Richard Henry Dana, the Elder. An American poet and essayist; born at Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 15, 1787; died Feb. 2, 1879. His lectures on Shakespeare’s characters, delivered in the principal cities of the Atlantic coast (1839–40) awakened a deep public interest. His principal poems are: “The Change of Home” (1824); “The Dying Raven” (1825); “The Buccaneers” (1827), specially noteworthy for its magnificent descriptions of the vicissitudes of ocean scenery. To a periodical publication, The Idle Man (N. Y., 1821–22), of which he was editor, he contributed critical papers and several short stories; among them “Paul Fenton,” and “Edward and Mary.”

Personal

  The most charming way to see Dana was on his own coast, on the rocks, under a gray sky, as the small black figure moved slowly up and down the beach, with the face to the sea…. He sat beneath his portrait, the work of William M. Hunt, and as I cast my eyes at the portrait the thought came that this was an octogenarian, but as he drew me into conversation upon current literatures I could not but feel that I was talking with a man of my own age. To one who was specially intimate with him he recently said “I never remember I am old. I feel young.” In fact, he never grew old. His beard grew to be silver gray, but he never used glasses, and even the print of the London Guardian was not too close for him to read by gaslight only a few days before his death. And so I found him the youngest old man I have ever met. His conversation was as fresh as salt-sea spray; it was racy; it sparkled. I never met a man who put more meaning into words…. His religious life, if less prominent than his literary life, was what was chief and best in him. He took the conservative side in the famous controversy in which his cousin, Dr. Channing, led the liberal side. His opinions were broad and strong; they were his own. He was not satisfied with the Calvinism of his day, and finally found his home in the Episcopal church, in which communion he henceforth lived and in which he died. He was one of the original founders of the Church of the Advent, and as long as it kept to its old position was warmly attached to it, and worshipped there to the last.

  He was under the usual height, broad-shouldered but slight, still holding himself tolerably erect, with sight and hearing unimpaired, his eloquent and expressive eyes undimmed, and his pale countenance and fine regular features presenting a mingled air of sadness and unmistakable refinement, combined with the sweet, high-born courtesy of the old school of gentlemen. His silvery hair, reaching to his shoulders, and his full, flowing beard and long mustache of the same color, assisted in making him in his tout ensemble one of the finest living pictures that I have ever seen of noble and venerable age. I stood in the presence of Richard Henry Dana, the patriarch of American poets. Although over ninety years of age, he was still in the possession of a fair measure of health and strength, and in the enjoyment of a serene and sunny old age.

	In the old churchyard of his native town,
	And in the ancestral tomb beside the wall,
	We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,
	And left him to his rest and his renown.
	The snow was falling, as if Heaven dropped down
	White flowers of Paradise to strew his pall;—
	The dead around him seemed to wake, and call
	His name, as worthy of so white a crown.

The Buccaneer, 1827

  “The Buccaneer,” is a story of supernatural agency, founded, as the author says in his Preface, on a tradition relating to an island off the New England coast. It is a narrative of a murder committed by a piratical, hardhearted man, of whom the whole island stood in awe, and who at last comes to a strange and horrible end…. The incidents are strongly conceived, and brought before the reader, with great distinctness of painting. It seems to us, however, that the rough brutality of the Buccaneer’s character is sometimes brought out so broadly, as to have rather an unpleasing effect. Yet nothing, it seems to us, can be better in its way, than the passage in which his remorse is described, after it had finally mastered and subdued his spirit.

  There is a boldness in the outline of this poem, and a strength of conception in the incidents, which bespeak genius of no common stamp. The elements of the work are of a description to put to a rigorous test the powers of the writer. The feelings engendered in the darkest recesses of the human heart, and the workings of the stronger and sterner passions of our nature, demand great boldness in the mind that would explore their mysteries, and superior skill in the hand that would subdue them to the purposes of poetry. The spirits of the air come not at the bidding of common mortals; it is only the potent wand of the true enchanter which can summon them from their abodes and command them to do his pleasures. Mr. Dana has approached this subject evidently with a correct appreciation of the daring nature of his attempt, and the execution of his task indicates a careful study of his materials. His subject is one, which in its main features, has been turned to frequent use in poetry, yet he has treated it in a manner peculiarly his own…. The most striking effects of the poem relate more to the manner, than the matter. There is an abruptness in the progress of the narrative, which sometimes appears like a want of connection in the incidents, as if the minor developments, here and there, yet remained to be supplied. The style is remarkable for its plainness and severity; it has no labored elevation or brilliancy, but is at the same time neat and expressive. The language is on the whole in good keeping with the subject. Its simplicity is well adapted to the representation of vehement passions, and is suited to the service and naked grandeur of those feelings which it is the object of the narrative to depict. Notwithstanding the deficiency of ornament in the style, the descriptions are in a high degree striking and picturesque.

  The characters in this poem are not elaborately drawn and filled out. A few bold touches, and a sketch of living power starts into being before the reader’s eye. A word, an expression, a line, open deep glances into the inmost hiding-places of the soul, like a flash of lightning suddenly let in upon the recesses of some gloomy cavern. On these daring pencillings, if we may be allowed a term from a kindred art, the shading of supernatural incidents is made to fall with startling effect, and here and there a trait of softest light, mingles sweetly with the general sternness of the piece. The style is terse and strong. Few words, chosen with consummate art, and constructed with singular power, each being necessary to give the full meaning, and not always doing that, form its leading characteristic.

  The poetical literature of our country can scarcely be said to have a longer date than that of a single generation. As a matter of fact, the very fathers of it are still living. It really commenced with Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” and Dana’s “Buccaneer.” The grave, philosophic tone, chaste simplicity of language, freedom of versification, and freshness and truth of illustration, which marked the former poem, and the terse realism of the “Buccaneer,” with its stern pictures of life and nature drawn with few strokes sharp and vigorous as those of Retzsch’s outlines, left the weak imitators of an artificial school without an audience.

  “The Buccaneer” is remarkable for its representation, equally clear, of external objects and internal moods of thought and passion. In one sense it is the most “objective” of poems; in another, the most “subjective.” The truth would seem to be that Dana’s over-powering conception of the terrible reality of sin—a conception almost as strong as that which was fixed in the imagination of Jonathan Edwards—interferes with the artistic disposition of his imagined scenes and characters, and touches even some of his most enchanting pictures with a certain baleful light.

  “Dana’s imagination has none of the frisky lightness and celerity of an Ariel, but, combining something of the wild grandeur of a Salvator with the imposing darkness of a Rembrandt, is intent upon transferring to his sombre canvas the effect of crime to beget more appalling crime, to dry up the founts of human feeling in the soul, to blast the springing shoots of tenderness and manliness and honor in the heart, to render the man more cruel as he becomes more callous, to banish him from the circle of human sympathies and affections, and to separate him from the companionship of his kind by the solitariness of his unparalleled atrocities, till he becomes unendurable even to himself; and at last, stung by the ghost of unbidden memories, preyed upon by remorse, and maddened by spectral fears and terrors, he plunges beneath the angry waves of black despair.”

  “The Buccaneer,” on which Dana’s reputation rests, is a very striking and graceful poem, dealing with a ghastly story of crime on the high seas which is a little out of keeping with a style as cold and severe as that of Akenside. It is written, moreover, in an unattractive stanza, of which this is an example:—

	“A sweet, low voice, on starry nights,
	Chants to his ear a plaining song;
	Its tones come winding up the heights,
	Telling of woe and wrong;
	And he must listen, till the stars grow dim,
	The song that gentle voice doth sing to him.”

But the poem is well composed, and must be judged, not by the standard of to-day, but by that of the “Corsairs” and “Jacquelines” in competition with which it was written. In Dana’s other poems he shows himself a tamer and less stately Bryant, always graceful, and sometimes very felicitous, preferring, however, the heroic measure to Bryant’s eighteenth-century blank verse.

  In depicting the strongest human feelings and emotions, such as avarice and cruelty, bravado and cowardice, defiance and remorse, the poem possesses a certain power that both fascinates and repels the reader. There are passages of remarkable beauty that are almost sublime, yet one finishes its perusal with the feeling that the poet’s execution falls short of the high design. There is a lack of melody in spite of its elaborate finish, as well as a lack of those essentials that appeal to the sympathies of the reader, and leave indelible impressions upon his memory. It is neither a great nor beautiful poem…. The great Scotch critic was perhaps correct in declaring, “We pronounce it by far the most powerful and original of American poetic compositions.”

General

  Notwithstanding the cold reception it [“The Idle Man”] met with from the public, we look upon as holding a place among the first productions of American literature. It will be referred to hereafter, we doubt not, as standing apart from the crowd of contemporary writings, and distinguished by a character of thought and expression peculiarly its own…. He seems to have fixed his attention only upon what he thought the permanent qualities of literature, and his work is one which will be read with the same pleasure a century hence, as at the present time…. The style of “The Idle Man” is genuine mother English, formed from a study of the elder authors of the language, with now and then a colloquial expression of the humblest kind, elevated into unexpected dignity, or an obsolete word or phrase revived, as if on purpose to excite the distaste of the admirers of a stately or a modernized diction. It is free from all commonplace ornaments, from all that multitude of stock metaphors and illustrations which have answered the uses of authors from time immemorial.

  In attempting to compress his language he is sometimes slightly obscure, and his verse is occasionally harsh, but never feeble, never without meaning…. All the writings of Dana belong to the permanent literature of the country. His prose and poetry will find every year more and more readers.

  Mr. Dana is, perhaps, our most original poet. No American productions, with which we are acquainted, are characterized by such intense subjectiveness, or bear so deep an impress of individuality, as those of the author of the “Buccaneer.” We feel in reading them, that the inward life of the man has found utterance in the rugged music of the poet. He seems never to have written from hearsay, or taken any of his opinions at second-hand. Perhaps this is to be attributed, in a great degree, to his habits of retirement…. In description, he excels, perhaps, all his American contemporaries.

  I fear, owing a very large portion of his reputation to his quondam editorial connection with the “North American Review.”

  Mr. Dana is a writer of great purity and power, of much acuteness and elegance in other walks than in those of philosophic sentiment, or of sentimental description; but in those he is a master, and ranks first among his contemporaries and countrymen. He has vast power in depicting the struggles of the darker passions, jealousy, hatred, suspicion and remorse. “Paul Felton” has touches of Byronic force, and discloses a similar vein to that so fully opened, and with such popular effect, in the works of Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown. In “Paul Felton,” Mr. Dana has exhibited power in depicting passion, as well as sentiment; and the same criticism applies to his “Thornton,” though in a much inferior degree. Yet he is most at home in pictures of domestic life; in describing the charm of home-scenes, in realizing the ideals of conjugal felicity. Strange that the author who, as a man, is so enthusiastic on such a theme, should, as a poet (for he is one, as much in “Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton,” as in the “Buccaneer”), delight in pictures also of gloom, of crime, of remorse…. A writer, equally excellent in prose and poetry, seems to be regarded as a sort of intellectual bigamist. The narrowness of vulgar judgments will no more allow a twofold excellence than the law will allow of more than one wedded wife. It is hence, perhaps, the poetry of Dana has been underrated. His prose fiction is so powerful and fine, his criticism so acute and searching, his moral writing so deep and subtle, that with most critics his poetry must suffer in proportion. Mr. Griswold has pointed out its principal defect, occasional harshness, (almost inseparable from vigorous earnestness), while he has dwelt justly upon its depth and richness of thought Mr. Dana is essentially a philosophic poet, with perhaps more of thought than imagination; a reflective rather than a creative genius, we mean in degree and relatively. Most of his poetry is grave, and much of it religious. There is a spirituality about it, highly characteristic of the writer and the man. Domestic life, and childhood, and feminine purity, are his favorite and frequent themes.

	Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along,
	Involved in a paulo-post-future of song,
	Who’ll be going to write what’ll never be written
	Till the Muse, ere he think of it, gives him the mitten,—
	Who is so well aware of how things should be done,
	That his own works displease him before they’re begun,—
	Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows,
	That the best of his poems is written in prose;
	All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting,
	He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating;
	In a very grave question his soul was immersed,—
	Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first,
	And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on,
	He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton,
	Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there,
	You’ll allow only genius could hit upon either.
	That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore,
	But I fear he will never be anything more;
	The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him,
	The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o’er him,
	He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart,
	He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart,
	Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable,
	In learning to swim on his library-table.

  There are a simplicity and individuality about Dana’s writings, which give him the decided impress of being a man of more originality than he really possesses. There is less reliance upon foreign sources for his subjects; he likewise treats them in a manner of his own, which compels the reader to respect him for his intention, if he cannot applaud him for the successful result of his experiment.

  The contents of the “Idle Man” have been long known to the lovers of Mr. Dana’s writings. It is now nearly thirty years since that little publication was suspended, and nearly twenty, since its stories were collected, together with the poetry, and published in a single duodecimo volume. The most powerful of the fiction is “Paul Felton,”—a terrible delineation of the course of a highly sensitive and educated mind, the victim of morbid feelings, perverting the good and innocent into causes of suspicion and jealousy, and dragged, as by the power of fiends, along its wretched path of misery to murder, exhaustion, and death. To depict such scenes demands very high powers,—a profound insight into the heart, and a certain experience of the sorrows of a morbidly sensitive mind.

  Dana was really the first poet who possessed power enough to delineate the natural peculiarities of his country and to discover the romantic treasures lying hid in its history.

  The life of Richard Henry Dana has special interest for all Americans, from the circumstance that it includes the entire literary history of the nation, not excepting Barlow’s “Vision of Columbus,” which appeared about the time of his birth. He has seen the whole achievement, of which he is an honored part. His own contribution to it is none the less important, because so unobtrusively made. He has never been one of those who attach themselves to the structure as a flying buttress, or seek to shoot aloft at an ornate and conspicuous pinnacle; but when we examine the foundations, we shall find his chisel-mark on many of the most enduring blocks.

  The general impression which the poetry of Richard Henry Dana leaves upon the mind is that he is not so much a poet as a man of vigorous intellect who had determined to be a poet, and that he reached this determination too late in life. He moves like one who is shackled by his measures, whether they are simple, as in “The Buccaneer,” or of a higher order, as in “The Husband and Wife’s Grave” and “The Dying Raven.” The literary career of Richard Henry Dana may be said to have practically ended with the publication of the little volume containing “The Buccaneer” (1827), though he afterward added to it as many more poems as were contained therein (nine in all), and brought out a collected edition of his works in two volumes.

  Brown’s influence is apparent in two novels of Richard Henry Dana, “Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton,” in which a more graceful, if still somewhat abrupt, style is employed, with almost equal vigour, if inferior originality, to illustrate similar monstrosities of character, on the basis of incidents almost equally unnatural, and directed to a moral purpose with such intensity that they are said to have rather frightened than amused their readers.

  The reader will not go to Dana for any original work in prose. He was a reader and lover of books, and brought good ones to America; wrote about them in the “Review;” and, with the Channings—who were his cousins—with the Everetts, and Sparkses and Walkers, made a good centre about which a new literary culture formed itself; but after the literature began to grow, he was easily distanced by the young men who reverenced and outgrew him. Except for that rare and brilliant genius, William Ellery Channing, brought up in part like himself in Newport, he was the oldest of the group that welcomed Wordsworth and the “Lake” people, and blessed them because they loved Nature—the only poetical thing, except his fireside and his liberty, which the New Englander then found to love.

  His poems, published in 1827, under the title of “The Buccaneer, and Other Poems,” were too psychological to be popular: but they picture with striking vividness both the outward and the inward world, and show a truly Calvinistic conception of the reality of sin. Their power is greater than their art: and their beauty is overshadowed by their gloom. Dana was one of those men who gave glimpses of powers apparently equal to any achievement, but who never—for whatever reason—achieve quite what is expected of them.

  Wrote better prose than verse. “The Buccaneer” is based on a finely poetical sea-superstition, but is awkwardly told; all his poems seem manufactured, and most are dull. His reviews of Brown, Irving, and others, in The North American, are sensible, and the style is clear and strong. The tales, “Tom Thornton” and “Paul Felton” (in his periodical, The Idle Man,) have considerable power, although the didacticism of the first is too obvious and the second is a rather violent imitation of Brown.