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

[page 55:]

AMERICAN PROSE WRITERS.

NO. 3.

JOHN WATERS.

JOHN WATERS is well entitled to a place in the catalogue of American prose writers. Mr. Griswold has given him a niche among our poets,”but he will be known better by his essays than his poems. In one respect he is like Charles Lamb; the best part of his life has been devoted to business; the Phenix bank, of which he was president many years, contains the largest amount of his writings, as the India House does of Lamb's. We are not aware that John Waters has ever appeared before the public with a book, but his individuality is as well defined, and he stands apart from other writers as distinctly as Elia did before his essays were published in a separate volume.

It would be unjust to compare him with Lamb, as we have heard done, for their style and habits of thought are quite different. In fastidiousness of tastes, a reverence for the past and a delicacy of appetite, there is considerable resemblance between these two authors, but in other respects they are widely different. A looseness of religious sentiment pervades the writings of Elia, but you discern upon a very short acquaintance with John Waters, that his religious faith is as sharply defined, and as positive as his taste in fish or wine, and that he would frown upon heterodoxy in the church as severely as he would upon a blunder in carving, whether in marble or mutton. His essays are all short, as essays should be, of the Addisonian dimensions and density of expression. His sentences are the most perfect in the language; it would be a vain task to hunt through them all for a superfluous conjunction. They are too perfect to be peculiar, for writers are distinguished from each other more by their faults than their excellencies. He is manifestly an ad• mirer of Geoffrey Crayon, but very far from an imitator of his style. He has a finer artistic taste than the author of the Sketch Book, but a less genial love of nature, as nature. He can endure nothing that wears a slovenly aspect. His lawns must be neatly trimmed and his gardens weeded. He abhors Scuppernon wine, but can relish port in chowder. He has not written much about flowers, but we should think that his favorite was a Catnelia. He is in some sort a Sail Rogers, but more particular. In pictures he is an admirer of Both and Weir. Probably Gerard Douw and Watteau are among his great artists. His humor is of the quiet kind which provokes a bland smile, but never a laugh, which would be irregular and boisterous. His piety is tender and subduing, it may cause a tear, but never a swelling of the heart. He is rather fanciful than imaginative, and the pictures which he presents to us are exhibited through a stained glass, which mellows the outlines without distorting the forms represented. His descriptions have a delicacy of finish like the carvings of Grinling Gibbons. They remind you as forcibly of nature as anything short of nature can, but they never deceive you; you know all the while that it is not a reality that affects you.

We are not familiar with any of his writings, but those that have appeared in the New York American and in the Knickerbocker. They should be collected together in a volume by themselves; for they would make a valuable addition to our national literature. We need them as models of style, in these days of rhodomontades and Maraulayisms. John Waters is a sensualist. rather than a sentimentalist. Perhaps he thinks otherwise. But his sensualism is a sentiment. The greater part of his essays are purely sensual, although it is not a vulgar sensualism, but rather a spiritual appetite of the senses. He elevates a buttered muffin into a work of high art; and his fish are such exquisite creatures, that you feel while gazing upon them, that Vatel may be pardoned for falling upon his sword. There is always something to be tasted, or smelt or listened to in his essays. The mouth is more apt to water than the eyes, in his company.

John Waters is only an assumed name, as all the world knows, like that of Christopher North, Barry Cornwall, Geoffrey Crayon, and others. The real name of this pure essayist is Henry Cary. He is at present we believe a gentleman of wealth and leisure. With a keen relish for elegant literature and refined art, he appears to have had the prudence to labor diligently through his early years in acquiring a fortune, that his later life might be spent in the quiet of independent ease. Pity, pity, that many of similar taste were not endowed with similar prudence and forethought!

We give a short extract from one of his papers in the Knickerbocker containing an account of the great Hungarian pianist Lizst, who, we have reason to believe, we shall have among us during the year.

“Our nice travelling chariot, with all its trunks, cases, pockets, down-cushions, and delightful appliances, that we had thought such a purchase two days before at Frankfort, gave out just as we approach. ed Heicklberg. One of the axletrees heated, the wheel retused to turn round, and for two hours we were standing in the road, surrounded by peasantry that the postillion had assembled together, endeavoring to get the wheel off, pouring cold water upon it, and talking to us and about us in an unknown tongue; for although my friend and myself mustered five modern languages, German unfortunately was not one of them, and we knew nothing whatever of the patois of these honest people.

After consultation with a mechanic at Heidelberg, and finding that the defect was not to be remedied there without great delay, we resolved upon a partial repair, and to return as best we might to Frankfort and seek redress from the warranty of the party of whom we had bought the vehicle. We paid our visit to the incomparable ruins of the castle, and then proceeded to retrace our steps; and examining our wheels at every post-house, reached the Hotel d’Angleterre at Frankfort at the close of day in August last.

It is always depressing to be turned back upon one's path; and these reclamations and bargainings for redress are the most uncomfortable things in the world; so that M. and I looked blank at one another as we entered again the streets of that busy mart. We determined to say nothing of the matter until morning, and I longed heartily for some refreshment that should banish it altogether from my mind in the mean time.

‘Is there no music in Frankfort to-night?’ I inquired.

‘I beg your pardon,’ was the reply; there is, the finest. Monsieur Liszt, the pianist, performs this evening at the theatre.’

‘Is it far from this?’

‘Quite the contrary, fortunately, for the performances must have begun.’

‘Show me the way.’

In a few minutes I had passed through the boxes into the pit of a small theatre. It was well filled, and yet the number of performers and amateurs on the stage seemed hardly less than that of the audience. The entertainment had opened, and was continned for some time with alternate instrumental and vocal music. The latter was comprised of those strong brassy, male voices, that satisfy the ear by their correctness and force, perhaps, but make no approach toward the heart

There was then a pause of some minutes, and a movement of expectation throughout the house; and presently a pale-faced, light-complexioned, loosely-constructed, middle-aged person made his way through the artists and assistants saluted the audience in a shambling and gauche manner, and seated himself without notes at a piano that was near the front of the stage.

Until he reached the side of this instrument, he seemed like part of a man, wanting support and confidence; but as he took his place, the existence became complete, and joy passed over his countenance as he laid his hand upon the keys. It was one of the faces of Thorwaldsen, an express indication of the deep interior spirit; and expectation rose high when the piano breathed as it were under his touch. He ran through a delicious voluntary, that there might be no doubt of the exactness of each note, and we all felt the perfection of his fingering; clear, distinct, round, precious, full — a shower of pearls upon a table of porphyry.

‘It was now all stillness, the intense stillness of watchfulness, throughout the house; for his performance was to commence; and although the moment if measured by a clock might have been short, no doubt, we divided time by a different metre; and a wild waste had in our imagination extended itself around him, when he calmly raised his hands to their utmost height, and with blow after blow upon the instrument with his whole force, successively planted large columnar masses of sound over the extended plain, and a scene like that of the Giant's Causeway rose like enchantment before our astonished and delighted senses. Hardly had he sketched the vision before us, when a storm began such as I have seldom witnessed. The instrument rained, hailed, thundered, moaned, whistled, shrieked round those basaltic co, lamas. in every cry that the tempest, can utter in its wildest paroxysms of wrath. It was almost too powerful and ungoverned at the last; and [page 56:] at the instant that this thought entered into the mind, the wind lulled, the elements were spent, the calm came; the brooks and water-courses took up their song of exultation; the air was refreshed, the birds chirped, the sun put forth, and the young leaf lifted its green head.

We now accompanied him through a small valley with precipitous banks, such as one finds in Piedmont. where the large leafed tree grows beside the mossy rock, and the vine tries vainly to envelope both, and shade and light and repose arc the glory of the earth. Young clouds were forming on the upper heights, destined to paint the skies of Italy, and struggled hard in their ascent at every jutting rock and leafy buttress to remain adhering to their native ails, against the repeated bidding of the sun; as if preferring even to the cerulean heaven, a world so verdant and so fair! We were thus borne along by the strain through countless beauties of rock and sky and foliage to a grotto, by the side of which was a fountain that seemed one of the Eyes of the Earth, so large and darkly-brilliant was it, so deep and so serene; reflecting on its retina with magical distinctness every surrounding object, whether distant or near. Here we listened tor some moments to the voices rather than the songs of birds, when the music by degrees again diminished, and then fluttered and then ceased.

It was not immediately that the audience gave forth their demonstrations of rapturous applause; and as I looked round, I saw on all sides that eyes, in tears, both smiled and wept.’ I walked home almost upon air, and every pulsation on the way was a throb of gratitude to Him, who for our solace and delight hath ‘planted the ear,’ and opened all hearts to the inspiration of the truly gifted master of this wonderful art.

Thus far, dear editor, is the extract, which world never have been offered to your regard, but that being some days afterward in the society of au accomplished lady, herself no mean musician, and describing to her the effect produced on my mind by this remarkable performance, she surprised me by saying that she bad been present at it, and that the same imagery had passed with slight variation before her as she listened, that I have here endeavored faintly to preserve.

I was charmed at the assurance, for it confirmed me in the belief that this was not the mere flitting of the rainbow spirit across the imagination, rearing in its passage a fabric of happiness — beautiful at times as a palace Of the Genii, and, alas! as illusory — but a substantive and truthful joy, to be recalled at will; to be remembered in solitude; to be dwelt upon for the enrichment of the soul; and — may I entertain the hope? — in some degree perhaps even to be imparted.”

JOHN WATERS.