What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations,floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream,and mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections!Violent,abusive as he was,unjust to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice,his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was not harmful,but rather of use.His attack on Willis very probably did him good;he needed a little discipline,and though he got it too unsparingly,some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under.One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness,probably from some accidental pique,or equally insignificant reason.I myself,one of the three survivors before referred to,escaped with a love-pat,as the youngest son of the Muse.Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment.Bailey,an American writer,"who made long since a happy snatch at fame,"which must have been snatched away from him by envious time,for I cannot identify him;Thatcher,who died early,leaving one poem,The Last Request,not wholly unremembered;Miss Hannah F.Gould,a very bright and agreeable writer of light verse,--all these are commended to the keeping of that venerable public carrier,who finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge,after making a show of paying every possible attention to them so long as he is kept in sight.
It was a good time to open a portfolio.But my old one had boyhood written on every page.A single passionate outcry when the old warship I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen literature,and in the "Naval Monument,"was threatened with demolition;a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked hat and breeches,were the best scraps that came out of that first Portfolio,which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the duties of a profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which would have been otherwise expended in filling it.
During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the greater part of the time.Only now and then it would be taken up and opened,and something drawn from it for a special occasion,more particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which Iwas a member.
In the year 1857,towards its close,the "Atlantic Monthly,"which Ihad the honor of naming,was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips &Sampson,under the editorship of Mr.James Russell Lowell.
He thought that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine.I looked at the poor old receptacle,which,partly from use and partly from neglect,had lost its freshness,and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome the new-comer in the literary world of Boston,the least provincial of American centres of learning and letters.
The gilded covering where the emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded;not wholly,perhaps,but how was the gold become dim!---how was the most fine gold changed!Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time for literature,and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio had done little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of supply was still in existence.
I looked at the old Portfolio,and said to myself,"Too late!too late.This tarnished gold will never brighten,these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear;close them,and leave them to the spider and the book-worm."In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period.
When,a little while after the establishment of the new magazine,the "Saturday Club"gathered about the long table at "Parker's,"such a representation of all that was best in American literature had never been collected within so small a compass.Most of the Americans whom educated foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration official dignitaries,whose temporary importance makes them objects of curiosity--were seated at that board.But the club did not yet exist,and the "Atlantic Monthly"was an experiment.There had already been several monthly periodicals,more or less successful and permanent,among which "Putnam's Magazine"was conspicuous,owing its success largely to the contributions of that very accomplished and delightful writer,Mr.George William Curtis.That magazine,after a somewhat prolonged and very honorable existence,had gone where all periodicals go when they die,into the archives of the deaf,dumb,and blind recording angel whose name is Oblivion.It had so well deserved to live that its death was a surprise and a source of regret.Could another monthly take its place and keep it when that,with all its attractions and excellences,had died out,and left a blank in our periodical literature which it would be very hard to fill as well as that had filled it?
This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon,and I,who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord,having given myself to other studies and duties,wondered somewhat when Mr.Lowell insisted upon my becoming a contributor.And so,yielding to a pressure which I could not understand,and yet found myself unable to resist,I promised to take a part in the new venture,as an occasional writer in the columns of the new magazine.
That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my table,and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857.I was already at least Nel mezzo del cammin di mia,vita,when I risked myself,with many misgivings,in little-tried paths of what looked at first like a wilderness,a selva oscura,where,if Idid not meet the lion or the wolf,I should be sure to find the critic,the most dangerous of the carnivores,waiting to welcome me after his own fashion.
