THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE.

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW 作者：华盛顿·欧文投票推荐加入书签留言反馈

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A COLLOQUY IMINSTER ABBEY.

 I know that all beh the moon decays,

 And what by mortals in this world is brought,

 In times great periods shall return to nought.

 I know that all the muses heavenly rays,

 With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,

 As idle sounds, of few or none are sought--

 That there is nothing lighter than mere praise.

 DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

 THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was l about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought whie is apt to dignify with the name of re?e, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by peing still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library.

 He ducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of fes, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in whisday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some dif?culty, as if seldom used. We now asded a dark narrow staircase, and, pas<bdi>?</bdi>sing through a sed door, ehe library.

 I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothidows at a siderable height from the ?oor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An a picture of some reverend dignitary of the Chur his robes hung over the ?replace. Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. They sisted principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the tre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed ?tted for quiet study and profouation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers eg soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reighrough the dusky hall.

 I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in part, with brass clasps, aed myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but sider the library a kind of literary catab, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed ao bla and moulder in dusty oblivion.

 How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with sudifference, cost some ag head! how many weary days! how many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the faan, and the still more blessed face of Nature; aed themselves to painful researd intense re?e! And all for what? To occupy an inch of dusty shelf--to have the titles of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy chur or casual straggler like myself, and in ane to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers, ?lling the ear for a moment, lingering traly in echo, and then passing away, like a thing that was not!

 While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unpro?table speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I actally loosehe clasps; when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep, then a husky hem, and at length began to talk. At ?rst its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb whie studious spider had woven across it, and having probably tracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly ?uent, versable little tome.

 Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to re in modern parlance.

 It began with railings about the of the world, about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other suonplace topics of literary repining, and plained bitterly that it had not been opened for more than two turies--that the dean only looked now and then into the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, tri?ed with them for a few moments, and theurhem to their shelves. "What a plague do they mean?" said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was somewhat choleric--"what a plague do they mean by keeping several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, like so maies in a harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal to the task, let them on a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing."

 &quot<tt>?t>;Softly, my worthy friend," replied I; "you are not aware how much better you are off than most books of yeion. By being stored away in this a library you are like the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels, while the remains of their porary mortals, left to the ordinary course of Nature, have long siuro dust."

 "Sir," said the little tome, ruf?ing his leaves and looking big, "I was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was inteo circulate from hand to hand, like reat porary works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two turies, and might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeah my iines if you had not by ce given me an opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."

 "My good friend," rejoined I, "had you beeo the circulation of which you speak, you would lohis have been no more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well stri in years: very few of your poraries be at present ience, and those few owe their loy to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and gratefully have pared to those in?rmaries attached tious establishments for the be of the old and decrepit, and where, by quiet f and no employment, they often eo an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your poraries as if in circulation. Where do we meet with their works? What do we hear of Rrosteste of Lin? No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but, alas! the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He deed two bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but posterity never inquires after his labors.

 What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the pt of the world, which the world has revenged by fetting him? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in classical position?

 Of his three great herois, one is lost forever, excepting a mere fragment; the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis the Francis, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury--of Simeon of Durham--of Be of Peterbh--of John Hanvill of St. Albans--of----"

 "Prithee, friend," cried the quarto in a testy tone, "how old do you think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manriated themselves, and deserved to be fotten;* but I, sir, was ushered into the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in my own native to a time when the language had bee ?xed; and indeed I was sidered a model of pure and elegant English."

 (I should observe that these remarks were couched in sutolerably antiquated terms, that I have had in?nite dif?culty in rendering them into modern phraseology.) "I cry you mercy," said I, "for mistaking ye; but it matters little. Almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed intetfulness, and De Wordes publications are mere literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+ Even now many talk of Spensers `well of pure English unde?led, as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not rather a mere ?uence of various tongues perpetually subject to ges and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so ?eeting. Uhought be itted to something more perma and ungeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity aation of the most popular writer. He ?nds the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He looks bad beholds the early authors of his try, ohe favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few shes have covered them with obscurity, and their merits only be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow antiquated and obsolete, until it shall bee almost as unintelligible in its native land as aian obelisk or one of those Runiscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. "I declare," added I, with some emotion, "when I plate a modern library, ?lled with new works in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep, like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, aed that in one hundred years not one of them would be ience."

 * "In Latin and French hath many soueraites had great delyte to endite, and have many hinges ful?lde, but certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the Fren have as good a fantasye as w ave in hearying of Frens Englishe."--CHAUCERS Testament of Love.

 + Holinshed in his icle, observes, "Afterwards, also, by diligent vell f Geffry Chaucer and John Gowre, iime of Richard the Sed, and after them of John S and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfe until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully aplished the ornature of the same to their great praise and mortal endation."

 "Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is: these in modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia, Sackvilles stately plays and Mirror fistrates, or the ?ne-spun euphuisms of the `unparalleled John Lyly."

 "There yain mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose in vogue, because they happeo be so when you were last in circulation, have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia, the immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,* and which, in truth, was full of houghts, delicate images, and graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were ohe delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wra the time, have likewise gone down with all their writings and their troversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a spe for the grati?cation of the curious.

 * "Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his get, and the golden pillar of his noble ce; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquehe breath of the muses, the honey bee of the dai ?owers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the ?eld, the tongue of Suada in the chamber, the spirits of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellen print."-Harvey Pierces Supererogation.

 "For my part," I tinued, "I sider this mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence for the be of the world at large, and of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied aiful tribes of vegetables springing up, ?ourishing, ad the ?elds for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fedity of nature would be a grievanstead of a blessing. The earth would groan with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface bee a tangled wilderness. In like mahe works of genius and learning dee and make way for subsequent produs. Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have ?ourished their allotted time; otherwise the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be pletely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.

 Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious operation; they were writteher on part, which was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for another; or on papyrus, which was fragile aremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and unpro?table craft, pursued chie?y by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and ed almost eo monasteries. To these circumsta may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity--that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, and menius drowned in the deluge. But the iions of paper and the press have put ao all these restraints. They have made every one a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The sequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river-expanded into a sea. A few turies since ?ve or six hundred manuscripts stituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries, such as actually exist, taining three or four huhousand volumes; legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on with fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number? Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of the Muse, now that she has bee so proli?c, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere ?uctuation of language will not be suf?t. Criticism may do much; it increases with the increase of literature, and resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by eists. All possible encement, therefore, should be given to the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vai criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and the world will iably be overstocked with good books. It will soohe employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man of passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything but reviews, and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a mere walking catalogue."

 "My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was sidered quite temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he oor, half-educated varlet, that knew little of La?９9lib.in, and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the try for deer-stealing. I think his name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."

 "On the trary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, which by their vast and deep roots, peing through the mere surfad laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-?owing current, and hold up many a neighb plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.

 Such is the case with Shakespeare, whom we behold defying the enents of time, retaining in moderhe language and literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, merely from having ?ourished in his viity. But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of entators, who, like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them."

 Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at length he broke out into a plethoric ?t of laughter that had wellnigh choked him by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" cried he, as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you would persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning! by a poet! forsooth--a poet!" And here he wheezed forth a of laughter.

 I fess that I felt somewhat led at this rudeness, which, however, I pardoned on at of his having ?ourished in a less polished age. I determined, heless, not to give up my point.

 "Yes," resumed I positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the best mortality. Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always uand him. He is the faithful portrayer of Nature, whose features are always the same and always iing. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages crowded with onplaces, and their thoughts expanded into tediousness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, toug, or brilliant.

 He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, therefore, tain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets whiclose within a small pass the wealth of the language--its family jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed, as in .９９lib.he case of Chaucer; but the brilliand intrinsic value of the gems tinue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, ?lled with monkish legends and academical troversies! What bogs of theological speculations! What dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only do we behold the heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beas on their widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to age."*

 I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly unscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further versation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was another of those old day-dreams to which I am subject, I have o this moment, been able to discover.

 * Thorow earth and waters deepe,

 The pen by skill doth passe:

 Aly nyps the worldes abuse,

 And shoes us in a glasse,

 The vertu and the vice

 Of every wight alyve;

 The honey b that bee doth make

 Is not so sweet in hyve,

 As are the golden leves

 That drops from poets head!

 Which doth surmount our on talke

 As farre as dross doth lead.

 Churchyard.

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