Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), January 25, 1845, vol. 1, no. 4, p. ??

CONVERSATIONS ON SOME OF THE OLD POETS. By Jarsts R.vsazza. LOWELL. Cambridge: Published by John Owen, 1845.

(Second Notice.)

PASSAGES like these in a conversation on Chaucer, appear somewhat incongruous when taken by themselves, but they spring up as naturally as flowers do from a seemingly exhausted soil:

Philip. The Devil might listen to some preaching I have heard, without getting his appetite spoiled. There is a great deal of time and [page 54:] money expended to make men believe that this one or that one will be damned, and to scare or wheedle them into good Calvinists or Episcopalians; but very little pains is taken to make them good Christians.

John. You use plain words.

Philip. Plain words are best. Truth wants no wail; the chastity and beauty of her countenance are defence enough against all lewd eyes. Falsehood, only, needs to hide her face; for, that unseen, she has learned so well to mimic the gait and feign the voice of Truth, as to counterfeit her with ease and safety. Our tongue has become so courtly and polite, as well-nigh to have forgotten that it has also words befitting indignation and reproof. Some thoughts demand the utmost swell and voluptuousness of language; they should float like Aphrodite upbome on a summer ocean. For others, the words should be jagged and immitigable and abrupt as the rocks upon the shore. Let the feeling of the moment choose. If melody be needed, the chance shell of the tortoise shall become a lyre which Apollo might sigh for. We have given an extract on the Dignity of Poverty: we give one below on the false dignity of DEATH.

John. It has never been a safe thing to breathe a whisper against the church, least of all in this country, where it has no prop from the state, but is founded only on the love, or, if you will have it so, the prejudices of the people. Religion has come to be esteemed synonymous with the church; there are few minds clear enough to separate it from the building erected for its convenience and its shelter. It is this which has made our Christianity external, a task-ceremony to be gone through with, and not a principle of life itself. The church has been looked on too much in the light of a machine, which only needs a little oil, now and then, on its joints and axles, to make it run glibly and perform all its functions without grating or creaking. Nothing that we can say will be of much service. The reformers must come from her own bosom; and there are many devout souls among her priests now, who would lay down their lives to purify her. The names of infidel and heretic are the San benitos in which we dress offenders in the nineteenth century, and a bigoted public opinion furnishes the fagots and applies the match! The very cross itself, to which the sacred right of private judgment fled for sanctuary, has been turned into a whipping-post. Doubtless, there are nations on the earth so wicked as those who profess Christianity; and the blame may be laid in great measure at the door of the church, which has always sought temporal power, and has chosen to lean rather upon the arm of flesh than upon that of God. The church has corrupted Christianity. She has decked her person and embroidered her garments with the spoils of pagan altars, and has built her temples of blocks which paganism had squared ready to her hand. We are still Huns and Vandals, and Saxons and Celts, at heart. We have carved a cross upon our altars, but the smoke of our sacrifice goes up to Thor and Odin still. Lately I read in the newspapers a toast given at a military festival, by one of those who claim to be earthly representatives of the Prince of Peace. Epg land and France send out the cannon and the bayonet, upon mission. ary enterprises, to India and Africa, and our modem Elliots and Brai-nerds among the red men are of the same persuasive metal.

Philip. Well, well, let us hope for change. There are signs of it: there has been a growling of thunder round the horizon for many days. We are like the people in countries subject to earthquakes, who crowd into churches for safety, but find that their sacred walls are as fragile as other works of human hands. Nay, the very massiveness of their architecture makes their destruction more sudden, and their fall more dangerous. You and I have become convinced of this. Both of us, having certain reforms at heart, and believing them to be of vital interest to mankind, turned first to the church as the nearest helper under God. We have been disappointed. Let us not waste our time in throwing stones at its insensible doors. As you have said, the reformers must come from within. The prejudice of position is so strong, that all her servants will unite against an exoteric assailant, melting up, if need be, the holy vessels for bullets, and using the leaves of the holy book itself for wadding. But I will never enter a church from which a prayer goes up for the prosperous only, or for the unfortunate among the oppressors, and not for the oppressed and fallen; as if God had ordained our pride of caste and our distinctions of color, and as if Christ had forgotten those that are in bonds. We are bid to imitate God: let us in this also follow his example, whose only revenge upon error is the giving success to truth, and but strive more cheerfully for the triumph of what we believe to be right. Let us, above all things, imitate him in ascribing what we see of wrongdoing to blindness and error, rather than to wilful sin. The Devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity and patience. The scourge is better upon our backs than in our hands.

John. When the air grows thick and heavy, and the clouds gather [column 2:] in the moral atmosphere, the tall steeples of the church are apt to attract the lightning first. Its pride and love of high places are the most fatal of conductors. That small upper room, in which the disciciples [[disciples]] were first gathered, would always be safe enough.

John. It is singular what ugly portraits of Death are ordinarily given us. There seems to be but little living faith in the immortality of the soul — so soon does any idea become formal and external, when diluted by the customariness of a creed. Men do not believe in the next world as they do in London or Boston; they do not launch upon the igne-tum mare with a shadow of that prophetic belief which girded up the heart of Columbus. Most religion-mongers have baited their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have templed the body with large promise of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern. For my own part, I think it wiser to make the spirit a staff for the body, than the body for the spirit. When the vessel casts off for the voyage, and the body finds itself left behind, it may well cry out and disturb the whole vicinage with the story of its wrong.

Philip. I agree with you that the body is treated with quite too much ceremony, and respect. Even religion has veiled its politic hat to it, till, like Christopher Sly, it is metamorphosed, in its own estimation, from a tinker to a duke. Men, who would, without compunction, kick a living beggar, will yet stand in awe of his poor carcass, after all that rendered it truly venerable has fled out of it. We agree with the old barbarian epitaph, which affirmed that the handful of dust had been Ninus; as if that which convicts us of mortality and weakness could at the same time endow us with our high prerogative of kingship over them. Southr in one of his sermons, tells us of certain men whose souls are of no worth, but as salt to keep their bodies from putrifying. I fear that the soul is too often regarded in this sutler fashion. Why rhould men ever be afraid to die, but that they regard the spirit as secondary to that which is but its mere appendage and conveniency, its symbol, its word, its means of visibility? If the soul lose this poor mansion of hers by the sudden conflagration of disease, or by the slow decay of age, is she therefore houseless and shelterless? If she cast away this soiled and tattered garment, is she therefore naked? A child looks forward to his new suit, and dons it joyfully; we cling to our rags and foulness. We should welcome Death as one who brings us tidings of the finding of long-lost titles to a large family estate, and set out gladly to take possession, though, it may be, not without a natural tear for the humbler home we are leaving. Death always means us a kindness, though he has often a gruff way of offering it. Even if the soul never returned from that chartless and unmapped country, which I do not believe, I would take Sir John Davies's reason as a good one:

“But, as Noah's pigeon, which returned no more,

Did show she footing found, for all the flood;

So, when good souls, departed through death's door,

Come not again, It shows their dwelling good.”

The realm of Death seems an enemy's country to most men, on whose shores they arc loathely driven Ly stress of weather; to the wise man it is the desired port where he moors his bark gladly, as in some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the golden west in which his sun sinks, and, sinking, casts back a glory upon the leaden cloud-rack which bad darkly besieged his day.

After all, the body is a more expert dialectician than the soul, and buffets it, even to bewilderment, with the empty bladders of logic; but the soul can retire, from the dust and turmoil of such conflict, to the high tower of instinctive faith, and there, in hushed serenity, take comfort of the sympathizing stars. We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him for the monster which the flawed and crooked glass presents him. You say truly that we have wasted time in trying to coax the body into a faith in what, by its very nature, it is incapable of comprehending. Hence, a plethoric, short-winded kind of belief, that can walk at an easy pace over the smooth plain, but loses breath at the first sharp uphill of life. How idle is it to set a sensual bill of fare before the soul, acting over again the old story of the Crane and the Fox!

These Conversations cannot fail to prove a permanent addition to our national literature. For although their professed subject is one of the most hackneyed that could be chosen; yet they contain as much freshness and beauty as though it were now handled for the first time.