among lovers, an attitude peculiar of course to many of the very early echopoems. 96 Except for these two poems just cited, it may be rather broadly stated that the use of the echo-device was discontinued in England after the Restoration. In fact the further occurrences of the species from 1660 to the present time are so few that they can be grouped and briefly discussed as a whole. As mere evidence that this use of the echo is not dead, without any attempt to indicate a vigorous life, we may at least say that the single echo fitted into the stanza form is found in Byron's "Oscar of Alva" (In "Hours of Idleness," 1807),97 Shelley's "Epysychidion" (1821),98 in Tennyson's "Launcelot and Elaine" (1859),99 and in the French (simply to show that it had not died there either) in Lamartine's "Jocelyn" (1837).100 And yet it seems even from the beginning that these are not really echoes at all in our sense of the word. They are verbal repetitions and have the dramatic effect; but they spring out of thought rather than out of technical manipulation. They are real echoes, not poetic ones. 101 They are in the poems because the authors actually imagined real responses echoing down the steep turret steps to Elaine or through the forest aisles to the poet of Epipsychidion. They are not there because of literary relationships and influences. But there was one use of the echo-dialogue in base forms which in all probability had purely literary origins. It is a Napoleonic adaptation of the device as it had been employed against Roundheads and against Jesuits. It furthermore has a tragedy connected with it for none could then take lightly the name of the man who rode across frontiers in a dim gray traveling coach, and ruled and dominated Europe. 96 This poem, called "A Gentle Echo on Woman, in the Doric Manner," is to be found among the "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse Printed for John Mayhew," 1711. The authors of these miscellanies were Swift, Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay; but of this we can only be sure it was not written by Swift. There are, besides this extended use, a few cases similar to that in Addison's translation from Ovid: Pope's "Pastorals" (1709), where a great part of the refrain is an invitation to Echo, and one stanza has: "Come, Delia, come; ah, why this long delay? Again we find in Pope, "The Rape of the Lock" (1712), fourth canto: "O wretched maid!' she spread her hands, and cried, Then in John Dyer's, "The Ruins of Rome" (1740): "Sung Caesar, great and terrible in war, 98 11. 225-239. For text see Appendix to be published with this article when printed as a separate. 99 11. 1766-1776. See note 98. To these could be added the single echo at the end of Kipling's prose, "The Story of the Gadsbys," in the Garden of Eden scene (see note 98), and a curious one in Byron's "Bride of Abydos" (1813): "Hark! to the hurried question of despair: 100 In "Quatrième Epoque": "Lawrence!"... L'écho seul me renvoye: "Lawrence!" 101 As for instance, in Wordsworth's "Simon Lee"; personification without giving the actual verbal echo: "When Echo bandied round and round, The hallow of Simon Lee." For publishing the original of this 102 and the book in which it was contained, a certain bookseller of Nuremberg was taken out at Braunau and summarily shot on the morning of August 26, 1806. The execution caused a great furore at the time, which did not die down, but continued in the memories of Bavarians for years. Even until very recent times the incident has continued to be written up and to have the original documents concerning it published and republished. Said Carlyle: "Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest. I am not sure that he had better have lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German bookseller, Palm." Thus much trouble did at least one verse cause, and thus did Johann Phillip Palm lose his life for the satiric responses of which Echo is capable. Yet, aside from this great publicity and notoriety, echoes seemed to have gone on about as before. They were mentioned in out-of-door places where the scenery was pastoral, in Walton, in Gay's "Journey to Exeter," in Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea's poem "To the Echo," in Marmontel's "La Bergère des Alpes" (1766), which though not producing regular echodialogues show that the echo-theme is still an accompaniment of the pastoral idea. But the pastoral had never been particularly popular in England. It enjoyed a slight vogue about 1580–1590, and about the year 1630. But never did it become the formal and popular species of entertainment that it was in France from 1620-1630, or in Italy earlier when, as we have already said, Guarini popularized the echo in pastoral. There are some in Congreve's "The Mourning Bride." Yet the formal gardens of the Eighteenth Century, and Allan Ramsay's shepherdesses, yielded no echoes; and we are forced to turn to the drama. Even there the plays are too much akin to the "music hall" and too remote from the delicate art of pastoral. In the famous garden scene of Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro" (1783) 103 there are cleverly feigned echoes, the same counterfeiting appears with an attempt at terror effects in "The Haunted Tower" (1789) by James Cobb, 104 and bass responses are heard to a woman's song (in the manner of an echo) in "The Noble Peasant" (1786) by Thomas Holcroft.105 But these are either simulated echoes or musical refrains, so that we really have no echo at all until we come to Pixerécourt's mélodrame, "Coelina or the Tale of Mystery" (1802), which used a single echo, "Vengeance!" for terror effect, but which Holcroft in translation omitted from the English version of the play.106 And so in the field of the drama almost the only real example we can point to within the past two hundred and fifty years is in a play called "The Echo of Westminster Bridge" (1835), where the whole plot depended upon that particular echo. So we have found very little in the usual forms in which echo-poems previously appeared. The sonnet is forgotten, the importance of the device 102 See "Notes and Queries," Series 1, v. IX, p. 153; Series 11, v. X, p. 10, 55, 76. 104 See note 98. 105 See note 98. in drama is neglected, the pastoral treads the stately measure of the heroic couplet. It is only as we come to the later outburst of genuine song in what is known as the Romantic "period" that we find any echoes. And these when we do find them are reminiscent of a very uncharacteristic type, that type of a semi-musical nature which may not honestly be an echo at all, which appeared in the masques and court "revels" of Ben Jonson, and William Browne. It is not, of course, possible to include Shelley's powerful poem "Prometheus Unbound" (1820) within the category of masques and revels any more than within that of the drama, and yet the use of the echo-device is almost identical with that in Jonson and Browne. Thus do merely technical details leap across the centuries irrespective of methods and environments. It will be noticed that there is another important point of similarity with Jonson, for here as in “Cynthia's Revels" the echoes develop an entirely independent voice with separate speech of their own. To this should be added a song containing an echo chorus as follows: Echo in the hollow glen, Wake ye from your stilly sleep; Let us hear your voice again, Clear and deep. Clear and deep! contained in a little book edited by William B. Bradbury, published by M. H. Newman & Co., 199 Broadway, New York, in 1847, which illustrates again how close the echo may sometimes be to mere musical refrains. These concluding pages of this paper will illustrate, by their haphazard and formless arrangement, exactly what has occurred in the later history of the echo-device which reached the end of its development during the Elizabethan period and since then has been dropped and spasmodically taken up again, now and then, here and there. 107 But each poem which I shall cite here will represent almost a totally different thing, except that the device seems now to be used with a sharp-pointed pen, sharp with wit or sharp with satire. The first called "Echo" by John Godfrey Saxe is purely a humorous application. I asked of Echo, t'other day (Whose words are often few and funny). What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love, and matrimony. Quoth Echo plainly, - "Matter o' money!" Whom should I marry? Should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth Echo, sharply, — “Nary flirt!" 107 A few scattered verses are given by William S. Walsh in his "Handbook of Literary Curiosities," p. 260 ff. What if, aweary of the strife That long has lured the dear deceiver, She promise to amend her life, And sin no more; can I believe her? Quoth Echo, very promptly, - "Leave her!" But if some maiden with a heart But what if, seemingly afraid To bind her fate in Hymen's fetter, Quoth Echo, rather coldly, "Let her!" What if, in spite of her disdain, I find my heart intwined about With Cupid's dear delicious chain So closely that I can't get out? Quoth Echo, laughingly, - "Get out!" But if some maid with beauty blest, As pure and fair as Heaven can make her, Till envious Death shall overtake her? Quoth Echo, (sotto voce), - "Take her!" The next poem, with the Greek title, EI' "EXQ 'ANAMQAATTQ, was first published in the Harvard "Lampoon." But the author, Jefferson Butler Fletcher, has long been a student of Renaissance Literature and in all probability did a pure "stunt-piece" in imitation of the earlier forms.108 108 From the Harvard "Lampoon," March 12, 1886. The poem was not reprinted in the author's later volume of collected poetry. Ah! Heavy'd seem Olympic bread, Though Hera's home-made yeast-cake leavens, Beside the lightness of that tread Those fairy shoes, O blissful heavens! Wouldn't all the world be willing To give all the world's delight; If to seize those kisses thrilling, By Jove! you jade, you! that is too much; Well, I forgive you ere we part, Though you've made me a sorry martyr. But don't try too hard to be smart, Lest some day you should catch a Tartar. "L'Echo," from François Coppée (see note 98), rather continues in the modern tendency, if not toward humor, at least toward that discreet humor which is known as society verse. Another, "Eco y Yo" (see note 98), is in Spanish, by a South American, simply to show how far the technical trait has spread. It may bob up in Chinese next. This poem is by Ruben Darío (1868-1916) and has not, so far as I know, been translated.109 The next poem carries us into still another country: it is a poem called "The Echo" translated from Heine.110 Through the lovely mountainland There rode a cavalier. 'Oh, ride I to my darling's arms, So onward rode the cavalier The next echo-poem which I am giving, and it is the last, is the strangest manifestation of a very strange device. A technical trick, used mostly in periods of great artificial fantasy, is taken up by a poet of a nation at war and used as it had previously been used for political satire. The 100 It is included by Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly as No. 205 in "The Oxford Book of Spanish Verse." |