PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. [Born 1816. Died 1850.] PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE was born in Martinsburg, Berkeley county, Virginia, on the twentysixth of October, 1816. His father, Mr. JOHN R. COOKE, was honourably distinguished at the bar, and his mother was of that family of PENDLETONS which has furnished so many eminent names to that part of the Union. At fifteen he entered Princeton College, where he had a reputation for parts, though he did not distinguish himself, or take an honour, and could never tell how it happened that he obtained a degree, as he was not examined with his class. He liked fishing and hunting better than the books, and CHAUCER and SPENSER much more than the dull volumes in the "course of study." He had already made rhymes before he became a freshman, and the appearance of the early numbers of the "Knickerbocker Magazine" prompted him to new efforts in this way; he wrote for the Knickerbocker," in his seventeenth year, "The Song of the Sioux Lover," and "The Consumptive," and in a village paper, about the same time, other humourous and sentimental verses. When he left college his father was living at Winchester, and there he himself pursued the study of the law. He wrote pieces in verse and prose for the Virginian," and "The Southern Literary Messenger," (then just started,) and projected novels and an extensive work in literary criticism. Before he was twenty-one he was married, admitted to the bar, and had a fair prospect of practice in Frederick, Jefferson, and Berkeley counties. "I am blessed by my fireside," he wrote, "here on the banks of the Shenandoah, in view and within a mile of the Blue Ridge; I go to county towns at the sessions of the courts, and hunt and fish, and make myself as happy with my companions as I can." "So," he writes to me in 1846, "have passed five, six, seven, eight years, and now I am striving, after long disuse of my literary veins, to get the rubbish of idle habits away, and work them again. My fruittrees, rose-bushes, poultry, guns, fishing-tackle, good, hard-riding friends, a long-necked bottle on my sideboard, an occasional client, &c. &c., make it a little difficult to get from the real into the clouds again. It requires a resolute habit of selfconcentration to enable a man to shut out these and all such real concerns, and give himself warmly to the nobler or more tender sort of writing and I am slowly acquiring it." The atmosphere in which he lived was not, it seems, altogether congenial-so far as literature was concerned and I find in one of his letters: "What do you think of a good friend of mine, a most valuable and worthy and hard-riding one, saying gravely to me a short time ago, I would n't waste time on a damned thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighbourhood disputes and difficulties.' You have as much chance with such people, as a dolphin would have if in one of his darts he pitched in amongst the machinery of a mill. Philosophy would clip an angel's wings,' KEATS says, and pompous dulness would do the same. But these very persons I have been talking about are always ready, when the world generally has awarded the honours of successful authorship to any of our mad tribe, to come in and confirm the award, and buy, if not read, the popular book. And so they are not wholly without their uses in this world. But wo to him who seeks to climb amongst them! An author must avoid them until he is already mounted on the platform, and can look down on them, and make them ashamed to show their dulness by keeping their hands in their breeches pockets, while the rest of the world are taking theirs out to give money or to applaud with. I am wasting my letter with these people, but for fear you may think I am chagrined or cut by what I abuse them for, I must say that they suit one-half of my character, moods, and pursuits, in being good, kindly men, rare table companions, many of them great in field sports, and most of them rather deficient in letters than mind; and that, in an every-day sense of the words, I love and am beloved by them." Soon afterwards he wrote: "Mr. KENNEDY'S assurance that you would find a publisher for my poems leaves me without any further excuse for not collecting them. If not the most devoted, truly you are the most serviceable, of my friends, but it is because Mr. KENNEDY has overpraised me to you. Your letter makes me feel as if I had always known you intimately, and I have a presentiment that you will counteract my idleness and good-for-nothingness, and that, hoisted on your shoulders I shall not be lost under the feet of the crowd, nor left behind in a fence corner. I am profoundly grateful for the kindness which dictated what you have done, and to show you that I will avail myself of it, I enclose a proem to the pieces of which I wrote you in my last." asked and obtained permission to print it in a The proem referred to was so beautiful that I magazine of which I was at that time editor. The author's name was not given, and it excited much curiosity, as but two or three of our poets were thought capable of such a performance, and there thing anonymously. It was most commonly, was no reason why one of them should print any however, attributed to Mr. WILLIS, at which Mr. COOKE was highly gratified. The piece, which dred lines, and was a feigned history of the comwas entitled "Emily," contained about three hunposition of tales designed to follow it, exquisitely PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. told, and sprinkled all along with gems that could has been in the woods and on the waters-every 6 At length through his cousin and friend, JOHN with all mankind,) the MS. of all the poems was printed volume, written with a regular elegance endured an audacity of thought or word, I ha verse a post prandium entertainment, and never tamed myself out of your approbation." The book was finally published, but thoại what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used' 'Had not known the bent of my own mind, Until the mighty spell of "Porter" woke to match that of the old copyists. In an accompanying letter he says, "They are certainly not in the high key of a man warm with his subject, and doing the thing finely; I wrote them with the reluctance of a turkey-hunter kept from his sport, -only Mr. KENNEDY'S urgent entreaty and remonstrance whipped me up to the labour. You for Porter' and 'passions.' Then I have a ballonly Albert Pike, says Coleridge' and 'powers' will hardly perceive how they should be called 'Ballads.' You are somewhat responsible for sketches, histories, commenced or arranged in my written novel in my MS. piles, with poems, tales, the name. I designed (originally) to make them short poems of the old understood ballad cast. I word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. mind ready to be put in writing, to order. In a sent you the proem, which you published as a pre- My life here invites me urgently to literary el bore a look of perpetuity (or rather of fixedness) that a country gentleman really wants of the Words in print ployments. My house, servants, &c. &c.about them, and what I would have changed if goods of life, are in sure possession to me and only my pen and portfolio had been concerned, mine. I want honours, and some little more me your type deterred me from changing. The term ney. Be good enough, my dear sir, to let me face to the Froissart Ballads.' Froissart Ballads,' however, is, after all, correct, know how I am to go about acquiring them." I wrote with frankness what I thought was true, of possible pecuniary advantages from the course he proposed, and was answered: "What you say about the returns in money for an author's labours is dispiriting enough, and I at once give over an earnest purpose which I had formed of In reply to some comments of mine upon these writing books. Thank God, I am not dependent productions he remarks: "You will find them beon the booksellers, but have a moderate and sure neath your sanguine prognostic. They are mere narrative poems, designed for the crowd. Poetic support for my family, apart from the crowding hopes and fears which dependence on them would speculation, bold inroads upon the debatable land, the wild weird clime, out of space, out of time,' I no doubt generate. But I must add (or forego have not here attempted. I will hereafter merge some gratifications) two or three hundred dollars myself in the nobler atmosphere; in the mean per annum to my ordinary means. I might easily make this by my profession, which I have deserted time I have stuck to the ordinary level, and endea- mill to me: I detest the law. On the other hand, and neglected, but it would be as bad as the tread even with the poems as they are. of Bolton' is as much a song as the Lay of the The Master Last Minstrel,' although I have no prologue, interludes, &c., to show how it was sung; and as for Orthone,' &c., Sir John Froissart may as easily be imagined chanting them as talking them." voured to write interesting stories in verse, with for the cold, I have failed to touch the quick and airy melody in the Tempest, tingles pleasantly in grace and spirit. I repeat my fear that in writing rhythm, coming from God knows where, like the I love the fever-fits of composition. The music of warm that in writing for a dozen hunting com my veins and fingers; I like to build the verse, rades, who have been in the habit of making my cautiously, but with the excitement of a rapid PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. ཀན From this time Mr. COOKE wrote much, but in a desultory way, and seemed in a growing devotion to a few friends and in the happiness that was in his home to forget almost the dreams of ambition. Of this home he dwelt with a tender enthusiasm in his correspondence, and we > have glimpses of it in some beautiful verses to his daughter, in which he has written with charming simplicity an interesting portion of his biography: "TO MY DAUGHTER LILY. A darling to your mother good, A little, shivering, feeble thing Your baby eyes of blue. "You fastened on our hearts, LILY, As day by day wore by, And beauty grew upon your cheeks, I know not even now, my dear, "When you were four years old, LILY, You were my little friend, A grave grown man will start to hear "When care pressed on our house, LILY,- I hated mankind for the wrong But when I read your young frank face,- "And sometimes it would be, LILY, I learned those lessons of the heart "At last our cares are gone, LILY, As you have seen the sun shine out In the good land where we were born, A life of love will bless our home To keep me constant to the right, And for your mother good. 523 He commenced a historical novel to be called "Maurice Weterbern," in which the great battle of Lutzen was to end the adventures of his hero. "What it is you will some time or other see," he wrote to me; and, as if doubtful whether this were a safe prediction, added, "I am bestowing great care, but little labor, upon it." This he threw aside, and his love for that age appeared in "The Chevalier Merlin," suggested by the beautiful story of CHARLES the Twelfth, as given by VOLTAIRE, several chapters of which appeared in the "Southern Literary Messenger." In the same magazine he printed "John Carpe," "The Two Country Houses," and other tales: parts of a series in which he intended to dramatize the life and manners of Virginia. He also contributed to the "Literary Messenger" a few pieces of criticism, one of which was a reviewal of the poems of the late EDGAR A. POE. As for any applause these might win for him, he wrote to his friend JoHN R. THOMPSON: "I look upon these matters serenely, and will treat renown as Sir THOMAS MORE advises concerning guests: welcome its coming when it cometh, hinder not with oppressive eagerness its going, when it goeth. thermore I am of the temper to look placidly upon the profile of this same renown, if, instead of stopping, it went by to take up with another; therefore it would not ruffle me to see you win the honours of southern letters away from me." Fur Renewing his devotion to poetry, near the close of the year 1849, he wrote fragments of "The Women of Shakspeare," "The Chariot Race," and a political and literary satire. He projected works enough, in prose and verse, to occupy an industrious life of twenty years. In one of his letters he remarked, "I have lately spurred myself again into continuous composition, and mean to finish books." But in the midst of his reawakened activity and ambition, he suddenly died, on the twentieth of January, 1850, at the age of thirtythree. Undoubtedly PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE was one of the truest poets of our country, and what he has left us was full of promise that he would vindicate, in other works, the rank with which he was accredited, by those admiring friends who estimated his abilities from his conversation more than from anything he had printed. His mind bloomed early, though it was late in maturing. Many of his most pleasing poems were written at col PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. lege, or soon after his return, between his fifteenth and eighteenth years; but they had not the most noticeable characteristics of his later productions. The chivalric poetry occupied his attention early and long, and he was only banishing it for the more independent and beautiful growth of his own nature, when his untimely death destroyed the hopes of fruits which his youth foretold in such prodigality and perfection. Of his love poems, the little song entitled " Florence Vane," written when he was scarcely more than twenty, is perhaps the finest. In the lines "To my Daughter Lily," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his "Ballads," the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; and in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature. "Ugolino," was in his own opinion the best of all his poems, but it fell far short of his estimate of the capacities of the subject. "I have merely tried my hand in it," he said, "and can only praise what I have done as true to FROISSART. I shall do much better than this." As a boy and as a young man, I understr“: commanding affectionate respect. As he his life was always poetical-apart, original vo older, and married, he became practical in views, reaching that point in the life of gen or become the strength of wise resolves. i which its beautiful ideals take the forms of ward his family, including his father, mother thers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and ta tering devotion. A short time before bish illness he introduced into his household and evening prayers. He died, as he had a pure-minded gentleman, and humble Care tian. His voice has been described to me as musica joyous, sometimes varying to a sad sweetness sometimes wild. His carriage was graceful a upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trad his hair was black and curling; his as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge manner impressed with dignity. bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; eye dark an YOUNG Emily has temples fair, Speak wisely from her hazel eyes. Her speech is ignorant of command, Her white teeth sparkle, when the eclipse She moves, all grace, with gliding limbs In her sweet childhood, Emily But with this natural merriment, She loves her kind, and shuns no duty, I know that she was born for mine. Dearer than any joy of wine, Maidens who love are full of hope, But I delay: one jocund morn— |