Volume 24 63
Save next a roof, or where a roof has been;
Its knot-grass, plantain,—all the social weeds,
Man’s mute companions, following where he leads;
Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling
heads,
Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds;
Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb;
Its roses, breathing of the olden time;
All the poor shows the curious idler sees,
As life’s thin shadows fade by slow degrees,
Till nought remains, the saddening tale to tell,
Save home’s last wrecks,—the cellar and the well!Motley questioned the phrase “elbowed spectres”
and asked “can a shadow fade?”, but approved of
the whole,... Not strictly speaking “Ideal,” the
picture is “beautiful” according to standards sup-
plied by Blair:
There is, however, another sense... in which Beauty
of writing characterizes a particular manner; when it
is used to signify a certain grace and amenity in the
turn either of style or sentiment.... In this sense, it
denotes a manner neither remarkably sublime, nor
vehemently passionate, nor uncommonly sparkling,
but such as raises in the reader an emotion of the gen-
tle placid kind, familiar to what is raised by the con-
templation of beautiful objects in nature; which
neither lifts the mind very high, nor agitates it very
much, but diffuses over the imagination an agreeable
and pleasing serenity.Blair had earlier used as an example of the “beau-
tiful” the movement of a bird in flight, contrasting
that with flashes of lightning, which he clearly took
for “sublime.” The passage quoted is followed by
a grudging admission of the pleasure afforded by
novelty, an admission made in such a way as to
discourage the student from trying to achieve it and
the reader from admiring it. The faithful pupil of
Blair was encouraged to provide the mixture as be-
fore. It is noticeable that Motley nowhere criticized
his friend for being trite; the acceptable ideality
of picturesque ruins made him content with
stereotypes.
Pleasing to Motley and also “beautiful” ac-
cording to the standards of Blair are lines from the
introductory section, “The Old Player.”
From groves of glossy beech the wood thrush fills
In the dim twilight with his rapturous trills;
From sweet still pastures, cropped by nodding kine,
Their noon-tide tent the century-counting pine;
From the brown streams along whose winding shore
Each sleepy inlet knows my resting oar;
From the broad meadows, where the mowers pass
Their scythes slow-breathing through the feathered
grass;
From tawny rye-fields, where the cradler strikes
With whistling crash among the bearded spikes;
Fresh from such glories, how shall I forget
My summer’s day-dream, now the sun is set?The critic apparently found ll. 5–10 especially sat-
isfying, for he gave them two sets of approving par-
allels. Again Motley was sufficiently taken with the
ideality of the subject to be indifferent to the qual-
ity of the language, to the grotesque effects of the
personifications, and to the haphazard arrangement
of the details.
Employing the same standard of the “beauti-
ful,” Motley gave his accolade to the pseudo-
Homeric catalogue of ships in “The Exile’s Secret”;
but when human beings appear on the scene he had
complaints. He did not like an “old skipper” who
“curses,” an “excursion crew” of fishermen, a
“slightly tipsy” sailor, and a group of “clam-
adventurers.” Here Motley appears to be obeying
the injunction of Blair against the use of “such
allusions as raise in the mind disagreeable, mean,
vulgar or dirty ideas.”
Anxious to meet his friend’s standards,
Holmes frequently diluted his original matter.
Lines of the Private Copyreading:
We stand a moment on the outstreched pier;—
Ho! lazy boatman, scull your dory here!
The tide runs fast;
became in Songs in Many Keys:
So fair when distant should be fairer near;
A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier.
The breeze blows fresh;
The change was dictated by Motley’s protest
against the imperative: “Scull your dory here!”
That in quest of the Ideal and in evasion of the Ac-
tual, one might come upon the insipid—this con-
sequence the exponents of the favored opposition
failed to perceive. Holding to the principle, Mot-
ley pushed Holmes toward an alien style. He brack-
eted and questioned these lines:
Pilots, with varnished hats and shaggy coasts;
Fishers, with scaly oars and slippery boats;
Boys of rude speech, who spread a ragged sail
On courtesying skiffs that want a crew to bale;
Sires of the town who quit the cushioned chair
On some bright morning when the breeze is fair,
And tempt the dangers of the tossing brine
To learn how paupers live,—and guardians dine;
The critic’s marginal note is: “I would omit this—
It is very good & Crabby, but I like your heroic style
best particul[arl]y in this poem.” Not Holmes at his
best certainly, these lines are nevertheless in his best
vein, and Motley did him no service by trying to
shift his attention from a Crabbe to a Schiller. The
whole of “The Exile’s Secret,” alternating between
the “beautiful” and the “Crabby,” did not give Mot-
ley the same satisfaction as “The Mother’s Secret,”
with its clearly Ideal theme. The incongruity of theThe Chambered Nautilus