We Seem To Hear The
Music Of A Thought, And Care Not If The Understanding Be Not
Gratified.
For their beauty, consider the fables of Narcissus,
of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morning, the representative of all
Promising youths who have died a premature death, and whose
memory is melodiously prolonged to the latest morning; the
beautiful stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone
afar off white with the bones of unburied men; and the pregnant
ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the Sphinx; and that long list of
names which have already become part of the universal language of
civilized men, and from proper are becoming common names or
nouns, - the Sibyls, the Eumenides, the Parcae, the Graces, the
Muses, Nemesis, &c.
It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the
farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give
completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they
indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and
dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific
body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus.
As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or
the asteroid Astraea, that the Virgin who was driven from earth
to heaven at the end of the golden age, may have her local
habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned her, - for the
slightest recognition of poetic worth is significant. By such
slow aggregation has mythology grown from the first. The very
nursery tales of this generation, were the nursery tales of
primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from
west to east; now expanded into the "tale divine" of bards, now
shrunk into a popular rhyme. This is an approach to that
universal language which men have sought in vain. This fond
reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest
posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouching the
old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and
Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. All men are
children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to
bed, and wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the
missionary, distributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, translated
into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made a great sensation.
"Robinson Crusoe's adventures and wisdom," says he, "were read by
Mahometans in the market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya,
and admired and believed!" On reading the book, the Arabians
exclaimed, "O, that Robinson Crusoe must have been a great
prophet!"
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and
biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common
sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and
you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either
time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a
century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can
write some pure mythology to-day without the aid of posterity.
In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the
story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence for our
classical dictionary, - and then, perchance, have stuck up their
names to shine in some corner of the firmament. We moderns, on
the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and
history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which itself is but
materials to serve for a mythology. How many volumes folio would
the Life and Labors of Prometheus have filled, if perchance it
had fallen, as perchance it did first, in days of cheap printing!
Who knows what shape the fable of Columbus will at length assume,
to be confounded with that of Jason and the expedition of the
Argonauts. And Franklin, - there may be a line for him in the
future classical dictionary, recording what that demigod did, and
referring him to some new genealogy. "Son of - - and - - . He
aided the Americans to gain their independence, instructed
mankind in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds."
The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes
thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the
poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with
which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if
they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths
than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to
wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the
sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our
day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman
intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as
its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the
human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday
thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine
intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of
philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.
As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its scenery
is the more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, and this day
its water was fuller of reflections than our pages even. Just
before it reaches the falls in Billerica, it is contracted, and
becomes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly bottom,
hardly passable for a canal-boat, leaving the broader and more
stagnant portion above like a lake among the hills. All through
the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica meadows we had heard no
murmur from its stream, except where some tributary runnel
tumbled in, -
Some tumultuous little rill,
Purling round its storied pebble,
Tinkling to the selfsame tune,
From September until June,
Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble.
Silent flows the parent stream,
And if rocks do lie below,
Smothers with her waves the din,
As it were a youthful sin,
Just as still, and just as slow.
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