"whcbn10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howells William Dean)

both in English and Italian with such an airy burletta as "Il Pesceballo"
(he wrote it in Metastasian Italian, and Lowell put it in libretto
English); he had a critical sense as sound as it was subtle in all
literature; and whatever he wrote he imbued with the charm of a style
finely personal to himself. His learning in the line of his Harvard
teaching included an early English scholarship unrivalled in his time,
and his researches in ballad literature left no corner of it untouched.
I fancy this part of his study was peculiarly pleasant to him; for he
loved simple and natural things, and the beauty which he found nearest
life. At least he scorned the pedantic affectations of literary
superiority; and he used to quote with joyous laughter the swelling
exclamation of an Italian critic who proposed to leave the summits of
polite learning for a moment, with the cry, "Scendiamo fra il popolo!"
(Let us go down among the people.)




II.

Of course it was only so hard worked a man who could take thought and
trouble for another. He once took thought for me at a time when it was
very important to me, and when he took the trouble to secure for me an
engagement to deliver that course of Lowell lectures in Boston, which I
have said Lowell had the courage to go in town to hear. I do not
remember whether Professor Child was equal to so much, but he would have
been if it were necessary; and I rather rejoice now in the belief that he
did not seek quite that martyrdom.

He had done more than enough for me, but he had done only what he was
always willing to do for others. In the form of a favor to himself he
brought into my fife the great happiness of intimately knowing Hjalmar
Hjorth Boyesen, whom he had found one summer day among the shelves in the
Harvard library, and found to be a poet and an intending novelist. I do
not remember now just how this fact imparted itself to the professor, but
literature is of easily cultivated confidence in youth, and possibly the
revelation was spontaneous. At any rate, as a susceptible young editor,
I was asked to meet my potential contributor at the professor's two
o'clock dinner, and when we came to coffee in the study, Boyesen took
from the pocket nearest his heart a chapter of 'Gunnar', and read it to
us.

Perhaps the good professor who brought us together had plotted to have
both novel and novelist make their impression at once upon the youthful
sub-editor; but at any rate they did not fail of an effect. I believe it
was that chapter where Gunnar and Ragnhild dance and sing a 'stev'
together, for I associate with that far happy time the rich mellow tones
of the poet's voice in the poet's verse. These were most characteristic
of him, and it is as if I might put my ear against the ethereal wall
beyond which he is rapt and hear them yet.