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[page 84, continued:]
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Christopher
Pease Cranch.
 The Reverend C. P. Cranch is one of the least
intolerable of
the Boston transcendentalists: — in fact, I believe that he
has
at last come out from among them, abandoned their doctrines (whatever
they are) and given up their society in disgust. He was at one
time
a
contributor
to "The Dial" — but has repented of his sins, and reformed his habits
of thought and speech,
domiciliated
himself in New-York, and set up the easel of an artist in one of the
Gothic
chambers of the University.
Four or five years ago Carey and Hart, of
Philadelphia, published a collection of his poems. By the critics it
was unmercifully and, I think, somewhat unjustly treated. Mr Cranch
seems to me vivacious, fanciful, and dexterous in expression — while
his versification is
noticeable
for its accuracy, vigor, and even for its (comparative) originality of
effect. I
might say, perhaps, rather more than all this, and maintain that he
has
imagination if he would only condescend to employ it: — but he will
not — or would not until lately; — the word-compounders and
quibble-concoctors
of Frogpondium [[Boston]] having inoculated him with a preference for
Imagination's
half-sister, the Cinderella, Fancy. He rarely contents
himself with harmonious combinations of
thought. To afford him perfect
satisfaction,
there must always be a certain amount of the odd — of the whimsical —
of the affected — of the bizarre. He is as full of conceits
as Cowley or Donne —
with this
difference,
that the conceits of these latter are Euphuisms beyond redemption —
radical,
irremediable, self-contented nonsensicalities — and in so much are
good
of their kind; while the conceits of Mr Cranch are, for the most part,
intentionally manufactured, for conceit's sake, out of the material for
properly imaginative or proportionate
ideas.
He forces us to see that he has taken pains to make
a
fool of himself.
His best poem, upon the whole, is the one of which I have
already quoted the opening stanza in "The Rationale of Verse"; and I
cannot place his merits in a fairer light than by now copying the lines
in full:
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My Thoughts.
Many are the thoughts that come to me
In my lonely musing;
And they drift to strange and swift
There's no time for choosing
Which to follow — for to leave
Any seems a losing.
When they come, they come in flocks,
As, on
glancing feather,
Startled birds rise, one by one,
In autumnal weather,
Waking one another up
From the sheltering heather.
Some so merry that I laugh;
Some are grave and serious;
Some so trite their last approach
Is enough to weary us;
Others flit like midnight ghosts,
Shrouded and mysterious. [page
85:]
There are thoughts that o'er me steal
Like the day when dawning —
Great thoughts winged with melody,
Common utterance scorning,
Moving in an inward tune
And an inward morning.
Some have dark and drooping wings —
Children all of sorrow;
Some are as gay as if to-day
Could see no cloudy morrow;
And yet, like light and shade, they each
Must from the other borrow.
One by one they come to me
On their destined mission;
One by one I see them fade
With no hopeless vision —
For they've led me on a step
To their home Elysian.
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The passages italicized belong to the highest order of
natural or obvious fancy. The last is singularly truthful; the first
vividly picturesque; and its effect is aided by the happy directness,
or colloquiality, of the "waking one another up." The rest of the poem
may be designated as "fine writing" merely. There is a great deal of
"ease", however, in the final stanza. "Dawning" with "scoring" is a bad
rhyme; and "moving in an inward tune and an inward morning" is a good
Lily-ism. The chief merit of the whole lies in its versification, which
is excellent. "Some are as gay as if to-day" is a beautiful variation.
Here the scansion is
Some ar4e as4 | gay a2s |
if t1o | day cou2ld.|
see n2o
| cloud2y | morro2w|
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"Some are as" is a bastard trochee; and the rhythm of one line is
continued into that of the succeeding; as in the opening lines of "The
Bride of Abydos." [page 86:]
But perhaps I err in supposing
myself at
all in condition to decide on Mr Cranch's poetry, which,
professedly,
is addressed to the few. "Him we will seek," says the poet —
Him we will seek, and none but
him,
Whose inward sense hath not grown
dim;
Whose soul is steeped in Nature's
tinct
And to the Universal linked;
Who loves the beauteous Infinite
With deep and ever new delight,
And carrieth, where'er he goes,
The inborn sweetness of the
rose —
The perfume as of Paradise —
The talisman above all price —
The optic glass that wins from
far
The meaning of the utmost star —
The key that opes the golden doors
Where Earth and Heaven have piled
their stores
—
The magic ring — the enchanter's wand
—
The title-deed to Wonder-Land —
The wisdom that oerlooketh
sense —
The clairvoyance of Innocence. |
The last rhyme is identical. Altogether, the lines are
somewhat too much selon les règles of "The Dial" — also
somewhat too
elocutionary — still they are fanciful and neatly turned — with the
exception of the last two; these should have been left out. It is
laughable to see that the
transcendental
poets, if beguiled for a minute or two into respectable English and
common
sense, are always sure to remember their cue just as they get to the
end
of their song, which, by way of saving its reputation, they then round
off, in accordance with that "wisdom that o'erlooketh sense,"
with a scrap of doggrel about "the
clairvoyance of Innocence." It is especially observable that, in
adopting
the cant of thought, they feel bound to adopt, at the same moment, the
cant of phraseology. Can Mr. C., or can any body
else,
say why it is that, in the really not nonsensical opening passages of
what
I have here quoted, he employs the modern, and only in the final
couplet
of goosetherumfoodle makes use of the obsolete, [page 87:]
terminations of verbs in
the third person singular, present tense?
One of the most meritorious of Mr Cranch's
compositions is
his poem on Niagara. It has many natural thoughts, suiting the
subject — some
grand
ones that do not suit it; but all are more than half divseted of their
force by the attempt at adorning them with oddity of
expression. Quaintness, under certain circumstances, is an
effective adjunct to imagination; and its value has long been
misapprehended; but in picturing
the sublime it is altogether out of place. What idea of power, for
example, — of grandeur — can any human being attach even to Niagara,
when
Niagara is described in language so tripping — so fantastical — so
palpably
adapted to a purpose — as that which follows?
I stood
upon a speck
of ground;
Before
me fell a stormy ocean.
I was like a
captive
bound;
And around
A universe of sound
Troubled the heavens with
ever-quivering
motion.
Down,
down forever —
down, down
forever —
Something
falling, falling, falling;
Up, up
forever — up, up,
forever —
Resting never —
Boiling up forever,
Steam-clouds shot up with
thunder-bursts
appalling. |
It is difficult to conceive any thing
more
out of keeping than the really natural thoughts of these stanzas, and
the petit-maître, fidgety,
hop-skip-and-jump air of the words, and the Liliputian parts of the
metre, in which the thoughts are attempted to be conveyed.
A somewhat similar metre is adopted
by Mr.
C.
in his "Lines on Hearing Triumphant Music" — but as the subject is
essentially
different, so the effect is by no means so displeasing. I copy
one
of the stanzas as the finest individual passage which I can find among
the poems of its author. [page 88:]
That
glorious strain!
Oh, from my
brain
I see the shadows flitting
like scared
ghosts.
A 1ight —
a light
Shines in
to-night
Round the good angels trooping to
their posts,
And the
black cloud
is rent
in twain
Before
the ascending
strain. |
Mr Cranch is well educated and
quite
accomplished.
Like Mr Osborn, he is musician and painter, as well as poet — being in
each about equally
very respectably successful.
He is thirty-four or five
years of age; in
height perhaps five feet eleven; athletic; front face rather handsome —
the smile pleasant and the forehead evincing intellect; but the
profile
is marred by the turning up of the nose. Eyes and hair are dark brown —
the latter worn short, although slightly
inclined
to curl: — thick whiskers meeting under the chin and much out of
keeping
with the shirt-collar à la Byron.
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