Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903
It was a wild mixture of cosmopolitanism and Hamletism, and it indicates
accurately the true state of my _cor cordium_ at that time. Earnest
thought, or a yearning for truth, and worldly folly, were playing a game
of battledore and shuttlecock, and I was the feathered cork. There is a
song without words by Mendelssohn, which sets forth as clearly as
Shakespeare or Heine could have done in words, deep melancholy or
unavoidable suffering expressing itself merrily and gaily in a manner
which is both touching and beautiful, or sweet and sad. Without any self-
consciousness or display of sentimentalism, I find deep traces of this in
many little poems or sketches which I wrote at that time, and which have
now been forgotten. I had been in Arcadia; I was now in a very pleasant
sunny Philistia; but I could not forget the past. And I never forgot it.
Once in Paris, in the opera, I used in jest emphatically the Russian word
_harrascho_, "good," when a Russian stranger in the next box smiled
joyously, and rising, waved his glove to me. Once in a brilliant soiree
in Philadelphia there was a Hungarian Count, an exile, and talking with
him in English, I let fall for a joke "_Bassama terem-tete_!" He grasped
my hand, and, forgetting all around, entered into a long conversation. It
was like the American who, on finding an American cent in the streets in
Paris, burst into tears. So from time to time something recalled Europe
to me.
I went now and then to New York, which I liked better than Philadelphia.
I was often a guest of Mr. Kimball. He introduced me to Dr. Rufus
Griswold, a strange character and a noted man of letters. He was to his
death so uniformly a friend to me, and so untiring in his efforts to aid
me, that I cannot find words to express his kindness nor the gratitude
which I feel. He became the editor of a literary magazine which was
really far in advance of the time. It did not last long; while it
endured I supplied for it monthly reviews of foreign literature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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