations, not confessed, in the book, we do not think it necessary to speak, because they are so easily identifiable, and because, while they are certainly to be lamented, they seem all of early date, and are probably part of Mr. Harte’s past which he will be willing to forget hereafter.