Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I | Page 8

it right, before going to rest, to reason with me about
my disobedience, shown in a way, as he considered, so insolent. I
listened, but could not feel interested in what he said, nor turn my mind
from what engaged it. He went away really grieved at my impenitence,
and quite at a loss to understand conduct in me so unusual.
'--Often since I have seen the same misunderstanding between parent
and child,--the parent thrusting the morale, the discipline, of life upon
the child, when just engrossed by some game of real importance and
great leadings to it. That is only a wooden horse to the father,--the child
was careering to distant scenes of conquest and crusade, through a
country of elsewhere unimagined beauty. None but poets remember
their youth; but the father who does not retain poetical apprehension of
the world, free and splendid as it stretches out before the child, who
cannot read his natural history, and follow out its intimations with
reverence, must be a tyrant in his home, and the purest intentions will
not prevent his doing much to cramp him. Each new child is a new
Thought, and has bearings and discernings, which the Thoughts older
in date know not yet, but must learn.--
'My attention thus fixed on Shakspeare, I returned to him at every hour
I could command. Here was a counterpoise to my Romans, still more
forcible than the little garden. My author could read the Roman nature

too,--read it in the sternness of Coriolanus, and in the varied wealth of
Cæsar. But he viewed these men of will as only one kind of men; he
kept them in their place, and I found that he, who could understand the
Roman, yet expressed in Hamlet a deeper thought.
'In CERVANTES, I found far less productive talent,--'indeed, a far less
powerful genius,--but the same wide wisdom, a discernment piercing
the shows and symbols of existence, yet rejoicing in them all, both for
their own life, and as signs of the unseen reality. Not that Cervantes
philosophized,--his genius was too deeply philosophical for that; he
took things as they came before him, and saw their actual relations and
bearings. Thus the work he produced was of deep meaning, though he
might never have expressed that meaning to himself. It was left implied
in the whole. A Coleridge comes and calls Don Quixote the pure
Reason, and Sancho the Understanding. Cervantes made no such
distinctions in his own mind; but he had seen and suffered enough to
bring out all his faculties, and to make him comprehend the higher as
well as the lower part of our nature. Sancho is too amusing and
sagacious to be contemptible; the Don too noble and clear-sighted
towards absolute truth, to be ridiculous. And we are pleased to see
manifested in this way, how the lower must follow and serve the higher,
despite its jeering mistrust and the stubborn realities which break up the
plans of this pure-minded champion.
'The effect produced on the mind is nowise that described by Byron:--
"Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away," &c.
'On the contrary, who is not conscious of a sincere reverence for the
Don, prancing forth on his gaunt steed? Who would not rather be he
than any of the persons who laugh at him?--Yet the one we would wish
to be is thyself, Cervantes, unconquerable spirit! gaining flavor and
color like wine from every change, while being carried round the world;
in whose eye the serene sagacious laughter could not be dimmed by
poverty, slavery, or unsuccessful authorship. Thou art to us still more
the Man, though less the Genius, than Shakspeare; thou dost not evade
our sight, but, holding the lamp to thine own magic shows, dost enjoy
them with us.
'My third friend was MOLIÉRE, one very much lower, both in range
and depth, than the-others, but, as far as he goes, of the same character.
Nothing secluded or partial is there about his genius,--a man of the

world, and a man by himself, as he is. It was, indeed, only the poor
social world of Paris that he saw, but he viewed it from the firm
foundations of his manhood, and every lightest laugh rings from a clear
perception, and teaches life anew.
'These men were all alike in this,--they loved the natural history of man.
Not what he should be, but what he is, was the favorite subject of their
thought. Whenever a noble leading opened to the eye new paths of light,
they rejoiced; but it was never fancy, but always fact, that inspired
them. They loved a thorough penetration of the murkiest dens, and
most tangled paths of nature; they did not spin from the desires of their
own special natures, but reconstructed the world from materials