Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes | Page 9

by the writer, with the success
in high quarters attendant the disposal of his works, has not,
convincingness being the indicator, been reached, nor surpassed. The
Warwickshire alchemist invariably throws across his scenes and to the
centre, a glare, a strong ray, which burns to the water-line the barque of
Agnosticism. This is tacitly recognised, concurrently and alternately
traced in the selection of the phrases, and in the subtle or dramatic
sense of the scene photographed; the second inspiration springing into
immediate co-operation, linking to the first the thought by a magnetised
hyphen, causes his symbolistic pictures to thrive gloriously, rapturously;
the first touch of sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly
lit, although never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly
system by our revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme
passes of imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is naïvely

introduced and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows
itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower
taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating
contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to glow
in the crucible of memory's recesses. Specious instances of irony
playing the manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence,
fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas, in
rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another.
Connection, an element of robust mesmeric cohesion with this prized
author being the adamantine hyphen, the articulating link, which
compacts the roll. John Henry Shorthouse, the templar, the confessor of
music, was, and concurrently, the apologist of philosophic light.
Engaged to a powerful mechanism of romantic dogma, the nett article
of its creed; the neochromatic acoustic regalia of stage eloquence, the
key, or longest recurrent note; the van or middle the next, the sinuous
lever of stage discipline. After all, concurrently may it not, be said that
this colour instinct aspect of cosmically conceived romanticism is
never wilfully vulgarized. For its incomparable, iconographical purpose
it exists, and is as intrinsically useful and serviceable to the scheme as
the figures which admirably illustrate the pictures of Hogarth and
Holman Hunt. When introduced, music is rarely intended to edge itself
into the important place of "first study." This in alchemy or
personification being occupied by the circumstantial cruxes of life,
philosophic morality, vested usually in courtly attire; I would not say
abstract attire, for the clean-cut character it bears is too strictly defined
(for the sake of that Artist's art) for such an impression to be born, or
even to lurk by sentiment, there beneath.
The mould employed at all times is minutely fashioned, as a sculptor
would, by investing his model with a code of spirituality, inspired with
fire, which epicureanly endows fleeting emotion with a voice, and
vitality lends also to distant-reaching invisible ends: hinting that the
picturesque alchemy of music is potential too in reaching and touching
the lower chords of animal passion, where movement is rapid and light
redundant. The breast of the thoughtful writer heaved ever to animal
instincts without measure in extolling the complex phases of court,
ecclesiastic, and domestic oligarchy. Statesmanship and subjunction

rise and peacefully sink together, and in his magnetic touch, are made
to harmoniously coalesce in the political balance. Shorthouse the author,
a believer in, a champion was of two-fold or dual cosmos: his colour
sense being susceptible to and wrought upon in singular consular
consistence with the effulgent dogmas of its creed, and in alliance with
the spirit of the cinque cento Italian Renaissance Schools of Painting
and Architecture. Practically speaking, he conceived a train of adept
ideas, at times fanciful, and at times morbid, transforming them
adroitly by adept excursions of cross-lit introspection, accentuation,
and by dint of manual caress, as the first of players upon stringed
instruments.
Music, I would apologetically infer, being the middle, the rallying
feature, of Mr. J.H. Shorthouse's verbose apology. If fictionizing in
prose, he writes with brief orange-hued flashes of liquid ether; each of
short, all but, brief span. Characteristically, he belongs to the same
school and unapproachable law as the French organist-composer, C.M.
Widor: stringent, petulant observance of free uncurbed metronome time,
allied to picturesque handling; punctuality of tidal consort rigidly
regarding, when each, the one to the other, linked; less a care, by
virtuous intuition displaying for lyric measure. The writings of
Nathaniel Hawthorne more forcibly and piquantly evince cylindrical
flow, and strike at the object lesson with less artificial, _cadavre_,
fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper
and tempo is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense
suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic certainty
and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be or not. For
freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never manifesting
anxiety of freeing himself