But, my dear sir,
watering
does not improve the quality
of ink, even though you should do it with tears.
of ink, even though you should do it with tears.
James Russell Lowell
' I smiled at this after a moment's reflection,
and he added gravely, 'The most punctilious refinement of manners is the
only salt that will keep a democracy from stinking; and what are we to
expect from the people, if their representatives set them such lessons?
Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text. There was, at
least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the
tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle
blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay. ' In
this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his
upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A. D.
1844, occasioned by the wild notions in respect to the rights of (what
Mr. Wilbur, so far as concerned the reasoning faculty, always called)
the unfairer part of creation, put forth by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz,
are too well known to need more than a passing allusion. It was during
these heats, long since happily allayed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that
'the Church had more trouble in dealing with one _she_resiarch than with
twenty _he_resiarchs,' and that the men's _conscia recti_, or certainty
of being right, was nothing to the women's.
When I once asked his opinion of a poetical composition on which I had
expended no little pains, he read it attentively, and then remarked
'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is
wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into
rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate
with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My
Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your
emotions there.
But, my dear sir, watering does not improve the quality
of ink, even though you should do it with tears. To publish a sorrow to
Tom, Dick, and Harry is in some sort to advertise its unreality, for I
have observed in my intercourse with the afflicted that the deepest
grief instinctively hides its face with its hands and is silent. If your
piece were printed, I have no doubt it would be popular, for people like
to fancy that they feel much better than the trouble of feeling. I would
put all poets on oath whether they have striven to say everything they
possibly could think of, or to leave out all they could not help saying.
In your own case, my worthy young friend, what you have written is
merely a deliberate exercise, the gymnastic of sentiment. For your
excellent maternal relative is still alive, and is to take tea with me
this evening, D. V. Beware of simulated feeling; it is hypocrisy's first
cousin; it is especially dangerous to a preacher; for he who says one
day, "Go to, let me seem to be pathetic," may be nearer than he thinks
to saying, "Go to, let me seem to be virtuous, or earnest, or under
sorrow for sin. " Depend upon it, Sappho loved her verses more sincerely
than she did Phaon, and Petrarch his sonnets better than Laura, who was
indeed but his poetical stalking-horse. After you shall have once heard
that muffled rattle of clods on the coffin-lid of an irreparable loss,
you will grow acquainted with a pathos that will make all elegies
hateful. When I was of your age, I also for a time mistook my desire to
write verses for an authentic call of my nature in that direction. But
one day as I was going forth for a walk, with my head full of an "Elegy
on the Death of Flirtilla," and vainly groping after a rhyme for _lily_
that should not be _silly_ or _chilly_, I saw my eldest boy Homer busy
over the rain-water hogshead, in that childish experiment at
parthenogenesis, the changing a horse-hair into a water-snake. All
immersion of six weeks showed no change in the obstinate filament. Here
was a stroke of unintended sarcasm. Had I not been doing in my study
precisely what my boy was doing out of doors? Had my thoughts any more
chance of coming to life by being submerged in rhyme than his hair by
soaking in water?
and he added gravely, 'The most punctilious refinement of manners is the
only salt that will keep a democracy from stinking; and what are we to
expect from the people, if their representatives set them such lessons?
Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text. There was, at
least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the
tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle
blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay. ' In
this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his
upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A. D.
1844, occasioned by the wild notions in respect to the rights of (what
Mr. Wilbur, so far as concerned the reasoning faculty, always called)
the unfairer part of creation, put forth by Miss Parthenia Almira Fitz,
are too well known to need more than a passing allusion. It was during
these heats, long since happily allayed, that Mr. Wilbur remarked that
'the Church had more trouble in dealing with one _she_resiarch than with
twenty _he_resiarchs,' and that the men's _conscia recti_, or certainty
of being right, was nothing to the women's.
When I once asked his opinion of a poetical composition on which I had
expended no little pains, he read it attentively, and then remarked
'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is
wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into
rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate
with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My
Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your
emotions there.
But, my dear sir, watering does not improve the quality
of ink, even though you should do it with tears. To publish a sorrow to
Tom, Dick, and Harry is in some sort to advertise its unreality, for I
have observed in my intercourse with the afflicted that the deepest
grief instinctively hides its face with its hands and is silent. If your
piece were printed, I have no doubt it would be popular, for people like
to fancy that they feel much better than the trouble of feeling. I would
put all poets on oath whether they have striven to say everything they
possibly could think of, or to leave out all they could not help saying.
In your own case, my worthy young friend, what you have written is
merely a deliberate exercise, the gymnastic of sentiment. For your
excellent maternal relative is still alive, and is to take tea with me
this evening, D. V. Beware of simulated feeling; it is hypocrisy's first
cousin; it is especially dangerous to a preacher; for he who says one
day, "Go to, let me seem to be pathetic," may be nearer than he thinks
to saying, "Go to, let me seem to be virtuous, or earnest, or under
sorrow for sin. " Depend upon it, Sappho loved her verses more sincerely
than she did Phaon, and Petrarch his sonnets better than Laura, who was
indeed but his poetical stalking-horse. After you shall have once heard
that muffled rattle of clods on the coffin-lid of an irreparable loss,
you will grow acquainted with a pathos that will make all elegies
hateful. When I was of your age, I also for a time mistook my desire to
write verses for an authentic call of my nature in that direction. But
one day as I was going forth for a walk, with my head full of an "Elegy
on the Death of Flirtilla," and vainly groping after a rhyme for _lily_
that should not be _silly_ or _chilly_, I saw my eldest boy Homer busy
over the rain-water hogshead, in that childish experiment at
parthenogenesis, the changing a horse-hair into a water-snake. All
immersion of six weeks showed no change in the obstinate filament. Here
was a stroke of unintended sarcasm. Had I not been doing in my study
precisely what my boy was doing out of doors? Had my thoughts any more
chance of coming to life by being submerged in rhyme than his hair by
soaking in water?
