He decided simultaneously that his own local studies must be illustrated,
and that he must come with the artist and show him just which bits to do,
not knowing that the two arts can never approach the same material from
the same point. He thought he would particularly like his illustrator to
render the Dickensy, cockneyish quality of the shabby-genteel
ballad-seller of whom he stopped to ask his way to the street where
Lindau lived, and whom he instantly perceived to be, with his stock in
trade, the sufficient object of an entire study by himself. He had his
ballads strung singly upon a cord against the house wall, and held down
in piles on the pavement with stones and blocks of wood. Their control in
this way intimated a volatility which was not perceptible in their
sentiment. They were mostly tragical or doleful: some of them dealt with
the wrongs of the working-man; others appealed to a gay experience of the
high seas; but vastly the greater part to memories and associations of an
Irish origin; some still uttered the poetry of plantation life in the
artless accents of the end--man. Where they trusted themselves, with
syntax that yielded promptly to any exigency of rhythmic art, to the
ordinary American speech, it was to strike directly for the affections,
to celebrate the domestic ties, and, above all, to embalm the memories of
angel and martyr mothers whose dissipated sons deplored their sufferings
too late.
Pages:
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582