A Passage With “The Veteran Quarterly”
Selections from A Passage with “The Veteran Quarterly” by William Gilmore Simms
Originally published in Southern and Western Magazine and Review Vol. L, No. V. May 1845
A circular, recently issued by the publishers of the North American Review, somewhat earnestly insists upon the claims of this “veteran” periodical to the favor of the public, in “having done its part in representing the taste, science and literature of the country, for a period of nearly thirty years.” It is certainly a matter of surprise that it should become necessary for a periodical, situated in the very heart of a region equally rich and populous, to send forth a paper which dwells, in language of doubtful delicacy, upon its claims to public favor, in order to obtain it;—particularly, too, when you shall not meet a man in the whole country who is not willing to attest the perfect fidelity of this work to a people equally ambitious of ascendancy and needing a champion.
That the “North American Review” has worked religiously for New England, her sons, her institutions, her claims of every sort, there is no manner of question.
Whatever doubts we may entertain of the American character of this periodical, of its catholic tendency, and its equal regard to the claims of the nation, as a whole, we can have none, and none have ever been felt or expressed, of its perfect devotedness to the region from which it more immediately issues.
None can deny the exclusive and jealous vigilance with which it insists upon the pretensions of Massachusetts Bay—the merits of its policy, the wisdom of its statesmen, the superior excellence of its genius generally—of its works of art, its works of imagination, its historians, its poets, its romancers. The very humblest of these is not suffered to escape recognition and laud, and it is a daily surprise to other parts of the world, to perceive with how little effort of their own, the Birds of the Charles, and other contiguous waters—rare birds indeed—are lifted into the perfect purity and size of the Swan, with only a little pleasant puffing from the plumes of the “North American.”
With a gift like this, it is certainly a matter of wonder to us all, that such a circular as the one before us, should need to pass beyond the single province of the Review itself. Why, the poets alone; and the essayists, the writers of pilgrim-orations, the tractarians and sermonizers, the makers of national school books and Parley books—all of whom have been glorified in its pages—should alone be sufficiently numerous, as we take for granted they are sufficiently grateful, to prevent a necessity so humiliating to themselves and their organ.
It has certainly done its duty—and, perhaps, something more than its duty—by all this class of persons; and there must be something wrong in the system by which it works, if, after all, it is compelled to look abroad, to regions for whose cash alone it seems to care, for the miserable support which is necessary to its prolonged existence. Had it but as religiously performed its duty by the whole broad country, the name of which it modestly appropriates to itself—had it regarded the nation, east and west, north and south, with an equal eye to its glory, progress and advancement—we cannot think that its condition would be so greatly straightened now.
But, as “veteran journals,” like veteran soldiers, are apt to lapse into feebleness with years, it is thought advisable to show, that such cannot be the case with our “North American,” which draws from a perennial fountain, and can exhibit, whenever the thing is necessary, quite as much of the proper fluid, the genuine red blood, as will suffice, not only for all periodical, but all mortal purposes. To the good old names of Channing, the Everetts, Bancroft and Sparks, Story, Wheaton and Prescott, there succeed others, of whom, as worthy to wear the mantles which these have cast aside, we have liberal assurance—though we hear, for the first time, of some of the persons named.
There are, for example, “Mr. Peabody, of Springfield, and his brother of Boston.” Peabody is a good name enough, particularly in an agricultural country. Here is the very curse of this review. It is New England only and all over—nothing but New England. Of all the contributors enumerated by the editor, in his laudable desire to attract subscribers to his list from all the States of the American confederacy, he mentions but one name—that of Mr. Wm. B. Read, of Philadelphia—which is not absolutely and entirely New England.
There is not a single New-Yorker, not a Virginian, not a Marylander, not a Carolinian, Kentuckian, or Tennessean in the catalogue. This is surely a strange way to bait for subscribers in other States, and betrays, quite as strongly as any thing can do, the miserable selfishness of that policy, so notorious of New England, which, even when its object is to find favor abroad, overlooks the most obvious method of doing so, in the slavish blindness of its early training. Surely, it is not pretended that good men and true—able writers, profound and elegant thinkers—are not to be found in all that stretch of country which has the Atlantic for its base, from Long Island to the western limits of Georgia. But no! this “North American Review” is a neat contrivance for teaching North America by means of New England.
It is to embody and spread abroad the tastes and the fashions, the philosophies and the bigotries, of a trim little group, squat, complacent, that sits, unquestioning and utterly unquestioned, in all the suavity of assumed authority, within the colossal shadow of the Bunker Monument.
Their writers are usually fastidious gentlemen, rather more solicitous of style than of more important matters, and apt to write so very like one another, that it will be somewhat difficult for one, not accustomed to note the various degrees in which they severally exhibit their energies, to detect the difference between them. They will give you, most generally, a well written article, which will show you the absolute position of the question—where it was in the time of Noah, what changes were effected by the policy of Solomon, how, and by whose hands it came down to us, and where it is at the present moment in New England.
This tenacity of position, in their mental concerns, being the fruit of certain inherent qualities of their blood, and a certain regimen of which they make much, and which they call conservatism. Of this conservatism we shall know more hereafter.
If we have any one fault to find with them and the writers of their school generally, it is in that want of courage, and that timidity of heart, which is apt to characterize and constitute those who insist upon their conservatism. They are a people who suffer their tastes to get the better of their energies—who, in their solicitude to be nice, sometimes cease to be manly—who delight in neat little prettinesses of style and manner, who will pick you out the delicate passages of the poem, those which are marked by quaint figure, or neatly turned period, and, in due degree as they are delighted with these, will revolt at the rude expression, the coarse, or clumsy phrase—the slightest inelegancy making them heedless of the just claims of the work—its massy strength, its admirable outlines, its daring height, its superiority in all the substantial respects, of noble conception and bold, enduring scheme.
“The editors have endeavored to impart to it a national character—to make it a means of fostering American literature, science and art, and of explaining and defending American institutions. It is so considered abroad.”
It is very possible that the editors do persuade themselves that the work has been thus catholic in its sympathies, for it has been very much the habit, in the region whence it issues, to speak of New England as the nation. Mr. Webster, only recently, in one of his crack discourses, declared the battle of Bunker’s Hill to have been the American Revolution!—the beginning and consummation of that great event which made us a nation! That was all the patriotism—that was all the fighting—the rest was nothing, but “Leather and prunella;”—and this is the complacent mode of thought and speech throughout his neighborhood. The New Englander knows no nation but New England, whenever he talks about America;—the great deeds and doings are certainly his—it was his patriots that begot the movement—his orators that preached it—his soldiers that fought the battles. It is only when there is something discreditable—some great swindling, or murder—to be accounted for and excused—and then he discovers that New England must not be confounded with the South and West; nay, must not have its skirts soiled even with Manhaddanism.
It turns up its nose at its next door neighbor with an aristocratic swagger that is perfectly delightful, in the case of our “poor pilgrims leaving all for conscience sake.” The error is an easy one, therefore, which insists that the “North American Review”—which has been all its life devoted to a delighted showing up of what is good and precious in New England only—puffing its small poets and its small statesmen, its small orators, and smaller sermon makers, with most hearty bellows—not to speak of that small sect which it most favors—for, even in New England, there is a more sacred circle to be found within the circle of its special charity—has been in reality doing the duty of a national organ, seeking the honor and elevation of its country, in every section of this wide-spread land, insisting upon the excellence, however remotely it may be found, and holding it up to the knowledge of our own and other nations.
This miserable partiality has been so manifest, in spite of all its studious efforts to avoid the appearance, that nobody out of New England, entertains the smallest doubt upon the subject; and, even within that favored region, many will be found, liberal and intelligent, frankly to make the admission and to lament the fact.
Let any one curious upon the subject, turn to its numerous issues, and he will find that, with the exception of those notices which are yielded to foreign publications, the rest of its criticisms are almost wholly confined to works issued from New England presses—sermons, grammars, orations—things of a day—which scarcely deserved mention in the quarterly list of new publications. When this rigid selfishness was departed from, it was only when public opinion had made the forbearance to notice a matter of notoriety and discredit—when, to he silent longer, would wholly expose the miserable selfishness of the system upon which it acted—and bring merited reproach and shame upon the breadth and brass of face which still ventured to insist upon its impartiality.
Writers, south of the Potomac, seldom met with notice, and then in a style of rudeness, and spirit of misrepresentation, which betrayed the malicious sectionality of temper which prevailed, to its exposure, even in its own despite.
We do not know that the middle States have fared very much better than those of the South, in the treatment which they have received at the hands of this journal. Their favorite writers are not employed upon its pages, and their publications are noticed slowly and with evident reluctance. When reviewed, it is very certain that the New England critic employs in the case of the New-Yorker, a very different and less indulgent standard of judgment than that which regulates his criticism when one of his own writers is under analysis,
Procrustes was not more inexorable in the use of his bedstead when the limbs of the stranger were to be adjusted—while, in the ease of the native, his excesses are gently intimated, and what he has good about him—whatever is simply correct and inoffensive proves the occasion for as much delighted cackling as is made by an old hen, suddenly put in possession of a nest egg which she never laid herself.
It is granted that the tastes are decidedly more rigorous in and about Boston than in most parts of America. But it is because of these very tastes that a Boston critic will be very apt to do injustice to the writers who offend them. A very fastidious person judges almost entirely by his tastes. Mere polish satisfies him, and the absence of it offends him, to the prejudice and disparagement of his subject.
The imaginative writer, with the terrors of a carping critic before him, will achieve nothing—he will attempt none of those daring outlawries of the mind, which secure the highest and longest reputation, but which, as certainly, offend the nice critic by constant departures from those inflexible standards which he has educed simply from the performances of preceding writers.
It is from New-York, with all its deficiencies of taste, its rough-and-tumble enthusiasm—blundering constantly against the proprieties— provoking constantly the sneer of our polished gentlemen down east—that we have the greatest amount of literary performance. Here we have Cooper and Irving; and Bryant and Halleck; and Hoffman and Willis; and Paulding and Herbert—and many more, who will give us, and who have given us, works, with which your Fadladeens, no doubt, will make sad havoc with thumb and fore finger, but which said works will be read, and read with delight, long after the critic by whom they were made mince-meat of, will be famishing upon his circulars.
The standards of judgment maintained by the North American Review, are of the sort to mislead it in this very wise. It looks to the polish rather than the material—to the finish rather than the conception—and will dwell more earnestly upon the clumsiness of the phrase, than upon the great truth which it envelopes. Indeed, it will not see the truth at all, heedful only of the form of utterance. In this respect it does wrong to the country, where, from the deficient forest education of millions, we must expect inferior, unpolished tastes, and, in just the same degree, have a right to look for bold and noble thoughts, great conceptions, and a fresh and vigorous imagination.
We might dwell much longer upon the parochial character of this Review, satisfied as we are that what has been the case from the beginning will continue to be the case, even to the end of the chapter. A more conclusive assurance to this effect could not be given than that furnished by the publishers themselves, in the list of contributors named in the circular. ‘To these, as writers, we have no sort of objection, and will not dispute the assertion that “no periodical in the country can furnish a more reputable list.”
But our objection lies more deeply. It is that these are all—that these speak only for a section—and that no pains have been taken to secure leading writers in every section of the Union, by which the rights, the reputation, and the interests of each, might properly be associated, in a vehicle claiming to represent the national mind abroad, and to give it succour and encouragement at home. Until this is done, it will be as vain for us to hope for justice to any but the region to which the contributors are all sworn, as it will be for the editors to seek for sympathy and patronage from any other. A decent sense of sectional desert and independence, will render the one thing quite as impossible, as it would appear that the other is destined to be.
As for its serving the national cause, and representing the national character, we venture to assert, with confidence, that the sectional and selfish partiality which it has always maintained,—asserting the one region to the wholesale and scornful neglect of all others,—was, in point of fact, calculated to do the national reputation more injury, by an indirect process, than all the abuse of all the British Quarterlies. Such a course naturally tended to produce the belief,—if, as the Circular boasts, and we fear truly,—that the rest of the country was a mere barren,—a wilderness,—unpregnant, unbearing,—destitute of moral of every sort,—wanting in character and manners, and totally deficient in all the shows, whether of art, or literature, or intellect.
To take up the pages of the North American Review, quarter after quarter, and see nothing but proofs of New-England, and this, too, in a work professing to speak for the whole nation, would, to those not in the secret,—to the uninquiring and uninterested,—establish this fact, if it failed in every other.
It is with regret that we are compelled to admit, as claimed by the Circular before us, that the “North-American Review” is regarded abroad, to a certain degree, as the proper exponent of our institutions and mind. This is due to various causes, which it will only be necessary to glance at here. The homogeneous character of the New-England people, growing into a clannishness which makes them stick together like shrimps, confers upon them, in all speculations, the force of numbers, and gives an impulse to the enterprise which they second, though it originates with an individual mind, which make its progress well-nigh irresistible.
They act by masses always, and not by individuals. Hence the fact, that the North-American Review,—their organ,—devoted to their interests,—contributing, at every quarterly issue, to the intense self-esteem of the community, and jealously excluding all others from consideration, as “outer barbarians,”—is able to boast of a prolonged existence of thirty years, when it is seldom that any periodical, in any other part of the United States, can be found to have survived more than a third part of that term.
They have concentrated their support upon this work,—have withheld patronage from all others out of their immediate borders,—and have thus conferred upon it all the authority of a permanent organ of the country. No such exclusiveness seems to distinguish the people of any other part of the Union. This Review (the North-American) has, until very lately, been taken in large numbers by the people of the South, while it is a fact, speaking volumes, that the “Southern Review,” edited by Hugh S. Legaré, and Stephen Elliott, and numbering among its regular contributors some of the noblest statesmen and most ripe scholars of the Union, did not circulate more than twenty-five copies North of New-York.
The reputation of the “Southern Review” is proverbial. Its great merits, making it second to none in the country, and superior to most, have never been denied, even when the opinion was extorted from the most hostile and bigoted of opponents. Yet was this work left to languish, depending exclusively upon the support of the Southern people, at the very time when the citizens of the South were pouring out their thousands into the laps of Northern publishers, in the maintenance of periodicals which were mainly devoted to the selfish business of upholding the interests and pride of the one single section at the expense of all the rest.
The evil results were three-fold. The native mind, South and West, was disparaged,—a constant stimulus was given to the mind of New-England,—and the character of her thinking was insensibly impressed upon the rest of the country. Nor must it be a reproach to the South and West, that they suffered their literature to be thus provided to their hands, by a people differing in many respects in character, and having but few sympathies with their customs and institutions. This result seems to have been almost inevitable from their pursuits. Devoted to agriculture, and covering sparsely an immense extent of country, the popular mind was necessarily deficient in activity, in consequence of the absence of that daily attrition of mind with mind, which favors the cause of literature in commercial and densely-settled communities.
While the crowded farmers and merchants of New-England work together in masses, the Southern planter is always an individual. A high sense of personal independence, on his part, makes him reluctant to serve in the ranks; and thus it is that the South is never found cordially to co-operate in any measures, social or political, under the plea that the object requires combination.
Let us illustrate by a single instance. In the Northern cities, three hundred individuals subscribe, per capita, to feed and lionize Mr. Charles Dickens. In the South, the course would have been to have divided the time of the lion, between the houses of as many private gentlemen. No such display could have been made in the one region as the other, and, possibly, this fact alone might have reconciled a visiter of any sensibility to the inferiority of the reception. The same individuality tends also to the general inappreciation of native endeavour.
We are slow to throw up our caps for one another, lest there be a king over us in Israel. These several characteristics have their mutual advantages and evils. Much is achieved by combination at the North, which it could be well for the South if we could bring about by any means. Public works, for example, flourish in the one region, and are apt to perish in the other. Large appropriations, from a common fund, raise noble fabrics, permanent bridges, capacious and famous turnpikes. With us, we have no common fund for any such purposes, or it is supplied with a very niggardly hand. But, in the absence of these advantages, we have no mobs such as in Philadelphia and Boston, where they burn convents, fire cities, scare innocent women, and murder simple artisans,——the consequence of a constant appeal to men to surrender their individuality and act in masses. Wanting this combined action, we have a personal responsibility, which is never given up to the keeping of numbers.
This individuality, which leads to frequent rencounters and duels, bloody feuds and fights, is yet sufficient to save us from the murder of women, which never takes place in the South, and is a frequent thing in the North. But to bring the parallel still more closely to bear,—while the aggregate sectionality of the one region prompts them to concentrate their support upon the one periodical, making it permanent, and thus, by the very means of its permanence, conferring character upon it,—the people of the other are indifferent to the matter altogether:—satisfied each man, with his individual supply of mental food, he gives himself no concern to ask whence it comes, and thus leaves it to strangers, who are sometimes hostile to his institutions, and at best only indifferent supporters,—to furnish the means of knowledge and of opinion to his neighbours and his children. It is one of the evil results of a purely agricultural state, that it lacks most of those means of moral strength which are desirable for combination.
The social world of New-England, and her institutions, are distinguished by characteristics of greater strength and permanence than most others of the Union. The New-Englander goes abroad upon a thousand adventures,—covers all lands and seas with his enterprise, but leaves his women at home, and most usually returns to them. It is to this fact, in a great degree, that he preserves the homogeneousness of the family; and to this practice he owes much more of character than is altogether apparent to himself.
But, so far from justly representing the character and mind of the United States, the North-American Review does not even correctly represent those of New-England. The New-England moral, like that of our people generally, is one of great and ambitious eagerness, full of energy and enthusiasm, and, if not spiced with the same degree of reckless and impatient spirit, as marks the Southern or the Western man, is noways deficient in a certain degree of impetuosity, which, under great excitement, puts on the look of wilfulness and fierceness. The tone is more consistent in New-England than elsewhere, but the popular mind equally insists on progress, and disdains that quality in politics which goes by the somewhat lackadaisical name of conservatism. Not that it is not conservative. It adheres to what it is, but not to what it has done. It clings to itself, to New-Englandism only, and knows no nation beside. But it is to New England in the advance, always ambitious, always on the march for acquisition It is still the old Puritan nature,—a singular compound of courage and caution, of eager enthusiasm and dogged tenacity. How can such a people be represented by such an organ as the “North-American Review,”—an organ, which, by reason of its own constitution, can never do justice to the more earnest, the more progressive and commanding attributes of the popular character.
Its staid formalities of demeanor, its nice proprieties, its quiet complacency, its utter lack of warmth and heartiness, the uniformity and monotony of its tone, to say nothing of the peculiar sect in religion which is supposed to predominate among its contributors,—these are all antagonist qualities to those which distinguish the nation, and the Yankee character as a part of it. These are the distinguishing features of a coterie, and are very unlike the rude vivacity, the unhesitating forwardness, the frank manhood, the persevering courage, the eager inquisitiveness, and the generous impulse, which are the leading marks of the Anglo-American.
The ‘North-American Review” may be admitted to represent what has been reached in the scholarship of the country, but not the peculiar traits of American genius. It represents only what is trim, and petite, and precise among us,—our greater polish, perhaps,—our finish, and the absolute height of our scholarship,—though this latter admission frequently denied But it scarcely speaks for the genuine nature of will be denied by-many a scholar of the country, as we have heard it the nation,—for its heart and for its strength—for its courage and imagination, for its noble works, its great enterprise, and the true grandeur of its character, shown in its honest impulse and progressive achievements.
But we tire of our theme. That the North-American Review did not meet the wants of the country, and was very far from representing its capacities and character, we know from many sources and circumstances, apart from such as flow from inevitable causes, which it is scarcely necessary to enumerate. It was because of this conviction that the American Quarterly Review was established by Mr. Walsh in Philadelphia; the Southern Review by Stephen Elliott in South Carolina; the New-York Review by Hawks & Henry, in New-York; and had these several communities been as clannish as New-England, these reviews would have been as permanent, and, we think, much more prosperous, than our “veteran periodical.” In some respects—of style and manner—inferior to the North-American, they were yet, in others, much more intrinsically important, vastly its superior. They were governed, in the first place, by a more catholic spirit; were more considerate of our own literature,—though still faulty in this essential,— and asserted the just claims of French letters, in regard to which the North American had proved itself equally ignorant and unjust.
But why dilate? Enough to counsel the worthy proprietors of this “veteran journal,” while they have certain improvements in progress, to attempt others, of far more importance, without which their self-complacent Circulars will avail them very little. Let our worthy and venerable brother,—whose real merits are such as to make us desirous that his faults and vices should be amended,—determine to do justice to the broad and covering title which he has assumed,—forget the immediate publishing city whence his journal issues, and the small cliques which buzz around his courtly tables,—and open his eyes to the true facts and the real nature of the great country of which he is the self-appointed organ. ‘This done, and the claim, which he now urges, to the national patronage, will be somewhat better founded, than he now, rather too complacently, imagines it to be.