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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:05 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12478-0.txt b/12478-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..792de32 --- /dev/null +++ b/12478-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7924 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12478 *** + +BOOKS & CHARACTERS + +FRENCH & ENGLISH + +_By_ + +LYTTON STRACHEY + + +LONDON + +First published May 1922 + + + + +TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES + + + + +_The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the Editors +of the Independent Review, the New Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the +Edinburgh Review._ + +_The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, +apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his English +period_. + + + + +CONTENTS + +RACINE 3 +SIR THOMAS BROWNE 27 +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD 41 +THE LIVES OF THE POETS 59 +MADAME DU DEFFAND 67 +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND 93 +A DIALOGUE 115 +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES 121 +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT 137 +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR 165 +THE POETRY OF BLAKE 179 +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN 193 +HENRI BEYLE 219 +LADY HESTER STANHOPE 241 +MR. CREEVEY 253 +INDEX 261 + + + + +RACINE + + +When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, +grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient and +modern worlds, with a single exception--Shakespeare. After some +persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a _part_ +of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the Louvre can now +see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather +less than half of the author of _King Lear_ just appearing at the +extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has +changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be +advanced--though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty--to the very steps +of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a +similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged +as the most characteristic representative of the literature of France? +Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would +more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, +whisking away into the outer darkness? + +There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes +and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, I +could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, +as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the +matter. But alas! _nous avons changé tout cela_. Now we are each of us +obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, +ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on +different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either that I +am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen +that while on one side of that 'span of waters' Racine is despised and +Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and +Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and +illustrated in a singular way. Mr. John Bailey, in a volume of essays +entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of +Racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the +second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the +merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of +Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance +of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant +critic, M. Lemaître, published a series of lectures on Racine, in which +the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from +beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting +criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated +classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of +these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the +opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue +along lines so different and so remote that they never come into +collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side +the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French +critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the +romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that +England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was to +be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaître, on the +other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. +Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's +supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. Lemaître +never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of +his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness +already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaître's book, one +begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find it +difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. It is no +paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find +so eminent a critic as M. Lemaître observing that Racine 'a vraiment +"achevé" et porté à son point suprême de perfection _la tragédie_, cette +étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve +peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to +the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this +kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful +consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the +susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a +French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue, +he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether he +willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the +difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate a +writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is +least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this +essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. +Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average +English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to +the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense +value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some +important general questions of literary doctrine will have been +discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to +vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that +English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, +brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal +distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to +think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of +an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes +fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared +by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice +of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, +and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have discovered +something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious +boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be grateful? +Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may +enjoy, and render thanks? + +M. Lemaître, starting out, like a native of the mountains, from a point +which can only be reached by English explorers after a long journey and +a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series +of brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on +one side almost altogether the questions connected both with Racine's +dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very +questions by which English readers are most perplexed, and which they +are most anxious to discuss. His style in particular--using the word in +its widest sense--forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. +Bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of Mr. +Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet +can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric +of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. Before, +however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well +to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because the +English reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very outset +of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the +Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he +should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. After +the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our early +tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of life +and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of +Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of +setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their +spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give +one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious +pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, +after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'La scène est à +Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'--could +anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? Here is nothing +for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no +wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here +is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five +acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to +meet in and make their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of the +'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself quite +unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a +critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those +antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, believes +that Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great +advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the +once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of +time and place are of no importance in themselves.' So far as critics +are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that plays +can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance +with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any +rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in +effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and +justifies the unities of time and place? Surely it is not, as Mr. Bailey +would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for it +is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must +possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen--as in +_Antony and Cleopatra_, for instance--that the very essence of this +interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local +activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true +justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the +conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis--the vision, +thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final +catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the +views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only +the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it +was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the +rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great +persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in the +literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have +become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along +totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more +consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the +crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is +narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come +more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of +form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather than +that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of _Macbeth_ +have been superseded by plays of the type of _Britannicus_. +_Britannicus_, no less than _Macbeth_, is the tragedy of a criminal; but +it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the +fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the +precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is +taken, and the criminal is made. The method of _Macbeth_ has been, as it +were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of _Britannicus_ +still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more rigorously +and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his +attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of +importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the +English reader--the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the +absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action--was no more +than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and +for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. +His dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, +supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact +that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to +the ground. Approached in this light, even the 'salle du palais de +Pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. We come to realise that, if it is +nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the +invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one +little room an everywhere.' It will show us no views, no spectacles, it +will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it +will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the +closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of +human hearts. + +It is remarkable that Mr. Bailey, while seeming to approve of the +classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him +for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical +form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in +the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of +human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects which +Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the +range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction +of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; +and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into his +compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to +find fault with a Mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration of +Wagner. But it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise +nature of Mr. Bailey's criticism. When he speaks of Racine's vision not +including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that Racine cannot be +reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat +different ground and discussing a more general question. All truly great +poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of +life'--a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the +universe; and, since Racine is without this quality, his claim to true +poetic greatness must be denied. But, even upon the supposition that +this view of Racine's philosophical outlook is the true one--and, in its +most important sense, I believe that it is not--does Mr. Bailey's +conclusion really follow? Is it possible to test a poet's greatness by +the largeness of his 'view of life'? How wide, one would like to know, +was Milton's 'view of humanity'? And, though Wordsworth's sense of the +position of man in the universe was far more profound than Dante's, who +will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? The truth is that +we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only of +Mr. Bailey's criticism of Racine, but of an entire critical method--the +method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in +general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it +possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. How often this +method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously +fallacious! For, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, +amenable to the rules of scientific induction. Its component parts +cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which +defies foreknowledge. When Matthew Arnold declared that the value of a +new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in +the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this +very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself +a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto +itself? It is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle +expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a +precedent. Thus Mr. Bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from +Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Goethe, the qualities without which no poet +can be great, and his condemnation of Racine because he is without them, +is a fallacy in criticism. There is only one way to judge a poet, as +Wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, has +pointed out--and that is, by loving him. But Mr. Bailey, with regard to +Racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of Wordsworth. Let us +look a little more closely into the nature of his attack. + +'L'épithète rare,' said the De Goncourts,'voilà la marque de +l'écrivain.' Mr. Bailey quotes the sentence with approval, observing +that if, with Sainte-Beuve, we extend the phrase to 'le mot rare,' we +have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may test +the merit of poetry. And doubtless most English readers would be +inclined to agree with Mr. Bailey, for it so happens that our own +literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge of +extravagance, reigns supreme. Owing mainly, no doubt, to the double +origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between +the highly-coloured crudity of the Saxon words and the ambiguous +splendour of the Latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national +taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and +penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie--the Hebrew +Prophets--our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of +writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the +extraordinary, and the bold. No one in his senses would regret this, for +it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, of +course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the +bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example +and its final justification. But the result is that we have grown so +unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to +believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an +impossibility. The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, and +of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but coldness +and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the +bravado that we love so well. It is as if we had become so accustomed to +looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an +exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us +as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the dancers, +which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. But let +us be patient, and let us look again. + + Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessée, + Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée. + +Here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to catch the mind +or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, +plainly set forth. But is there not an enchantment? Is there not a +vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the +ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is +precisely this--that he brings about, by what are apparently the +simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to +produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a proof +of his amazing art. In the following passage, for instance, what a sense +of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words! + + Enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice: + C'est faire à vos beautés un triste sacrifice + Que de vous présenter, madame, avec ma foi, + Tout l'âge et le malheur que je traîne avec moi. + Jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire mêmes + Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diadèmes. + Mais ce temps-là n'est plus: je régnais; et je fuis: + Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits. + +Is that wonderful 'trente' an 'épithète rare'? Never, surely, before or +since, was a simple numeral put to such a use--to conjure up so +triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! But these are subtleties which +pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals +of the great romantic poets. As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison +between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is +like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At +first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'éclatante vérité pittoresque du +grand maître flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste français qu'un ton assez +uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pâle et douce lumière. Mais qu'on +approche de plus près et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines +vont éclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce +tissu profond et serré; on ne peut plus en détacher ses yeux.' + +Similarly when Mr. Bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more general +questions of style, declares that there is no 'element of fine +surprise' in Racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of +Pindar and the Greek choruses--the reply is that he would find what he +wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'Who will forget,' he says, +'the comparison of the Atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty +nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human +bodies, of Helen to the lion's whelps?... Everyone knows these. Who will +match them among the formal elegances of Racine?' And it is true that +when Racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the +romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters of +the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and +anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his pages +will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the +daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out +of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus +many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration +of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in +the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind. + + C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. + +The sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might +pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after +vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. But, sometimes, +the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate and +terrific force-- + + C'est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée! + +A few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having. + +But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognise the +beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack of +extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis +and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of +his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic--its +suppression of detail. The great majority of poets--and especially of +English poets--produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of +details--details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty +or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details +Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words +which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our +minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been +accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of +significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more +marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few +expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate +reality. When Shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so +with a single stroke of detail--'not a mouse stirring'! And Virgil adds +touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae: + + Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, + Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis + Rura tenent, etc. + +Racine's way is different, but is it less masterly? + + Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune. + +What a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the Englishman's first +thought--with the conventional 'Neptune,' and the vague 'armée,' and the +commonplace 'vents.' And he forgets to notice the total impression which +these words produce--the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and +vastness and ominous hush. + +It is particularly in regard to Racine's treatment of nature that this +generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'Is he so much as aware,' +exclaims Mr. Bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, +that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear will +never have enough of the music of the sea? He might have written every +page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of his +study.' The accusation gains support from the fact that Racine rarely +describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, we +know, was not his plan. But he is constantly, with his subtle art, +suggesting them. In this line, for instance, he calls up, without a word +of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise: + + Déjà le jour plus grand nous frappe et nous éclaire. + +And how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! He can give +us the desolation of a calm: + + La rame inutile + Fatigua vainement une mer immobile; + +or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys: + + Voyez tout l'Hellespont blanchissant sous nos rames; + +or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm: + + Quoi! pour noyer les Grecs et leurs mille vaisseaux, + Mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux! + Quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recèle, + L'Aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle, + Les vents, les mêmes vents, si longtemps accusés, + Ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brisés! + +And then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a +triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves: + + Prêts à vous recevoir mes vaisseaux vous attendent; + Et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter, + Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter. + +The art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this line, +where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long +syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect. + +But it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like Mr. Bailey +are unable to find in Racine--they miss in him no less suggestions of +the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our +English habit of associating these qualities with expressions which are +complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of +fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase-- + + La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé + +we are apt not to hear that it is there. But there is another +reason--the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism +ever since the triumph of Wordsworth and Coleridge at the beginning of +the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. It would be easy to +prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of +'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that Mr. Bailey's +criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects of +this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the +unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the +key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find +in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he +is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious +when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind +of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' +in _Paradise Lost_, and that _Paradise Lost_ is one of the greatest +poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory, +however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which +may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in +its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity +and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine--that is to say, +there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the +transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the +constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere +rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking +what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will not +our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put +out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical +suggestion, the more we examine Racine, the more clearly we shall +discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually +console us for the loss of the first--the mystery of the mind of man. +This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it +adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how +much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with +the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, +wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies--Hermione and +Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phèdre--seem to emerge for +a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose +depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we shall +find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure +infinities of the heart. + + Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous taire. + +The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. That +is all affection; and this all desire-- + + J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler. + +Or let us listen to the voice of Phèdre, when she learns that Hippolyte +and Aricie love one another: + + Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher? + Dans le fond des forêts alloient-ils se cacher? + Hélas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence; + Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence; + Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux; + Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux. + +This last line--written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious +rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window--does it not +seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty +of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul? + +It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most +remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a +critic as M. Lemaître has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume +to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's +portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality +with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending +more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the +combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, and +his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaître, in fact, goes so far as to +describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in +him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no doubt, +but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to +compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous +kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And +there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never +tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and +monotonous; while M. Lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' and +Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' The +explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the +two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When +Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and +depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a +directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the +utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon stroke, +swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her +tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son: + + Prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur? + Ne le verrai-je plus qu'à titre d'importune? + Ai-je donc élevé si haut votre fortune + Pour mettre une barrière entre mon fils et moi? + Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi? + Entre Sénèque et vous disputez-vous la gloire + A qui m'effacera plus tôt de sa mémoire? + Vous l'ai-je confié pour en faire un ingrat, + Pour être, sous son nom, les maîtres de l'état? + Certes, plus je médite, et moins je me figure + Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre créature; + Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir l'ambition + Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque légion; + Et moi, qui sur le trône ai suivi mes ancêtres, + Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mère de vos maîtres! + +When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the +hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on +other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, +artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of +high-sounding words and elaborate inversions. + + Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides + Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses frères perfides. + +That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her brothers' +conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison +ce gage trop sincère.' It is obvious that this kind of expression has +within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century +tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got +out of the difficulty by referring to--'De la fidélité le respectable +appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts +Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based +upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the +spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense--physical +objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that +go to make up the machinery of existence--these must be kept out of the +picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have ruined +the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, they +must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire +attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the +composition--the spiritual states of the characters--which, laid bare +with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly +imprint themselves upon the mind. To condemn Racine on the score of his +ambiguities and his pomposities is to complain of the hastily dashed-in +column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention +the face. Sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own +conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with +a wonderful significance. Thus when the Sultana, Roxane, discovers her +lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge and +death, and she exclaims-- + + Ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est extrême + Que le traître une fois se soit trahi lui-même. + Libre des soins cruels où j'allais m'engager, + Ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'à se venger. + Qu'il meure. Vengeons-nous. Courez. Qu'on le saisisse! + Que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice; + Qu'ils viennent préparer ces noeuds infortunés + Par qui de ses pareils les jours sont terminés. + +To have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and +Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in +such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. +She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of +virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally +orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of +speech. + +But, as a rule, Racine's characters speak out most clearly when they are +most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an +intensity of directness unknown in actual life. In such moments, the +phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed +significance of character and situation; the 'Qui te l'a dit?' of +Hermione, the 'Sortez' of Roxane, the 'Je vais à Rome' of Mithridate, +the 'Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!' of Athalie--who can forget these +things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? Very different is the +Shakespearean method. There, as passion rises, expression becomes more +and more poetical and vague. Image flows into image, thought into +thought, until at last the state of mind is revealed, inform and +molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. Such revelations, +no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of Racine. +In life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; +and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and +agglomerated rather than compact and defined. But Racine's aim was less +to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon its +inmost being and to give expression to that. One might be tempted to say +that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, +after all, reality has no degrees. Who can affirm that the wild +ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical +existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and +'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'? + +It would be nearer the truth to rank Racine among the idealists. The +world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and +rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an +ampler ether, a diviner air.' It is a world where the hesitations and +the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a +world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown +ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love +the beginning and the end of all. It is, too, the world of a poet, so +that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through the +poet's sweet articulation--through verse. Upon English ears the rhymed +couplets of Racine sound strangely; and how many besides Mr. Bailey have +dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! But to his lovers, to those who +have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are +impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. +Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep +enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu +de ma part le roi de Comagène?'--How is it that words of such slight +import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. +And, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true worshipper, the +final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet is only fit +for satire. Has he forgotten _Lamia_? And he asks, 'How is it that we +read Pope's _Satires_ and Dryden's, and Johnson's with enthusiasm still, +while we never touch _Irene_, and rarely the _Conquest of Granada_?' +Perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our _a priori_ +theories, even the fiery art of Dryden's drama may remain dead to us, +and that, if we touched _Irene_ even once, we should find it was in +blank verse. But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. +Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: +'Suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more +displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see +there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the +confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce +anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your +sight ... 'Tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the +shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, cannot +be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we +attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the +rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as +bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' In this exquisite passage +Dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the +central argument for rhyme--its power of creating a beautiful +atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the +associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For Racine, with +his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier +between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his +art. His rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which we +can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the +forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' +And truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing +them'! + + Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée ... + Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage, + Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage, + Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots, + Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos. + Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte, + Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il l'élite? + Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors + Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords? + Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète, + Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite: + Pour en développer l'embarras incertain + Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main. + Mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancée; + L'amour m'en eût d'abord inspiré la pensée; + C'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours + Vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les détours. + Que de soins m'eût coûtés cette tête charmante! + +It is difficult to 'place' Racine among the poets. He has affinities +with many; but likenesses to few. To balance him rigorously against any +other--to ask whether he is better or worse than Shelley or than +Virgil--is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is +too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets--with +Virgil's for instance--Racine wrote for the stage. Virgil's poetry is +intended to be read, Racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the +theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. In a +sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of +Mozart with silent eyes. But, when the strings begin, when the whole +volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we +understand and feel! And so, at the theatre, before one of those high +tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations +of the greatest actresses of France, we realise, with the shock of a new +emotion, what we had but half-felt before. To hear the words of Phèdre +spoken by the mouth of Bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror of +crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of despair, +all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when +the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic +urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground--that indeed is to come +close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, and +to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light. + +1908. + + + + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE + +The life of Sir Thomas Browne does not afford much scope for the +biographer. Everyone knows that Browne was a physician who lived at +Norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one must +call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient +summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty +and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir +Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he +wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so +many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those +half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the +pleasantest kind of criticism is composed. + +Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the 'English Men of +Letters' Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. He has +not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he +has simply gone 'about it and about.' The result is a book so full of +entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary tact, +that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the +obvious--though surely irrelevant--truth, that the general impression +which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite +presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow +indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. It would be rash +indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse's example; after his +luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne's life at Norwich, on the +_Vulgar Errors_, and on the self-revelations in the _Religio Medici_, +there seems to be no room for further comment. One can only admire in +silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour. + +There is, however, one side of Browne's work upon which it may be worth +while to dwell at somewhat greater length. Mr. Gosse, who has so much to +say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very +small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the +most important thing about the author of _Urn Burial_ and _The Garden of +Cyrus_--his style. Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as a +master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered. Why then +does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about his +family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his porridge, +and who fished up the _murex_? + +Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of +Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his +book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. +Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In +spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid +and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat +acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is so +ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He +ranks the _Hydriotaphia_ among the gems of English literature; and the +prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as +fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be +little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal +homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks +upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough +the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely +misleading a preconceived theory may be. + +The study of Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Gosse says, 'encouraged Johnson, and +with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth century, +to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned +but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being +dispelled.' Such is Mr. Gosse's account of the influence of Browne and +Johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. But to +dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is +surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he +brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the +pre-Johnsonian prose style--the style which Dryden first established and +Swift brought to perfection--are obvious enough. Its advantages are +those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are +unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of the +second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, or of Bishop +Butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave defects. +It is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, no +balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. Johnson, there can be no +doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the +texture of English prose; and he went back for a model to Sir Thomas +Browne. Now, as Mr. Gosse himself observes, Browne stands out in a +remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and +predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. +He was, says Mr. Gosse, 'never carried away. His effects are closely +studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; +and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who +compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ with +any page in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_. The peculiarities of Browne's +style--the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its +tendency towards sonorous antithesis--culminated in his last, though not +his best, work, the _Christian Morals_, which almost reads like an +elaborate and magnificent parody of the Book of Proverbs. With the +_Christian Morals_ to guide him, Dr. Johnson set about the +transformation of the prose of his time. He decorated, he pruned, he +balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting +the Doric order of Swift into the Corinthian order of Gibbon. Is it +quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of +rhetorical writers' was encouraged 'to avoid circumlocution' by the +invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that +gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly +all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century--that +of Johnson himself, of Hume, of Reynolds, of Horace Walpole--which can +be traced even in Burke, and which fills the pages of Gibbon? It is, +indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the +facts, that the _Decline and Fall_ could not have been precisely what it +is, had Sir Thomas Browne never written the _Christian Morals_. + +That Johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of the +writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by +Mr. Gosse, who adds that Browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and +asserted by Coleridge and Lamb.' But we have already observed that Mr. +Gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. +His view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of Dr. Johnson's; +he swallows the spirit of Browne's writing, and strains at the form. +Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the +terminology of late Latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical +extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it +is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not +studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of +Latin and Greek.' He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he +meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; +and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of +Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' Attacks +of this kind--attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's +style--are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who +holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with +the subject as to make argument all but impossible. To the true Browne +enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state +of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hanging,' and 'asperous' +for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and 'quodlibetically' +altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between those +who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. There +is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the +more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had +better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the +jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, +a spectacle of curious self-contradiction. + +If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no +attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be +valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms +without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary +part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a +mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might +never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been +a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that +classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which +interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated +man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that if +he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only +legitimate ones, the _Hydriotaphia_ would have been as free from words +of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little +reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken this +view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered +all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, +is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are +full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this +the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be +written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A +striking phrase from the _Christian Morals_ will suffice to show the +deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:--'the +areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If Browne had thought the +Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to use +it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The +truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which +would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery and +secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. He did not +choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which he +wished them to have. Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast +between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct +antithesis to classical ones. In the last sentence of _Urn Burial_, we +are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as content +with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus.' How could Browne have produced +the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if his +vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to +words of a single stock? + +There is, of course, no doubt that Browne's vocabulary is +extraordinarily classical. Why is this? The reason is not far to seek. +In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with +thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be +expressed in Latinistic language. The state of mind which he wished to +produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were to +be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense +of mystery and awe. 'Let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things +which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long +past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the +stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. Let intellectual tubes +give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a +glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts but +tenderly touch.' Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, 'uncommon +sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of +pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? Not only is the Saxon form +of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is +still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce (by +some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, +though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex or +the remote. To understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for +the highly subtle and rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only +necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of Saxon +prose. + + Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same + down at Doctor Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this + manner: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We + shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as + I trust shall never be put out.' + +Nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this +passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. But who could conceive +of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of +these sentences from the _Hydriotaphia_? + + To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, + and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our + expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to + our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting + part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; + and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, + are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and + cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which + maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. + +Here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous Latin +substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense +succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, +the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. The +entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity and +subtlety which is utterly alien to Saxon prose. It would be foolish to +claim a superiority for either of the two styles; it would be still +more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by +means of the other. + +Wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a highly +Latinised vocabulary conferred on Browne. Without it, he would never +have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic _bravura_, +which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in +his finest passages. The precise quality cannot be easily described, but +is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to be +curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork in +a Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in +English literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated +art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer +technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but +pyramidally extant'--'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful +voices'--'predicament of chimaeras'--'the irregularities of vain glory, +and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'--are examples of this +consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of +others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days of +absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long +walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the +ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to +go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the +inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that one +begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to +have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English. + +One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be mentioned, +because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of +the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain classical +words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, +possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of Saxon +derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyramidally,' gives one at +once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something +extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And +this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only +Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. +The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was +visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him simply +and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has +flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of +humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference in +the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and +general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The +Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were +altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When +they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or +embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' +they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, +like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a +multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are +discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd. + +There can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for curious +details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. For +Browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of +detail ends, and its coordination begins. He knew little or nothing of +general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. And +the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. He was +always ready to begin some strange inquiry. He cannot help wondering: +'Whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose +bellies?' 'Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace +book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how warrantable +his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything +but treacle in the day, may admit of great doubt.' To inquire thus is, +perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of +which great scientific theories are made. Browne, however, used his love +of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a +scientific theory, but into a work of art. His method was one which, to +be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a +technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. Everyone +knows Pascal's overwhelming sentence:--'Le silence éternel de ces +espaces infinis m'effraie.' It is overwhelming, obviously and +immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. Browne's ultimate object +was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down +blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, by +an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a +mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles +drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of +heaven. His success gives him a place beside Webster and Blake, on one +of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, +Browne's peak is--or so at least it seems from the plains below--more +difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road skirts +the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one is +merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He +who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star +to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, +and tossed forever in the Paradise of Fools. + +Browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing in +the _Religio Medici_ which reaches the same level of excellence as the +last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ and the last chapter of _Urn +Burial_. A long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the +background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. +His strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. His +art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could +have produced this perfect sentence in _The Garden of Cyrus_, so well +known, and yet so impossible not to quote? + + Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in + sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with + delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly + with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose. + +This is Browne in his most exquisite mood. For his most characteristic, +one must go to the concluding pages of _Urn Burial_, where, from the +astonishing sentence beginning--'Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's +hell'--to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to +be found. The subject--mortality in its most generalised aspect--has +brought out Browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his +art--elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of +suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination--are accumulated in every +paragraph. To crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a +multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of +them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions +from the unknown depths of the past. As one reads, an extraordinary +procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes--Moses, +Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and +Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the +Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a +mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar and +ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, +almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is--who can doubt?--the +only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. But it would be vain to +dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note the +extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. Browne never +states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe +actually are. He speaks of everything but that; and yet, with triumphant +art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the +vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul. + +It is interesting--or at least amusing--to consider what are the most +appropriate places in which different authors should be read. Pope is +doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, Herrick in an +orchard, and Shelley in a boat at sea. Sir Thomas Browne demands, +perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. One could read him floating down the +Euphrates, or past the shores of Arabia; and it would be pleasant to +open the _Vulgar Errors_ in Constantinople, or to get by heart a chapter +of the _Christian Morals_ between the paws of a Sphinx. In England, the +most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some +habitation consecrated to learning, some University which still smells +of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. The present writer, at +any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of Browne's syllables +amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few +happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the +_Hydriotaphia_ out to the darkness and the nightingales through the +studious cloisters of Trinity. + +But, after all, who can doubt that it is at Oxford that Browne himself +would choose to linger? May we not guess that he breathed in there, in +his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which +pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in +the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep +beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid +that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, +the circumference of the Sheldonian. + +1906. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD + + +The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been fundamentally +affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, +for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, or +at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a +coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that _The Tempest_ was +written before _Romeo and 'Juliet_; that _Henry VI._ was produced in +succession to _Henry V._; or that _Antony and Cleopatra_ followed close +upon the heels of _Julius Caesar_. Such theories were sent to limbo for +ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external +evidence revealed the fact that, as Shakespeare's life advanced, a +corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his +verse. The establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate +position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once +followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics +became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the whole +succession of the works of Shakespeare. + +Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to +build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological order, +showed something more than a mere development in the technique of +verse--a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of +characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those +characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was +easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of +Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly +drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit +assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true +index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The validity +of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for +instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually +merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact +that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, during +that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the awful +problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose of this +essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the +artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally +accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that +of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this +hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of +Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable. + +What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as +follows: + + Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness + and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, + to the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of + middle age, to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so + many men) in later life, when, though outwardly successful, the + world seemed all against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on + scenes of faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and + subjects, ingratitude of children, scorn of his kind; till at last, + in his Stratford home again, peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita + in their lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was laid by + his quiet Avon side. + +And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's + + likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet + entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace. + +Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon +Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at +last--it is the universal opinion--a state of quiet serenity in which he +died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives the +most popular expression to this view, a view which is also held by Mr. +Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr. Brandes. +Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period +with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition to the preceding +one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir Sidney Lee, too, +seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in Shakespeare's mind, the +orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of +meditative romance. + +Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of +Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually +attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy--it +is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some +reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford the +light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear in +some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly +the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, +perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it be true that +Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last attain to the +serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent effort'; +that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of +the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, +in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's level meads, Shakespeare +closed his life on earth'--we have obtained a piece of knowledge which +is both interesting and pleasant. But if it be not true, if, on the +contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually the +case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our judgment +as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole +drift and bearing of Shakespeare's 'inner life'? + +The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate +serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final +retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It consists +of three plays--_Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_--and +three fragments--the Shakespearean parts of _Pericles, Henry VIII._, +and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. All these plays and portions of plays form +a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and +they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all Shakespeare's +previous work. + +One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do resemble in +some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding +them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new +method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they +immediately succeed--that great series of tragedies which began with +_Hamlet_ in 1601 and ended in 1608 with _Antony and Cleopatra_. In the +latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an +astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied with +a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to +the highest point of excellence--the tragedy of character. Every one of +his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon +character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his +greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has +made them what they are. Yet, after _Antony and Cleopatra_ Shakespeare +deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past +career. There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year +after year, to produce _Othellos, Hamlets_, and _Macbeths_; instead, he +turned over a new leaf, and wrote _Coriolanus_. + +_Coriolanus_ is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an intolerable play: +remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the +Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible +to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick with +situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of sudden +disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles +between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge +and egotism on the other--these would have made a tragic and tremendous +setting for some character worthy to rank with Shakespeare's best. But +it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in the +play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve +merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. For +rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the +beginning and the middle and the end of _Coriolanus_. The hero is not a +human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, which +roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, +through a melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is +true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So +far and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties +of _Cleopatra_. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one wonders, +as one beholds it, what will happen next. + +At about the same time, some of the scenes in _Timon of Athens_ were in +all probability composed: scenes which resemble _Coriolanus_ in their +lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it +in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of +foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably +unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if +draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of +furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we +are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to +blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness. + + From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, + like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of + Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before + him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more + lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves + of Prince Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind + was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave + serenity in _The Tempest_, and so ended. + +This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be admitted at +once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are charming creatures, that +Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but why +is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our +attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? Modern +critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful and +good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is +another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that these +plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose wickedness +finds expression in language of extraordinary force. Coming fresh from +their pages to the pages of _Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The +Tempest_, one is astonished and perplexed. How is it possible to fit +into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow +Iachimo,' or Cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the 'crafty +devil,' his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these +figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them +comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda +dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the +presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and +vigorous as that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's +violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle +utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a +torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from +'pastoral love,' exclaiming to Leontes: + + What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? + What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling + In leads or oils? what old or newer torture + Must I receive, whose every word deserves + To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, + Together working with thy jealousies, + Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle + For girls of nine, O! think what they have done, + And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all + Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. + That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; + That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant + And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much + Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour, + To have him kill a king; poor trespasses, + More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon + The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter + To be or none or little; though a devil + Would have shed water out of fire ere done't. + Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death + Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, + Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart + That could conceive a gross and foolish sire + Blemished his gracious dam. + +Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does he +verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel coarseness. +Iachimo tells us how: + + The cloyed will, + That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub + Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb, + Longs after for the garbage. + +and talks of: + + an eye + Base and unlustrous as the smoky light + That's fed with stinking tallow. + +'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her +husband in an access of hideous rage. + +What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene self-possession,' +of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? English +critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, +have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in +_Pericles_ but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the grossnesses +of _The Winter's Tale_ and _Cymbeline_. + + Is there no way for men to be, but women + Must be half-workers? + +says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt. + + We are all bastards; + And that most venerable man, which I + Did call my father, was I know not where + When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools + Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed + The Dian of that time; so doth my wife + The nonpareil of this--O vengeance, vengeance! + Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained + And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with + A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't + Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her + As chaste as unsunned snow--O, all the devils!-- + This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,--was't not? + Or less,--at first: perchance he spoke not; but, + Like a full-acorned boar, a German one, + Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition + But what he looked for should oppose, and she + Should from encounter guard. + +And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no less +to the point. + + There have been, + Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, + And many a man there is, even at this present, + Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, + That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence + And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by + Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't, + Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened, + As mine, against their will. Should all despair + That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind + Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none; + It is a bawdy planet, that will strike + Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, + From east, west, north and south: be it concluded, + No barricade for a belly, know't; + It will let in and out the enemy + With bag and baggage: many thousand on's + Have the disease, and feel't not. + +It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to agree +with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the beautiful +pathetic light is always present.' + +But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been so +completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be +found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming, Brutus is +grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that _Hamlet_, and +_Julius Caesar_, and _King Lear_ give expression to the same mood of +high tranquillity which is betrayed by _Cymbeline, The Tempest_, and +_The Winter's Tale_? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, 'for +you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not tragedies; +they all end happily'--'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz, 'of +forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not only +virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more? + +But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of +Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty +triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of +horror and of gloom. For, in _Measure for Measure_ Isabella is no whit +less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as +complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of _Measure +for Measure_ was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What is +it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in +one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes +matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is +rewarded or not? + +The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. _Measure for Measure_ is, +like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before _Coriolanus_, essentially +realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to +them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and +women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their +wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible +enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just as +we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in the plays of the +final period, all this has changed; we are no longer in the real world, +but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of +shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which +anything may happen next. The pretences of reality are indeed usually +preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is supposed to be the king +of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is supposed to demand tribute +of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience +with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for +war: + + Remember, sir, my liege, + The Kings your ancestors, together with + The natural bravery of your isle, which stands + As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in + With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, + With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, + But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest + Caesar made here; but made not here his brag + Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame-- + The first that ever touched him--he was carried + From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-- + Poor ignorant baubles!--on our terrible seas, + Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd + As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof + The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point-- + O giglot fortune!--to master Caesar's sword, + Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright + And Britons strut with courage. + +It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of +poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other +person than the Octavius of _Antony and Cleopatra_; and the contrast is +the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation +and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between Octavius, +Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and Enobarbus on the +other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage +of Antony and Octavia. + +Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's latest period; and +it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally +unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate +princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost +princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy +land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the +prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, +or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the +goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it is clear that such +happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be +taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; +they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories +ought to end. + +Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming +heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics +to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban, are to be +left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are +forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious +fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages +never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met +Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia? In this +land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In this world of +dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is it fair to say +that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil +mood,' when he was creating the Queen in _Cymbeline_, or writing the +first two acts of _The Winter's Tale_? + +Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other characteristic +of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and +Dr. Brandes--the singular carelessness with which great parts of them +were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the +_dénouement_ of _Cymbeline_? And with what perversity is the great +pastoral scene in _The Winter's Tale_ interspersed with long-winded +intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! For these blemishes are unlike +the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier +plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in themselves; +they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are +sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it cannot be denied, often bored, +and occasionally irritated, by Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and +Gonzalo and Belarius; these personages have not even the life of ghosts; +they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance to +involution upon involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of +Shakespeare's earlier works! + +It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored +himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, +bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He is +no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says +what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, +unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this mood +he must have written his share in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, leaving the +plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and +reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this +mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of +_Henry VIII_.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all the +resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of _Pericles_. + +Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years of +his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half +bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the +singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust +to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent speech? +If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is +surely this. + +And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a +consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of +Shakespeare's later work, and the one which critics most consistently +point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity--_The +Tempest_. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics which +distinguish _Cymbeline_ and _The Winter's Tale_ from the dramas of +Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In _The +Tempest_, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the principal +characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action +passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which can +only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, +peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of +persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, +and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did +Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights than +in some of the speeches of Prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty +than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions +that the triumph of his language asserts itself. It finds as splendid a +vent in the curses of Caliban: + + All the infection that the sun sucks up + From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him + By inch-meal a disease! + +and in the similes of Trinculo: + + Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul + bombard that would shed his liquor. + +The _dénouement_ itself, brought about by a preposterous piece of +machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg +for fine writing. + + O, it is monstrous, monstrous! + Methought the billows spoke and told me of it; + The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, + That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced + The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass. + Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and + I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, + And with him there lie mudded. + +And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance from the mouth of the pale +phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play. + +A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the +last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first +gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points of +resemblance between _The Tempest_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, their +common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of +their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the +delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the +_verve_ of their vulgar comedy--these, of course, are obvious enough; +but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison +striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near +Athens--it is full of life. The persons that haunt it--though most of +them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and +all of them are too agreeable to be true--are nevertheless substantial +creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough +sympathy; and the air they breathe--the lords and the ladies, no less +than the mechanics and the elves--is instinct with an exquisite +good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from +Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out +of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions have +vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too +delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the gaiety +of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. +Prospero is the central figure of _The Tempest_; and it has often been +wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author--an embodiment of +that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo +over Shakespeare's later life. But, on closer inspection, the portrait +seems to be as imaginary as the original. To an irreverent eye, the +ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty +personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had +developed an inordinate propensity for talking. These may have been the +sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to +risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is +sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also +self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for +pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, +during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his +Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. +'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of +Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she +would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of +Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and +Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. At all events, there can be +little doubt that they would not have had the entrée at Athens. + +The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured +by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his +companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are +interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the +hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and +deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. +Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, +Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies +between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the +'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, +eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of +disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The physical vigour of +the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'I left them,' +says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew: + + I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, + There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake + O'erstunk their feet. + +But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the +'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast. + + You taught me language, and my profit on't + Is, I know how to curse. + +Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may be +either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the +Heights.' + +1906. + + + + +THE LIVES OF THE POETS[1] + + +No one needs an excuse for re-opening the _Lives of the Poets_; the book +is too delightful. It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but +who re-opens Boswell? Boswell is in another category; because, as every +one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. But, on +its different level, the _Lives_ will always hold a firm and comfortable +place in our affections. After Boswell, it is the book which brings us +nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson. That is its primary +import. We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that +our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go +to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, we +are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these +benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a +mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; +but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is Samuel +Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and admired, +that further description would be superfluous. It is sufficient for us +to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that is +due. In one of Emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to +discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant +conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can +crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. The parallel is +close enough between this impudence and the attitude--implied, if not +expressed--of too much modern criticism towards the sort of +qualities--the easy, indolent power, the searching sense of actuality, +the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence +of thought--which went to the making of the _Lives of the Poets_. There +is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular +instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than +any squirrel that ever lived. + +That the _Lives_ continue to be read, admired, and edited, is in itself +a high proof of the eminence of Johnson's intellect; because, as serious +criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far +removed from the futile. Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost +invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality +to recommend them--except one: they are never right. That is an +unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up +for it, and that his wit has saved all. He has managed to be wrong so +cleverly, that nobody minds. When Gray, for instance, points the moral +to his poem on Walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that +glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to +the purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have +gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.' +Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously +true? But then, to use Johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less +'relation to the purpose'? It is his wit--and we are speaking, of +course, of wit in its widest sense--that has sanctified Johnson's +peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has +put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the reach +of time. + +For it is not only in particular details that Johnson's criticism fails +to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. Our +judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, +but because our whole method of judging has changed. Thus, to the +historian of letters, the _Lives_ have a special interest, for they +afford a standing example of a great dead tradition--a tradition whose +characteristics throw more than one curious light upon the literary +feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the +most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth +century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. The +most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged +authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every +infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, +which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson +never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at +discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of +poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one +condition--that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry +were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of +arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets +themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to bow +to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that his +first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his +criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of +Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater +width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its +drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set of +errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this +was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, and +how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and +tastes--that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in +question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the +Johnsonian black cap. + +But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the _Lives of the +Poets_. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson might +have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the +masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. +Whatever critical method he might have adopted, he still would have +been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our +minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion +of _Lycidas_ is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and +therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in _Comus_ he remarks: 'they are +harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He could +see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering +accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of +Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a +writer could be so absurd. Such preposterous judgments can only be +accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; Johnson had no ear, and +he had no imagination. These are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a +critic. What could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is +sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry? + +The answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change which +has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when +Johnson wrote. It has often been stated that the essential +characteristic of that great Romantic Movement which began at the end of +the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of Nature into the +domain of poetry. Incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly +every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return +to Nature. No less than the school of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the +school of Denham, of Dryden, and of Pope, proclaimed itself as the +champion of Nature; and there can be little doubt that Donne +himself--the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the +seventeenth century--wrote under the impulse of a Naturalistic reaction +against the conventional classicism of the Renaissance. Precisely the +same contradictions took place in France. Nature was the watchword of +Malherbe and of Boileau; and it was equally the watchword of Victor +Hugo. To judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the development +of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the +more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more and more natural as it +grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at +least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be called +Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the operations +of the external world--'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it--as +subject-matter for poetry. But it would have done very little, if it had +done nothing more than this. Thomson, in the full meridian of the +eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it would +be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a +fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more +than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation +of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of _The +Ancient Mariner_ is a landmark in the history of letters, not because of +its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the +poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it +was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of _The +Ancient Mariner_; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which +suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and +imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because +they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be invoked. +But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord +Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was +nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was +disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have +expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, +be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough. + +The new edition of the _Lives_, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for +publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon +Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished +Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and +appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to +shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific +conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr. +Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their +voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a +little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the +weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the +compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the +margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. +The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like +edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, +where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one +another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the +paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and, +as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the +Past, with the friendliness of a conversation. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 1: _Lives of the English Poets_. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. +Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, +1905.] + + + + +MADAME DU DEFFAND[2] + + +When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia, he ordered the +proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some +disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his +carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it might +be necessary to make. 'Je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et +j'écrirai de Mayence ce qu'il y aura à faire.' The volumes thus chosen +to beguile the imperial leisure between Paris and Mayence contained the +famous correspondence of Madame du Deffand with Horace Walpole. By the +Emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book--reprinted +from Miss Berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier +in England--was published almost at once. The sensation in Paris was +immense; the excitement of the Russian campaign itself was half +forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the Convent of +Saint Joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning +of Moscow and the passage of the Berezina. We cannot wonder that this +was so. In the Parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of Madame +du Deffand must have exercised a double fascination--on the one hand as +a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to +many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant +record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and +become historical. The letters were hardly more than thirty years old; +but the world which they depicted in all its intensity and all its +singularity--the world of the old régime--had vanished for ever into +limbo. Between it and the eager readers of the First Empire a gulf was +fixed--a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the +volcanic fires of the Revolution. Since then a century has passed; the +gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us +to-day seems hardly less remote--from some points of view, indeed, even +more--than that which is revealed to us in the Memoirs of Cellini or the +correspondence of Cicero. Yet the vision is not simply one of a strange +and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the letters +which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to +ourselves. The soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and +these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the +eighteenth century, can never be out of date. + +A fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate +them in their completeness. The late Mrs. Paget Toynbee, while preparing +her edition of Horace Walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the +original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a +country house in Staffordshire. The publication of these manuscripts in +full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which Mrs. Toynbee's +well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is +an event of no small importance to lovers of French literature. A great +mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. The +original edition produced by Miss Berry in 1810, from which all the +subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, +turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small +fraction of the whole correspondence; of the 838 letters published by +Mrs. Toynbee, 485 are entirely new, and of the rest only 52 were printed +by Miss Berry in their entirety. Miss Berry's edition was, in fact, +simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. +It skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves +the main outline of the story which the letters reveal. No doubt that +was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the more +exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in +the closely packed 2000 pages of Mrs. Toynbee's volumes. Enthusiasm +alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be +rewarded. In place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we +have now the truth itself--the truth in all its subtle gradations, all +its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable +obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in +black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. Probably Miss Berry's +edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to +become acquainted with a celebrated figure in French literature; but +Mrs. Toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, +and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste +for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the +heart. + +The Marquise du Deffand was perhaps the most typical representative of +that phase of civilisation which came into existence in Western Europe +during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most +concentrated and characteristic form about the year 1750 in the +drawing-rooms of Paris. She was supremely a woman of her age; but it is +important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, half +of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the Regent Orleans, +Fontenelle, and the young Voltaire; not that of Rousseau, the +'Encyclopaedia,' and the Patriarch of Ferney. It is true that her +letters to Walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written +between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and +they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the +whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new +forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, in +sentiment, in action--which for us form its peculiar interest and its +peculiar glory--were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her letters to +Walpole, whenever she compares the present with the past her bitterness +becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs +indicibles aux opéras de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de Thévenart et +de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me paraît détestable: acteurs, +auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais +goût, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards +intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the +'Encyclopaedia' and the _Philosophes_ was the object of her particular +detestation. She saw Diderot once--and that was enough for both of them. +She could never understand why it was that M. de Voltaire would persist +in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as +religion. Turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a +'sot animal.' His dismissal from office--that fatal act, which made the +French Revolution inevitable--delighted her: she concealed her feelings +from Walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the +Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Le renvoi du Turgot me plaît extrêmement,' she +wrote; 'tout me paraît en bon train.' And then she added, more +prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurément, nous n'en resterons pas +là .' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their works was +in part a matter of personal pique--the result of her famous quarrel +with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert +and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly +ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a +deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for +influence between two rival _salonnières_. There are indications that, +even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'Alembert +was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and +her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'Il y a de certains +articles,' she complained to Voltaire in 1763--a year before the final +estrangement--'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur +lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' The truth is that +d'Alembert and his friends were moving, and Madame du Deffand was +standing still. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse simply precipitated and +intensified an inevitable rupture. She was the younger generation +knocking at the door. + +Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common with +that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met +together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de +Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come +into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and +licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and +bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a +fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's +mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. Then +she became the intimate friend of Madame de Prie--the singular woman +who, for a moment, on the Regent's death, during the government of M. le +Duc, controlled the destinies of France, and who committed suicide when +that amusement was denied her. During her early middle age Madame du +Deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of Sceaux, where +the Duchesse du Maine, the grand-daughter of the great Condé and the +daughter-in-law of Louis XIV., kept up for many years an almost royal +state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. It was at +Sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and +conversations--supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked +balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of +the park--that Madame du Deffand came to her maturity and established +her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. +The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters and +the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast +representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no +longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the +glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern +life had not yet begun. It was an intermediate period, and the +comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and +intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity +and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since, +have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and +for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle years +of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those +days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found +all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however +fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of +the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a +society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that +there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms of +personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of the +eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was +expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, +those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run +smoothly--the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of +delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation--with the result that +a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and +obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those +persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it +in an unequivocal way--by the tenacity with which they clung to the +scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they almost +refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have +been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the +furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire, +d'Argental, Moncrif, Hénault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand +herself--all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived +to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities +unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young--at the age of +seventy-seven. Another contemporary, Richelieu, who was famous for his +adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within a +year of the opening of the States-General. More typical still of this +singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in +his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in +existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so. + +Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring +smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of +trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was no +light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being +blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, +realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a +peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le +commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly +true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were +those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, +over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so +charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the +rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that +lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in +their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious +orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of +personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be +left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow +sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised +as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself +should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and +absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be +tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious +and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for +literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for +recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat +such trifles as if they had a value of their own? Only one thing; and +that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the +inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation +was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not +even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of +perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the +solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared to +the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a +convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to +instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered +serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a +preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful +heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the +generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still +believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange +indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. The +Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a +threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the case +was hopeless. + +An innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm that +wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving +devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse--such +were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who had +spent their youth at the Court of the Regent, and dallied out their +middle age down the long avenues of Sceaux. About the middle of the +century the Duchesse du Maine died, and Madame du Deffand established +herself in Paris at the Convent of Saint Joseph in a set of rooms which +still showed traces--in the emblazoned arms over the great +mantelpiece--of the occupation of Madame de Montespan. A few years later +a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she became +totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a +transition, among the ranks of the old. For the rest of her life she +hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most +celebrated in Europe. The thirty years of her reign there fall into two +distinct and almost equal parts. The first, during which d'Alembert was +pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse. During the second, which lasted for the rest of her life, +her salon, purged of the Encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly +worldly tone; and the influence of Horace Walpole was supreme. + +It is this final period of Madame du Deffand's life that is reflected so +minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of Mrs. Toynbee +have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. Her letters +to Walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of +fifteen years (1766-1780). They allow us, on the one hand, to trace +through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, +and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps +the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed +society. For the circle which came together in her drawing-room during +those years had the hand of death upon it. The future lay elsewhere; it +was simply the past that survived there--in the rich trappings of +fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety--but still irrevocably the past. +The radiant creatures of Sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. We see +them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to +amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. Pont-de-Veyle, the +youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what +a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go the +rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard +no more. Hénault--once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for having +written an historical treatise--which, it is true, was worthless, but he +had written it--Hénault was beginning to dodder, and Voltaire, grinning +in Ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre délabré Président.' Various +dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. The Marquise de Boufflers +was gambling herself to ruin; the Comtesse de Boufflers was wringing +out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; +the Maréchale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the Maréchale +de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous +attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: +'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a +shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage que le Saint +Esprit eût aussi peu de goût!' Then there was the floating company of +foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at Madame du +Deffand's: Caraccioli, for instance, the Neapolitan Ambassador--'je +perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en +dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and Bernstorff, the Danish +envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and +fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'à travers tous ces +éloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler Puffendorf,' and Puffendorf the poor +man remained for evermore. Besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign +traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned _salon_; +Englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar +figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to Walpole +are Burke, Fox, and Gibbon. Sometimes influential parents in England +obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of +Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced by +his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle +of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and +orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the +fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the +leading word or smile or nod of an ancient Sibyl, who seemed to survey +the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. It is +easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. Madame du +Deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not +know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the same +difficulty. To an English youth, unfamiliar with the language and shy +as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old +lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the +stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, +from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the +pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. +As a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony--or rather, not the days, +but the nights. For Madame du Deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in +the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past +the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived--the moment of +supper. Upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. Supper, she +used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three +were she could never remember. She lived up to her dictum. She had an +income of £1400 a year, and of this she spent more than half--£720--on +food. These figures should be largely increased to give them their +modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could +only just manage to rub along. Her parties varied considerably in size; +sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper--sometimes twenty +or thirty. No doubt they were elaborate meals. In a moment of economy we +find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer +give 'des repas'--only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at +which there should be served nothing more than two entrées, one roast, +two sweets, and--mysterious addition--'la pièce du milieu.' This was +certainly moderate for those days (Monsieur de Jonsac rarely provided +fewer than fourteen entrées), but such resolutions did not last long. A +week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, +day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty +guests. But she did not always have supper at home. From time to time +she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of +Paris to one of her still extant dowagers--a Maréchale, or a +Duchesse--or the more and more 'délabré Président.' There the same +company awaited her as that which met in her own house; it was simply a +change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper +every night with the same half-dozen persons. The entertainment, apart +from the supper itself, hardly varied. Occasionally there was a little +music, more often there were cards and gambling. Madame du Deffand +disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a +choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of +seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing +vingt-et-un with Charles Fox. But distractions of that kind were merely +incidental to the grand business of the night--the conversation. In the +circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two +or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk +continually flowed. For those strange creatures it seemed to form the +very substance of life itself. It was the underlying essence, the +circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had +their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men +might go, but talk went on for ever. It is difficult, especially for +those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to +realise the nature of such conversation. Brilliant, charming, +easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never +intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, +never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most +vigorous flow of language. 'Écoutez! Écoutez!' Walpole used constantly +to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling +cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part--to +drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, +exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the +pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a +breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at +moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant +jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to +us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book--'C'est de l'esprit sur les +lois'--is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so +dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A +garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint +Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and +carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what +was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his +head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint +Denis--a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du +Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui +coûte.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to +go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened +to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred +going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a +chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and +stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to +hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it +was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was +ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home. + +It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed, +for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part +of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she +devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that +she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound +alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only +read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually +complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In +nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours +than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How the +eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our +biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge +and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! In those days, +even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to +read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from +catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that +Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in +_Athalie_. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the whole he +was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de +Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was +enraptured by the style--but only by the style--of _Gil Blas_. And that +was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or +insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it, +but she soon gave it up--it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon, +but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une +monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne s'occupe +que des bêtes; il faut l'être un peu soi-même pour se dévouer à une +telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in +manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted by +the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she +embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was +unexpected; she was positively pleased. _Coriolanus_, it is true, 'me +semble, sauf votre respect, épouvantable, et n'a pas le sens commun'; +and 'pour _La Tempête_, je ne suis pas touchée de ce genre.' But she was +impressed by _Othello_; she was interested by _Macbeth_; and she admired +_Julius Caesar_, in spite of its bad taste. At _King Lear_, indeed, she +had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle pièce! Réellement la +trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'âme à un point que je ne puis +exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader +was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning +early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the +cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous +company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and +Lady Macbeth? + +Often, even before the arrival of the old pensioner, she was at work +dictating a letter, usually to Horace Walpole, occasionally to Madame de +Choiseul or Voltaire. Her letters to Voltaire are enchanting; his +replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole +correspondence has never been collected together in chronological order, +and published as a separate book. The slim volume would be, of its kind, +quite perfect. There was no love lost between the two old friends; they +could not understand each other; Voltaire, alone of his generation, had +thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to Madame du Deffand +progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an +unpleasant necessity. She distrusted him profoundly, and he returned the +compliment. Yet neither could do without the other: through her, he kept +in touch with one of the most influential circles in Paris; and even she +could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. +Besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other +genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long +familiarity. The result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. If +they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to +write so well. They were on their best behaviour--exquisitely courteous +and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. His cajoleries +are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, +have almost the quality of a caress. She replies in the tone of a +worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her +'Monsieur de Voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. +He rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he +alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. Sometimes one just +catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the +smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one +is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat. + +Madame du Deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely than +that of Voltaire himself, the common-sense of the eighteenth century. +Its precision is absolute. It is like a line drawn in one stroke by a +master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. There is no +breadth in it--no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. One +cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her +blindness. What did she lose by it? Certainly not + + The sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose; + +for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at their +clearest? Her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating +glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere +irrelevance. The kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may +seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of +the Romantic school. Yet it will repay attention. The vocabulary is very +small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, +who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote--and spelt--by the +light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary +accomplishments--'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' +The object of all art is to make suggestions. The romantic artist +attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling +up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the +reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the +classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring +everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact +propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame du +Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never +strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such +is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on +their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the +dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to Walpole is +characteristic: + + Nous eûmes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la harpe à + merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du regret que vous + ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. Nous eûmes + aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fût touché avec une grande + perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison de la harpe. Je fus fort + triste toute la soirée; j'avais appris en partant que Mme. de + Luxembourg, qui était allée samedi à Montmorency pour y passer + quinze jours, s'était trouvée si mal qu'on avait fait venir + Tronchin, et qu'on l'avait ramenée le dimanche à huit heures du + soir, qu'on lui croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. L'ancienneté de + la connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitié; voir + disparaître ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-même; sentir + que l'on ne tient à rien, que tout fuit, que tout échappe, qu'on + reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgré cela on craint de le + quitter; voilà ce qui m'occupa pendant la musique. + +Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and +ordinary expressions--'un instrument admirable'--'une grande +perfection'--'fort triste.' Nothing is described; and yet how much is +suggested! The whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one's +imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, by +a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless +rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old +harp seems to be lingering still. + +While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant exterior +of Madame du Deffand's mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of +her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, +pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair--these are the feelings +that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's +lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed +the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the +rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was +surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? The +harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little +appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a feast; +the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her +distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act +of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from +her for ever. Yet--and this intensified her wretchedness--though the +banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself +away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts +of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was +out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and +there she must remain. 'Je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de +me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' She was extremely +lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her +life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'Je ne +vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which +were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in +analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she +lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, +Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her--'elle fait +des définitions,' she wails--to that of the lady who hoped to prove her +friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears--'comme je n'y tâte +pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de goût que j'ai pour elle.' Then +there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. +'Tous les Matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the Regent, +'excepté le Marquis de Matignon.' 'Cela est vrai,' the Regent replied, +'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' Madame +du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, there +was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet--what was +it? Something was the matter--yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool +yourself--'l'on est plus bête avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout seul.' As +she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentée d'arracher les masques +qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out +unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked +behind the gravest or the most fascinating exterior; then her fingers +began to itch, and she could resist no longer--she gave way to her +besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with Rousseau's +remark about her--'J'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fléau de sa haine +qu'à celui de son amitié.' There, sitting in her great Diogenes-tub of +an armchair--her 'tonneau' as she called it--talking, smiling, +scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the +remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces +that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed +itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and +meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism: + + J'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui était chez moi; + hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines à ressorts, qui + allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans + réfléchir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son rôle par habitude: Madame + la Duchesse d'Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de Forcalquier + dédaignait tout, Mme. de la Vallière jabotait sur tout. Les hommes + ne jouaient pas de meilleurs rôles, et moi j'étais abîmée dans les + réflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j'avais passé ma vie dans + les illusions; que je m'étais creusée tous les abîmes dans lesquels + j'étais tombée. + +At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual +hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours: + + Je ramenai la Maréchale de Mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, je + causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mécontente. Elle hait + la petite Idole, elle hait la Maréchale de Luxembourg; enfin, sa + haine pour tous les gens qui me déplaisent me fit lui pardonner + l'indifférence et peut-être la haine qu'elle a pour moi. Convenez + que voilà une jolie société, un charmant commerce. + +Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found +in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But +there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she _was_ +perfect!--'Elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand défaut qu'on ne +pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' At last one day the inevitable +happened--she went to see Madame de Choiseul, and she was bored. 'Je +rentrai chez moi à une heure, pénétrée, persuadée qu'on ne peut être +content de personne.' + +One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final +irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop +that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had +come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within +a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such +a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die +quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and +she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was +embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she +experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. +Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an +ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways of +worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, +and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. +Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a +holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, +hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blasé bachelor of fifty, should +have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have +treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him +which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in +a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest +fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our +knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; +nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and +painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an +inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that +letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived in +terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind +old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his +friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the +laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less +terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the +object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his +London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France +with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by +turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by +the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand--so far as he could like +anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her +letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably +the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute +rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most +ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to +continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du +Deffand. She accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she +wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. +Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her +side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. +Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked +by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the +same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the +charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a +miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he +had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a +good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was +the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had +been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight +of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole +too would have felt 'le fléau de son amitié'? His mask, too, would have +been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved +him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his +brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of +about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks--just long enough to +rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that +she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of +which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once +or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in +plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most violent +and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and +for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and +pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some +satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a +peculiarly painful attack of the gout. + +About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, +after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After +seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was +broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully +accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she +resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, +her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete. +She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations +on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'âme,' she +says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est le +ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est l'avant-goût du +néant, mais le néant lui est préférable.' Her existence had become a +hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been +uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le répète sans +cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'être né.' The grasshopper had +become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. +'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie +aussi triste?' When Death did come at last, he came very gently. She +felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in +her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: +'Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez +point de mon état, nous étions presque perdus l'un pour l'autre; nous ne +nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien +aise de se savoir aimé.' That was her last word to him. Walpole might +have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he +realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would have +been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived--her +room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her +ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one +attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it +is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. +Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such an +unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an +uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing +that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was +she perhaps right after all? + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 2: _Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole_ +(1766-80). Première Edition complète, augmentée d'environ 500 Lettres +inédites, publiées, d'après les originaux, avec une introduction, des +notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, +1912.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND[3] + +The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the history of +civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of +interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the French and +English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance +and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire planted +a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile +influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on +good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native +country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so +that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his was +the hand which did the work. + +It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in +Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a +hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could find +nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's day +the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long +Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate +the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the +publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the +_Lettres Philosophiques_, the work in which Voltaire gave to the world +the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien +Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the +period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which he +has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and +disputed points. M. Lanson's great attainments are well known, and to +say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to +the edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is +a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and +perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of +European culture. + +Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure for +England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The story, +as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official +documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the early +days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied +a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly +have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising +poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of +Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been +rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, +his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of +the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his +middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his +middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his +ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank +and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he +expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was +his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night +at the Opéra the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful +family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, +whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to +taunt the poet upon his birth--'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire--what +_is_ your name?' To which the retort came quickly--'Whatever my name may +be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered +something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had let +his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to +pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty +with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those _grands seigneurs_ +to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at +dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons._' It was +dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such +privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! A few days later +Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in Adrienne +Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and +'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan +lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and +the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the +arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's, +where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, +received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went +out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of +Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he +shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, +according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which +had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to +everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into +Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of +words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up +to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the +signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted +itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if +they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then +the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the +convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came +into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, +perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at +him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with +icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de +Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed +the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and +_Phèdre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups +de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' 'Nous serions bien +malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of +snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' Such friends as +remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing. +'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le fond il a +raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, and +she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, +lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two +months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised +swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was +cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally +rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long +term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did +not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those +days to a man of honour in such circumstances--to avenge the insult by a +challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, began +to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so +soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One +day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for +Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police +reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making +no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec éclat M. +le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly on +the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the _Police Gazette_, +'le sieur Arrouët de Voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, and +conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille. + +A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de Bernières while he +was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced +upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected +correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit. +The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting +smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are +informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, +for the first time in his life, is serious. + + J'ai été à l'extrémité; je n'attends que ma convalescence pour + abandonner à jamais ce pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre + que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par + un mot de votre main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je + vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance. + Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand; dites à Thieriot que je + veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je + serai heureux; jusque-là , je lui pardonne son indifférence. Dites à + M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité + de ses procédés pour moi. Comptez que tout détrompé que je suis de + la vanité des amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais + précieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir à Paris que pour vous voir, + vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance + dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs. + +'Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand!' Strange indeed are the +whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernières was then living in none other +than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai +des Théatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century later, +the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an +enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; +where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with +the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to +the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, +which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow +old.[4] + +Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. For some time he had +entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged for +permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was +to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to substitute exile +for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux +poète' was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and +remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty +leagues from Versailles. + +It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and +confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is +generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. His +subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at +Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the +interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object--in which +he did not succeed--of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel. +Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not +in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in +doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned +secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length +of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, +however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over +all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters +during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary +English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend +upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We +know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard +Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in +English--an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of +another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned Jew +was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a +Jewish broker.) + + I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, + alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to + nobody; my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could + not make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I + had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all + the misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among + all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind + refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who + forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London + citisen that I had seen but once at Paris, carried me to his own + country house, wherein I lead an obscure and charming life since + that time, without going to London, and quite given over to the + pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and generous + affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings + me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp + indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady + Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even + increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, + their money, their house; but I have refused all, because they are + lords, and I have accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a + single gentleman. + +We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as +to who or what Everard Falkener was--besides the fact that he was a +'single gentleman'--we have only just information enough to make us wish +for more. + +'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, +neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect +health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, +without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all +this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' +This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame +his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first +Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General--has anyone, +before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and +to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of +sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.' + +We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious document +brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at +a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to +argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' +until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed +conclusive. + + Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in + Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on + the subject of water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a + quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of Paul. They + questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on + which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of £500: and + Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl's horses, + and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney.... When I came he + desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, _he + was not sent to baptize_; which I presently did. Then courteously + taking his leave, he mounted and rode back-- + +and, we must suppose, won his wager. + + He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out + the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be + very exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it + might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his + companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every + respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal + value: telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were + most of the noblemen in France and in England; deriding the account + given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and + his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist: for I + could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against. + Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some + reluctance. + +In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating +figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square--'Belitery +Square' he calls it--or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane, +Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in +Westminster Abbey, or to pay a call on Congreve, or to attend a +Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he +found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the +'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and +delivering a harangue beginning--'Brave Englishmen! Am I not +sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are +one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb +Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the +episode of Sin and Death in _Paradise Lost_ with such vigour that at +last Young burst out with the couplet: + + You are so witty, profligate, and thin, + At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin; + +and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure him +into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had +scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I +thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom either +a fool or a philosopher.' + +It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its +scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, +and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have +been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, +and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His +correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose +presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to +England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has +completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which +passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there +any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark raises +our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years +later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to +Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary: + + Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very + old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots + on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke + all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but + genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall + and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly + vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with + whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who + first showed him the _Beggar's Opera_ before it was acted. He says + he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a + great deal of the ridiculum acre. + +And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at +Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision has +he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from +our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months +at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than one +or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk +which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream, +swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of +forgetfulness and the long night of Time! + +So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated +information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of +Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a +very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to +suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a +purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire +himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the +great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he +was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not +that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _réclame_, +with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of +those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even +less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire's own +story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire +was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is +only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at +him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in +England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody +else--'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'M. de +Voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en Angleterre: qu'il s'y est +fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui n'accordaient pas avec les +principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England +'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated +publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of +money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, +who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more +circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, +it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of +betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale +first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it +from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton +Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the +'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in +Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom +'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. +There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no +law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' +Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy +premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth +century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has +examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with +conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without +foundation. + +It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not limited +to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which centred about the +disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London +with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English Ambassador +at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, a +poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the favour +and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to +support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.," +which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the +priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and +Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London +edition of the _Henriade_, there was hardly a great name in England +which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the +poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of £240. Now it is +also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were +suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act +in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' +who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But to +conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was +known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the +inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, +owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers +to the _Henriade_--Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and +that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of +Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition +of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have +had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can +conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very summit +of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew +to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself +and his friends? + +Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in +England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition +of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of +the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its +pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon +the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his +tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his +History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged +with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_ +met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition +was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as +many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. +M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly +successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some +town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the +completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may, +he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he +applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th +of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more +than three years before came to a close. + +It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_ +appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire +gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a +focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation +into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had +scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the +culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the +Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to +England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration +which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the +hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like +most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar +attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular +sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The +agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign +of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual +activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed +to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime +the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of +the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State. +Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English; +never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of +judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and +complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of +Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the +whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those +elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of +the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both +appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of +the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were +visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the +Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into +English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy +Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of +English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny +fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable +silence, over their English beef and English beer. + +It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful +stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with +the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the +narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the +result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for +what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire +makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, +the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not +to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment +which was not published until after his death, describing his first +impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a +fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of +Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would +have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be +painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the +master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in +reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher and +more important, something more original and more profound. He determined +to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an +ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of +faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's +dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note +to Madame de Bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of England, +into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and +follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he +was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter +in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was +now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great +blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu +in his _Lettres Persanes_; the second was struck by Voltaire in the +_Lettres Philosophiques_. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous +precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work +appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as +its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections +upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common +point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England +is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of +which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy is brought into operation. The +book is an extremely short one--it fills less than two hundred small +octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy +gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it--a set of private letters +to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an +extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a +hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance--from the +theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the effects +of inoculation to the immortality of the soul--and every touch tells. It +is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential +point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality +of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The matters +treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed +so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder +whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been +expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been +expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an +exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial +trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough. +Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop +of some strange liquor--is it a poison or is it an elixir of +life?--whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the +remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French +readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were +looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had begun +among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid +frame-work of society--of life itself--the hard, dark, narrow, +antiquated structure of their existence--had suddenly, in the twinkling +of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing. + +It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a work +would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to +those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been +crowned with triumph, and all that was best in English life was founded +upon the political institutions which had been then established. The +moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a +free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and +incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by +Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; he +gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly +mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the +responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even +the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, +whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the +importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the +constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to +the reader than the famous lines in the _Henriade_: + + Aux murs de Westminster on voit paraître ensemble + Trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les rassemble. + +Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the English +edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be +inserted in the preface: + + Some of his _English_ Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at his + not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which + most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is + an effect of _M. de Voltaire's_ Judgment. He contented himself with + giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which + is entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the + _British_ Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible + for a Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy + Labyrinth, in which such of the _English_ themselves as are best + acquainted with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and + lost? + +Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of +Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later +eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They turned +away in disgust from the 'gloomy labyrinth' of practical fact to take +refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts, +'the Cast of which was entirely new'--and the conclusion of which was +also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution. + +It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the _Lettres +Philosophiques_ should have been condemned by the authorities, not for +any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in +question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the _ancien +régime_ was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its immediate +effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was +increased. And the _ancien régime_ itself was not slow to realise the +danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the +unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful. + + Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La + seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle + de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop de conséquence pour + la traiter sérieusement. Il a fallu l'égorger pour ne pas heurter + de front nos seigneurs les théologiens, gens qui voient si + clairement la spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils + pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent. + +Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so +gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then +beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly +perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names +of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In this +connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the +writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord Morley +says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of +the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian +theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is certain +both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that +his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England. +There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous letter, preserved +among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the +police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment. + + Vous venez de mettre à la Bastille [says the writer, who, it is + supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il + y a plus de 15 années. + +The writer goes on to speak of the + + métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le déisme tout à + découvert aux toilettes de nos jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien + Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu de contes et de fables, les + apôtres étaient de bonnes gens idiots, simples, et crédules, et les + pères de l'Eglise, Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le + plus, n'étaient que des charlatans et des suborneurs. + +'Je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un jour seulement, +afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa vie.' That +Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such pious +ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn +from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of +England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and +Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate +and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was +only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and +fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused +rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may each +and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and +suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. +Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal +relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and +superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in +his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions +and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; +but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and +far-reaching speculations of Hume belong, of course, to a totally +different class. + +Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which +the _Lettres Philosophiques_ did pioneer work of a highly important +kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. +The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best--succinct, lucid, +persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other +hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention +his existence--a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely +afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's +nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high +Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such +aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition for +matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he had +never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see +before him. All was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, d'ordre, de +vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and +elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the true +significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind. + +Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to +reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by +slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, +quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon +some of the _Pensées_ of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that these +reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious +venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his +subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and +intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged +Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice +extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his +book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt +that it would be safer to skip the best parts--'the poor man!' he said +afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'--but the permission +never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit +publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The +_Lettres Philosophiques_ were officially condemned; the book was +declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux bonnes +moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to be +publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might +have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from +putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps +and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. Loke +and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de +Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered +message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was +carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete. + +He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of +the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's country +house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and +a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of +the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, and +condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of +Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of +orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard. +But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton _was_ heard. The men of +science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much +to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which +took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century +were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire. + +With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English +influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never +lost his interest in England; he was never tired of reading English +books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in +the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that +deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so +foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But it +is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's +nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central +standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in +England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has ever +trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found +its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially +conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of +Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising +passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the +nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the +careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and explicit, +and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez l'infâme!' +was enough for him. + + +1914. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 3: _Correspondance de Voltaire_ (1726-1729). By Lucien Foulet. +Paris: Hachette, 1913.] + +[Footnote 4: 'Il est aussi animé qu'il ait jamais été. Il a +quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en vérité je le crois immortel; il jouit de +tous ses sens, aucun même n'est affaibli; c'est un être bien singulier, +et en vérité fort supérieur.' Madame du Deffand to Horace Walpole, 12 +Avril 1778.] + + + + +A DIALOGUE + +BETWEEN + +MOSES, DIOGENES, AND MR. LOKE + + +DIOGENES + +Confess, oh _Moses_! Your Miracles were but conjuring-tricks, your +Prophecies lucky Hazards, and your Laws a _Gallimaufry_ of Commonplaces +and Absurdities. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the Vulgar than in +ascertaining the Truth, and that your Reputation in the World would +never have been so high, had your Lot fallen among a Nation of +Philosophers. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that when you taught the _Jews_ to spoil the _Egyptians_ you +were a sad rogue. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that it was a Fable to give Horses to Pharaoh and an uncloven +hoof to the Hare. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that you did never see the _Back Parts_ of the Lord. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that your style had too much Singularity and too little Taste to +be that of the Holy Ghost. + + +MOSES + +All this may be true, my good Friends; but what are the Conclusions you +would draw from your Raillery? Do you suppose that I am ignorant of all +that a Wise Man might urge against my Conduct, my Tales, and my +Language? But alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by Choice but by +Necessity. I had not the Happiness of living in _England_ or a _Tub_. I +was the Leader of an ignorant and superstitious People, who would never +have heeded the sober Counsels of Good Sense and Toleration, and who +would have laughed at the Refinements of a nice Philosophy. It was +necessary to flatter their Vanity by telling them that they were the +favour'd Children of God, to satisfy their Passions by allowing them to +be treacherous and cruel to their Enemies, and to tickle their Ears by +Stories and Farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a +Nursery or _Bedlam_. By such Contrivances I was able to attain my Ends +and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is +not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must +fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from +Expediency. It is his Duty to _sacrifice_ the Best, which is impossible, +to a _little Good_, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay down a +Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in a +few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and +Superstitious, the _Jews_ would never have escaped from the Bondage of +the _Egyptians_. + + +DIOGENES. + +Perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming Disaster. But, in +truth, you are right. There is no viler Profession than the Government +of Nations. He who dreams that he can lead a great Crowd of Fools +without a great Store of Knavery is a Fool himself. + + +MR. LOKE + +Are not you too hasty? Does not History show that there have been great +Rulers who were good Men? Solon, Henry of _Navarre_, and Milord Somers +were certainly not Fools, and yet I am unwilling to believe that they +were Knaves either. + + +MOSES + +No, not Knaves; but Dissemblers. In their different degrees, they all +juggled; but 'twas not because Jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because Men +cannot be governed without it. + + +MR. LOKE + +I would be happy to try the Experiment. If Men were told the Truth, +might they not believe it? If the Opportunity of Virtue and Wisdom is +never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be +willing to take it? Let Rulers be _bold_ and _honest_, and it is +possible that the Folly of their Peoples will disappear. + + +DIOGENES + +A pretty phantastick Vision! But History is against you. + + +MOSES + +And Prophecy. + + +DIOGENES + +And Common Observation. Look at the World at this moment, and what do we +see? It is as it has always been, and always will be. So long as it +endures, the World will continue to be rul'd by Cajolery, by Injustice, +and by Imposture. + + +MR. LOKE + +If that be so, I must take leave to lament the _Destiny_ of the Human +Race. + + + + +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES + +The historian of Literature is little more than a historian of exploded +reputations. What has he to do with Shakespeare, with Dante, with +Sophocles? Has he entered into the springs of the sea? Or has he walked +in the search of the depth? The great fixed luminaries of the firmament +of Letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more +than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes of +an ordinary mortal. His business is with the succeeding ages of men, not +with all time; but _Hyperion_ might have been written on the morrow of +Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The +literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the +geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of +forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great +men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer +great--mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the +siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is +for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the +platitudes of Cicero. It is for him to sit up all night with the +spectral heroes of Byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable +alexandrines with the faded heroines of Voltaire. + +The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly +indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of +him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, and +not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of _Candide_, of +_Akakia_, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his +productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons now +living have travelled through _La Henriade_ or _La Pucelle_? How many +have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of _L'Esprit des +Moeurs_? _Zadig_ and _Zaïre, Mérope_ and _Charles XII_. still linger, +perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of _Oreste_, and of +_Mahomet_, and of _Alzire_? _Où sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Though Voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as a +precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a +poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not +only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, +every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the +censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded +houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and +Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got +by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf +which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a +comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our feelings +and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing--a tragedy by +Voltaire. For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, +as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort +to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets our +eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to +its forgotten corner--to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the +scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same +words must have conjured up. The splendid gaiety, the refined +excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion--all these things have +vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, +the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had +their being. It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to examine +one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may do +so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the +footsteps of Voltaire himself. His examination of _Hamlet_ affords a +precedent which is particularly applicable, owing to the fact that the +same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which divides +ourselves from him. One point of difference, indeed, does exist between +the relative positions of the two authors. Voltaire, in his study of +Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our +interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. At +the present moment,[5] a literal translation of _King Lear_ is drawing +full houses at the Théâtre Antoine. As a rule it is rash to prophesy; +but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of +them--hundred years hence a literal translation of _Zaïre_ will not be +holding the English boards. + +It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of +Voltaire's tragedies. Our object is to review some specimen of what +would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of +the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in +_Alzire, ou Les Américains_, first produced with great success in 1736, +when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist +already well established. + +_Act I_.--The scene is laid in Lima, the capital of Peru, some years +after the Spanish conquest of America. When the play opens, Don Gusman, +a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the +Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and +just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of his +countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the +work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's +temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, +harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. + + L'Américain farouche est un monstre sauvage + Qui mord en frémissant le frein de l'esclavage ... + Tout pouvoir, en un mot, périt par l'indulgence, + Et la sévérité produit l'obéissance. + +Such were the cruel maxims of his government--maxims which he was only +too ready to put into practice. It was in vain that Don Alvarez reminded +his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and that, as he +epigrammatically put it, 'Le vrai Dieu, mon fils, est un Dieu qui +pardonne.' To enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of +how his own life had been spared by a virtuous American, who, as he +said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' But Don Gusman +remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was +one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. He +was in love with Alzire, Alzire the young and beautiful daughter of +Montèze, who had ruled in Lima before the coming of the Spaniards. 'Je +l'aime, je l'avoue,' said Gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne +veux.' With these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes +plain to the spectator. The wicked Spanish Governor is in love with the +virtuous American princess. From such a state of affairs, what +interesting and romantic developments may not follow? Alzire, we are not +surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a Peruvian +prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the +tyranny of Don Gusman. Yet, for the sake of Montèze, her ambitious and +scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the Governor. She +consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to Zamore. +'Sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to Don Gusman, 'il eut pour moi +des charmes.' + + Il m'aima: son trépas me coûte encore des larmes: + Vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur, + Jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur. + +The ruthless Don did not allow these pathetic considerations to stand in +the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should +be immediately performed. But, at the very moment of his apparent +triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes. + +_Act II_.--It was only natural to expect that a heroine affianced to a +villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. The hero adored by +Alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural +than his resurrection? The noble Zamore was not dead; he had escaped +with his life from the torture-chamber of Don Gusman, had returned to +avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying +imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved +princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe. + +In this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable Alvarez, +who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's +release. In the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to +distinguish the features of Zamore; but the old man at last discovered +that he was addressing the very American who, so many years ago, instead +of hitting him, had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this +extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, +behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let +us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to +state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, +hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the +Governor. + +Act III.--Meanwhile, Alzire had been married. But she still could not +forget her Peruvian lover. While she was lamenting her fate, and +imploring the forgiveness of the shade of Zamore, she was informed that +a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'Admit him.' He was +admitted. 'Heaven! Such were his features, his gait, his voice: Zamore!' +She falls into the arms of her confidante. 'Je succombe; à peine je +respire.' + + ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant. + ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire! + Est-ce une illusion? + +It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to confess +to her lover that she was already married to Don Gusman. Zamore was at +first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still +struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and +Don Gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room. + +A double recognition followed. Zamore was no less horrified to behold in +Don Gusman the son of the venerable Alvarez, than Don Gusman was +infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had +consented was no other than Zamore. When the first shock of surprise was +over, the Peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him +with the tortures he had inflicted. The Governor replied by ordering the +instant execution of the prince. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded his son of Zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that Alzire +herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. Zamore was +dragged from the apartment; and Alzire and Don Alvarez were left alone +to bewail the fate of the Peruvian hero. Yet some faint hopes still +lingered in the old man's breast. 'Gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, +'je le sais, j'en frémis; + + Mais il est ton époux, il t'aime, il est mon fils: + Son âme à la pitié se peut ouvrir encore.' + +'Hélas!' (replied Alzire), 'que n'êtes-vous le père de Zamore!' + +_Act IV_.--Even Don Gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel itself +entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and +he consented to allow a brief respite to Zamore's execution. Alzire was +not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for +she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of +bribing the warder of the dungeon. Zamore was free. But alas! Alzire was +not; was she not wedded to the wicked Gusman? Her lover's expostulations +fell on unheeding ears. What mattered it that her marriage vow had been +sworn before an alien God? 'J'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe à quel +dieu!' + + ZAMORE: Ta promesse est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu. + Périssent tes serments et ton Dieu que j'abhorre! + + ALZIRE: Arrête; quels adieux! arrête, cher Zamore! + +But the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his lips +than an oath to be revenged upon the Governor. Alzire, perplexed, +deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned +for comfort to that God, who, she could not but believe, was, in some +mysterious way, the Father of All. + + Great God, lead Zamore in safety through the desert places. ... Ah! + can it be true that thou art but the Deity of another universe? + Have the Europeans alone the right to please thee? Art thou after + all the tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... No! The + conquerors and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all + are equally the work of thy hands.... + +Her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. She heard shrieks; +she heard a cry of 'Zamore!' And her confidante, rushing in, confusedly +informed her that her lover was in peril of his life. + + Ah, chère Emire [she exclaimed], allons le secourir! + + EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel! + + ALZIRE: Je puis mourir. + +Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an +emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself +under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately +removed to the lowest dungeon. + +_Act V_.--It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt the +reason of her arrest. Zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight from +her apartment into the presence of Don Gusman, and had plunged a dagger +into his enemy's breast. The hero had then turned to Don Alvarez and, +with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard. + + J'ai fait ce que j'ai dû, j'ai vengé mon injure; + Fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature. + +Before Don Alvarez could reply to this appeal, Zamore had been haled off +by the enraged soldiery before the Council of Grandees. Don Gusman had +been mortally wounded; and the Council proceeded at once to condemn to +death, not only Zamore, but also Alzire, who, they found, had been +guilty of complicity in the murder. It was the unpleasant duty of Don +Alvarez to announce to the prisoners the Council's sentence. He did so +in the following manner: + + Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! My own liberator + is the assassin of my son. Zamore!... Yes, it is to thee that I owe + this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal + gift.... I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy + fury, in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance + from my agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy + benefactions. And thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our + misery I yet call by a name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how + far is it from thy father's wishes to add to the agony which he + already feels the horrible pleasure of vengeance. I must lose, by + an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my liberator, my daughter, and + my son. The Council has sentenced you to death. + +Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the +culprits were to be spared--that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. +What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for +a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while Alzire +added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by +hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was +just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor +of death upon his features, was carried into the room. The implacable +Governor was about to utter his last words. Alzire was resigned; Alvarez +was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last. But lo! when +the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change had +come over his mind. He was no longer proud, he was no longer cruel, he +was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, he +had repented. Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the truth +of Christianity. And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don +Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in the +arms of Don Alvarez. For thus were the guilty punished, and the virtuous +rewarded. The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, +and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her lover +to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. That they +were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don +Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave. + +Such is the tragedy of _Alzire_, which, it may be well to repeat, was in +its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. It was +upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries +recognised Voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic +triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and +Racine. With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and it +is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of _Alzire_ was +a worthy successor of the author of _Athalie_. At first sight, indeed, +the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a +closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be spanned +by any superficial likeness. + +A careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere +_tours de force_; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. For, +as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly +unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere +_tour de force_' carries with it something more than the idea of +technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is +technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and nothing +more. The problem before a writer of a Chant Royal is to overcome +certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his +_tour de force_, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is +accomplished. But Racine's problem was very different. The technical +restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary was +cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic +movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every +conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the +alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he +was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a _mot bas_. But his +triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it +was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of +them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and +enchanting work of art. To have brought about this amazing combination, +to have erected, upon a structure of Alexandrines, of Unities, of Noble +Personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia +of the Classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite +poetry, of overwhelming passion--that is a _tour de force_ whose +achievement entitles Jean Racine to a place among the very few +consummate artists of the world. + +Voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, +when he took up the mantle of Racine, he put it, not upon a human being, +but upon a tailor's block. To change the metaphor, Racine's work +resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted +our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming +tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire was +able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and +the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut into +curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one +instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same +pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of +similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. It is amusing to +note the exclamations which rise to the lips of Voltaire's characters in +moments of extreme excitement--_Qu'entends-je? Que vois-je? Où suis-je? +Grands Dieux! Ah, c'en est trop, Seigneur! Juste Ciel! Sauve-toi de ces +lieux! Madame, quelle horreur_ ... &c. And it is amazing to discover +that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to express +all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his +best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing +hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly falls +within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, +of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet-- + + C'est ce même guerrier dont la main tutélaire, + De Gusman, votre époux, sauva, dit-on, le père, + +or as + + Qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en eux-mêmes, + +or + + Vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends pas. + +Voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his +predecessors. Alzire's 'Je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious +reminiscence of the 'Qu'il mourût!' of le vieil Horace; and the cloven +hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'O ciel!' with which Alzire's +confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. Many of these +blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for +Voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'This +tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'Alembert, enclosing +_Olympie_. 'You should not have rested on the seventh,' was d'Alembert's +reply. But, on the whole, Voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a +high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever +man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most +palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a +real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can +only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains and +his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a +moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and +they are all put back into their box. The glance which the reader has +taken into the little case labelled _Alzire_ has perhaps given him a +sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes. + +Voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate +incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It is +only possible to write good plays without the power of +character-drawing, upon one condition--that of possessing the power of +creating dramatic situations. The _Oedipus Tyrannus_ of Sophocles, for +instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of +horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. +One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the +manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire +himself. The guilt of Oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience +very early in the play; and, when the _dénouement_ at last arrives, it +comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the King. There can be no +doubt that Voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those +underlying causes which make the _Oedipus_ perhaps the most awful of +tragedies. To know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon one +after another of the characters, to see Oedipus at last alone in +ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his +struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable +moment, the appalling revelation--few things can be more terrible than +this. But Voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an +effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own sense +of the dramatic. 'Nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que Sophocle n'avait +pas perfectionné son art.' + +More detailed evidence of Voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight is +to be found, of course, in his criticisms of Shakespeare. Throughout +these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which Voltaire +seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great predecessor, +and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as Shakespeare himself +was by Voltaire. It is unnecessary to dwell further upon so hackneyed a +subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this +dramatic insensibility of Voltaire's was able to go--his adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage. A comparison of the two pieces +should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the +degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. Particular +attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral +oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of +the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent +sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:-- + + ANTOINE: Brutus ... où suis-je? O ciel! O crime! O barbarie!' + Chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits ... + Brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre était son fils! + ROMAINS: Ah dieux! + +If Voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits were +equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not +perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. The weight of +a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere--it is so +universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came +to a performance of _Alzire_ unconscious of the burden of the Classical +rules. They found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes +just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of startling +incidents, of happy _mots_. They were dazzled by an easy display of +cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it +was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a +distance, and under artificial light. When, in _Mérope_, one saw La +Dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote Voltaire himself, 'les yeux égarés, la +voix entrecoupée, levant une main tremblante, elle allait immoler son +propre fils; quand Narbas l'arrêta; quand, laissant tomber son poignard, +on la vit s'évanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle sortit de +cet état de mort avec les transports d'une mère; lorsque, ensuite, +s'élançant aux yeux de Polyphonte, traversant en un clin d'oeil tout le +théâtre, les larmes dans les yeux, la pâleur sur le front, les sanglots +à la bouche, les bras étendus, elle s'écria: "Barbare, il est mon +fils!"'--how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one +question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? +Alas! to us, who know not La Dumesnil, to us whose _Mérope_ is nothing +more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our +forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. Its glittering +was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the +manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, Voltaire was able to make up +for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a +great deal of 'go.' + +And to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. His vivacity, +indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. +He introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to write +tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he +was so bold as to rhyme 'père' with 'terre.' The wild diversity of his +incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under +happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose +path which ended in the bonfire of 1830. + +But it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of +decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as +would be--let us say--that of a shilling shocker written by Miss Yonge. +His heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in +inversions. Amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his +cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able +to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. The Classical +tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous +achievement was that it prevented Molière from being a great tragedian. +But there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have +taken--if only for some scattered moments--the sense of the ridiculous +from Voltaire. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 5: April, 1905.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT + + +At the present time,[6] when it is so difficult to think of anything but +of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast +occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least +prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be +instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that +Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless +to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely +active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would +be as well for him _not_ to live in France. For, just as modern Germany +dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so +modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of +the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms +one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in +history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few +brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's +masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of +_The History of Friedrich II_. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty years +have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of new +material--including the valuable edition of the correspondence between +Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the +Archives at Berlin--has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite +of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another rapid +review of it will not be out of place. + +Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and already one of the most famous +men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the +Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence +which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over +forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose +personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed to +lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary +European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his +nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was +moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering +of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted +with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his +admiration for the author of the _Henriade_ and _Zaïre_ was unbounded. + + La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour + tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font espérer + que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous trouvez + dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de + lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être pensant. J'ose + même avancer, sans déroger au mérite d'autrui, que dans l'univers + entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception à faire de ceux dont vous ne + pourriez être le maître. + +The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that +graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his +correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' +and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion +of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had +commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' For the next +four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It +was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his +passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured out +with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and _la raison +suffisante_, odes _sur la Flatterie_, and epistles _sur l'Humanité_, +while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no less enormous +philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal +Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, though +the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young +Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but +extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it +possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs +of feeling or of character. Voltaire's _empressement_ seems to take on, +once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one +notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with +'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly into +'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his +'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a +little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events. + + Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que vous + ne vous y mépreniez plus ... J'ai peu de mérite et peu de savoir; + mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds inépuisable + d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une vertu distinguée, et + avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitié + exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que + vous méritez; mais je n'en ai pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de + mauvais vers. + +But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place +of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of comparing +Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of +proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus +d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est Frédéric +que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of +protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez +pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... Je crois, +par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je +crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un Voltaire pour +le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments were too +emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said +afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; yet neither was +without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered +upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope +that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a +crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love +of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening. + +In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the +relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both +sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered +that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes +heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His _prince philosophe_ +started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and +turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was +at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than +Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the +King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed a +good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, remarkably +rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in +Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his +accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no +more, and its place is taken--at once and for ever--by the +self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In +this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of +Voltaire should lose some of its glitter--especially since Frederick now +began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh +with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is +noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the +part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse +Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only been +sent him on the condition of _un secret inviolable_. He writes to Jordan +complaining of Voltaire's avarice in very stringent terms. 'Ton avare +boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... Son apparition de +six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante écus. C'est bien +payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' +He declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi légère que le style de +ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man +_extraordinaire en tout_. + +Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing more +and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. +For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, +Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised +in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for +years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would +_posséder_--for so he put it--the author of the _Henriade_, would keep +him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, +would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own +verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish would +be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was +dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his +surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the +Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was +Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Châtelet. He had lived with her +for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of +friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would never +leave her--no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is +true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a +solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of +ladies--even of ladies like Madame du Châtelet--learned enough to +translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the +Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to _posséder_ Voltaire +either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated +temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first time, poor +Madame du Châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters from +Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew +nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her +distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she +dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But suddenly +Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at +her feet once more. + +What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of the +King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found +the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an +insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial +way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he +should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France +for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the +Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick +had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, he +had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that +of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an +opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give +verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded the +Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly +sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix +would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever +to return to France; and in that case--well, Voltaire would have no +other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and Madame +du Châtelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, Frederick's +plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had +happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to +stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had +been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to +stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he +forgave Frederick. But the King was most anxious to patch up the +quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing +Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more +immediate desire--to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous +work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet +and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates--_La +Pucelle_. + +Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more flattering +than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point +injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de badiner +sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La +Pucelle!_ et encore _La Pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour de Dieu, +ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' And at last +Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his +_Pucelle_--just enough to whet Frederick's appetite--and he declared +himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in March +1749; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous ai pardonné, et actuellement +je vous aime à la folie.' Within a year of this date his situation had +undergone a complete change. Madame du Châtelet was dead; and his +position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de +Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to +have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this +time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good +bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at Berlin +in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin and +Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of +Merit, together with a pension of £800 a year. These arrangements caused +considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying +prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien! +Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the +Quays. + +The curious drama that followed, with its farcical [Greek: peripeteia] +and its tragi-comic _dénouement_, can hardly be understood without a +brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief +actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had +now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem +which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He +frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year +before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most +urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter +to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He had +been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's +letters). + + Il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au Parnasse. C'est bien dommage + qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie. Il a les + gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que + c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de + rien, car j'en ai besoin pour l'étude de l'élocution française. On + peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. Je veux savoir son + français; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouvé le moyen de + réunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en même temps + qu'on méprise son caractère. + +There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he was a +scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of +_l'élocution française_; therefore it was necessary that he should come +and live in Berlin. But as for anything more--as for any real +interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of +respect, or even of regard--all that was utterly out of the question. +The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, +and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. In +the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude +which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle--that he was the victim of +an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, and +that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly +disappointed--becomes obviously untenable. If any man ever acted with +his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin. + +Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in more +than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to +_l'élocution française_ is easy enough to understand; but Frederick's +devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense +that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or +by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and +constant proximity of--what?--of a man whom he himself described as a +'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. +And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it +quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but +delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery, +so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less +undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange; +but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue--a vogue, +indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern reader +to realise it--enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and +literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick +was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of +any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady +and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the +social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid +to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole +standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast majority +of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was concentrated +in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French poetry +meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French +poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this +curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The _Grand Siècle_ +was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of +Boileau. + +Frederick's library, still preserved at Potsdam, shows us what +literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed +entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the +masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. But +Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; +he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after +the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred +sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. +It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of +the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his +own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept +him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled +volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most +complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb--_Poeta +nascitur, non fit_. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her +feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible +conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and +now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or +pathetic--one hardly knows which--were it not so certainly neither the +one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, +from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. +Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong--something, but +not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; +and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it--Voltaire, the one true +heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of +Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over +_Mahomet_ as over _Britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed Homer +and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read +the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the +lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed +(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. +Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he +would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German +Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of +rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of +correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the +blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes choses +d'un scélérat.' + +And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite +convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the +master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage +of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon +enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession +of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an +ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the +ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to +Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion +as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great +writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner +of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche +soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' _C'est bien dommage_!--as if there was +nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty +woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little +tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau +génie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was wrong: it +was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing. + +A devil--or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the +complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so +mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements +of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold +within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the +more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at +least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it +was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to +realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to +Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of +publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood +the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. +He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still +before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to +take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his consciousness, +aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at +this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth +into the unknown? + +What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it +is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with +Paris--he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless +literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his +countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not +appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he +admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. +'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de plus, il +était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, attendu la +faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal +intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased +consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his +order--to say nothing of the addition of £800 to his income. Yet, on the +other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for +servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would +make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in +his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however +successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to +Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he +had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by +the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he +always was--a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without +remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes--however dubious +those purposes may have been. + +And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece, +Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris +establishment and in whom he confided--in so far as he can be said to +have confided in anyone--he repeatedly states that there is nothing +permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is +only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on to +Italy to visit 'sa Sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville souterraine,' that +he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads +are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will +be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will +certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of +finishing his _Siècle de Louis XIV_.; he really must wait just a few +weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris +until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying +and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers +on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. +Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried +official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other +friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could +see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true +intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret +corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a +premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems +to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room +through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when +all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window +which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery +fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going +after all. + +In any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire's +visit could only have ended as it did--in an explosion. The elements of +the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two +confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house +together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of +mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or +later human nature will assert itself, and the _ménage_ will break up. +And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such +cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them +was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very +thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he +might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and +perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the +incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist +of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the +skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked how +much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on +his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses +were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man +expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well +enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and +uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very few +weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible +on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take +place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and +one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling +each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he +opens all our letters in the post'--Voltaire, whose light-handedness +with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The monkey,' +mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his +friends'--Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's +letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. 'How happy I should be here,' +exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing--his Majesty is +utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a +farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was +busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire. + +It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the first +really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the +temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of +illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a +series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with +the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and +countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost +his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the +court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it +is almost certain--the evidence is not quite conclusive--that he +committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was +furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from +Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not part +with his _beau génie_ so soon. He cracked his whip, and, setting the +monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the +shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu +tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once +more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, +came out and basked again in those refulgent beams. + +And the beams were decidedly refulgent--so much so, in fact, that they +almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite. +For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's +admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses--there is a +letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein +the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, +she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'--though he had ample +leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the +brilliant conversation of the King, though he could often forget for +weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot--yet, in +spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, and +he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's +court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of +persons--foreigners for the most part--whose business it was to instruct +him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out +of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one +of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant +dabbler in scientific matters--he had written a book to explain Newton +to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull +free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many +debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love +affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for +atheism and bad manners; and Pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, under +stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his +religion six times. + +These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his +leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange +rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with +d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of _La +Pucelle_. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove +the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout +with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, +and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place +where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times +Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of +Pöllnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and +serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a +Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough, +Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little +menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and Chasot +both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to +visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow their +example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to +return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch +was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his +escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a +surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jésus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains +of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous +voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' La Mettrie, with an oath, +expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, +remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.' + +Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure +whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from +the rest--that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of +the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate +fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then +recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very +anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing +measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to Lapland, +and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the +Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He +possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was +energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories +of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to +come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply +justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his +earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once +overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited +Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an _homme d'esprit_, +and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal +supper-parties. It was the happy--the too happy--President who was the +rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other +slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration +for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a +severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces +deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer +ensemble dans la même chambre.' And indeed to the vain and sensitive +poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies, +intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at +supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to +the shady mediocrities who sat around--that sight was gall and wormwood; +and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes +began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its +work. + +Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to +conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was +very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five +years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he was +deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who +could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?--Voltaire, who as +obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and +Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the +length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, +La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and +war was not long in coming. + +Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an +important mathematical law--the 'principle of least action.' The law +was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the +development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a +recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without realising +its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it +was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, however, was very +proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the +principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was +therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in +Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir +attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support +of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law +was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the +case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, and +that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When +Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He +summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig +was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should solemnly +pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious and +false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions +depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler +was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful +condemnation. + +Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had put +himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in +attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was +wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he +was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper subject +for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck now, +he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to +give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon this +matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick +certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive of +the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would +certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who himself +drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. +But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two +years in Berlin, and the atmosphere of a Court was beginning to weigh +upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for a +fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick +combined--he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered +himself that he would settle the hash of the President. + +As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from Berlin, +and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement +ordre à mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September 18, +1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled 'Réponse +d'un Académicien de Berlin à un Académicien de Paris.' It was a +statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its +concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President +must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The +terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, +and that man was receiving a royal pension of £800 a year and carrying +about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his +writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be +published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble +work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy +invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely +compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Réponse d'un Académicien +de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans génie,' an +'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the 'Réponse' itself +was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an 'action malicieuse, +lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the royal +insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le +sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien +étonnés de se trouver là .' But one thing was now certain: the King had +joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind +of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear--he +would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever. +And it so happened that just then an unexpected opportunity occurred +for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that +weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,' +he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.' + +Meanwhile the life of the Court--which passed for the most part at +Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built +for himself--proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life, +half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the +ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do +here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb +_s'ennuyer_,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a verb +unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still +preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the +formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly +coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable +old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his _Pucelle_, and +his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill--very ill; he was +probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed +to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. +He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he +was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But +he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found +him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,' +remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up from +the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques +meurent l'oeil enflammé?' When the evening came it was time to dress, +and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to the +little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, was +preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered +together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the +sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little space, +to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the +royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, +and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of +Rossbach drew tears from the author of _Candide_. But a moment later it +was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid +laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of +Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations +of Voltaire. + +Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the +rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but +nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but +still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's +enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours, +the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number +of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly +speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very +unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and +Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The +famous _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_ is still fresh with a fiendish +gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the +skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have +glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted +with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' +_rêveries_ have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and +nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The _Diatribe_, however, +is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For +instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that +Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B +divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well +founded. 'Lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la géometrie,' Voltaire +wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui +entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des ténèbres'; and +Maupertuis had in fact vitiated his treatment of the 'principle of +least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through +Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific +principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the +experimental method, a consistent attack upon _a priori_ reasoning, +loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all +this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of +effervescent raillery--cruel, personal, insatiable--the raillery of a +demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed +till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade +Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. +Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, +under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book +appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within +bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them +privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he +flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business. + + Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the + President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est + finie. J'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai lavé si bien la tête + que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, et je connais son âme lache, + incapable de sentiments d'honneur. Je l'ai intimidé du côté de la + boursse, ce qui a fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai + déclaré enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et + non une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent des + poissons. + +Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had come +a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and +by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick +wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe +qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait fouetté.' But now the monkey +_had_ been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems strange +that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close +observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He +might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in +spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose +obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a +threat 'du côté de la boursse.' Before the month was out all Germany was +swarming with _Akakias_; thousands of copies were being printed in +Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is +difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who +thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the enraged +master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'étonne,' fulminated +Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all Europe +was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the +President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly +espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. +'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper, +'dans l'état où je suis!' (He was, of course, once more dying.) 'Quoi! +vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.' +Frederick replied by having copies of _Akakia_ burnt by the common +hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his Order, +his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the +final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed +before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and +to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's +suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of Voltaire +to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly +controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's +accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually +went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. +But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at +Potsdam--'soupers de Damoclès' Voltaire called them; and then, on March +26, 1753, the two men parted for ever. + +The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in the +wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters of Plombières, stopped at +Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises to +the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of +_Akakia_. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to +Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued +yet another edition of _Akakia_, appended a somewhat unauthorised +version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and +cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a +vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which +figure so freely in the comedies of Molière. This stroke was the _coup +de grâce_ of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he dragged himself +from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple +of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In +the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had suddenly +remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few +privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had spent +so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several +passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that +those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious +Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which he +now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by +feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered +uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have +been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident in +Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet in +arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange +blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much controversial +and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German +biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little comedy +of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame--that +Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian +Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was careless in his +orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need any +Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government +in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the rule +of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd. + +After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free--free in +every sense of the word--free from the service of Kings and the clutches +of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He +hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of +Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the +profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering +and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to +and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time +even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were +almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was +submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose +compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. +But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier +and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even +Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of Ferney +something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He +actually came to respect the author of _Akakia_, and to cherish his +memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told d'Alembert, +when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin +Voltaire, _ora pro nobis_.' + +1915. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 6: October 1915.] + + + + +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR + + +No one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and +fascinating country, Eighteenth-Century France, can have come away from +it without at least _one_ impression strong upon him--that in no other +place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. France in +the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been--however splendid +in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour--was +certainly not a quiet place to live in. One could never have been +certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was +out, one would not be in the Bastille for something one had said at +dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one had +never said at all. + +Of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more +remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, +which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly +affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the +most potent of the precursors of the Revolution. The affair is +constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a +prominent place in the later books of the _Confessions_; and there is an +account of its earlier phases--an account written from the anti-Rousseau +point of view--in the _Mémoires_ of Madame d'Epinay. The whole story is +an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been +satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers +has been decidedly hostile to Rousseau, though it has not subscribed to +all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of the +quarrel. This, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an unprejudiced +reader of the _Confessions_ would naturally come to. Rousseau's story, +even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. He would have us +believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of +which Grimm and Diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in +alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included +all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does +such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but +the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally +insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the +unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by +rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded +mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by +contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own +writings subsequent to the _Confessions_, where his endless +recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear +all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years; +and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for +reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a +recently-published work[7], has produced some new and important +evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts +of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For +it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely +overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot, +and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told +in the _Confessions_ is simply the truth. + +If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's +newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value +of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a +revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the +eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a +cheat, that d'Alembert was a dupe, and Hume a liar--that, surely, were +no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from +Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the +data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may +be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' as +she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all +students of that remarkable age. + +Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the _Mémoires_ of +Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the concluding +quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most +detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It +has, however, always been doubtful how far the _Mémoires_ were to be +trusted as accurate records of historical fact. The manuscript +disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed +book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in +the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted +known events. Had Madame d'Epinay merely intended to write a _roman à +clef_? What seemed, so far as concerned the Rousseau narrative, to put +this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel +as it appears in the _Mémoires_ is, in its main outlines, substantiated +both by Grimm's references to Rousseau in his _Correspondance +Littéraire_, and by a brief memorandum of Rousseau's misconduct, drawn +up by Diderot for his private use, and not published until many years +after Madame d'Epinay's death. Accordingly most writers on the subject +have taken the accuracy of the _Mémoires_ for granted; Sainte-Beuve, for +instance, prefers the word of Madame d'Epinay to that of Rousseau, when +there is a direct conflict of testimony; and Lord Morley, in his +well-known biography, uses the _Mémoires_ as an authority for many of +the incidents which he relates. Mrs. Macdonald's researches, however, +have put an entirely different complexion on the case. She has +discovered the manuscript from which the _Mémoires_ were printed, and +she has examined the original draft of this manuscript, which had been +unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably +neglected by previous scholars. From these researches, two facts have +come to light. In the first place, the manuscript differs in many +respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a +conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; +the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies +of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a +fiction. And in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript +turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in +those portions which concern Rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and +notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the +corrections were made by Madame d'Epinay herself; but in nearly every +case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the +notes themselves are in the handwriting of Diderot and Grimm. Mrs. +Macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, which +amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before +long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the +_Mémoires_, with all the manuscript alterations clearly indicated; for +until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the +text. However, it is now beyond dispute both that Madame d'Epinay's +narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its +agreement with the statements of Grimm and Diderot is by no means an +independent confirmation of its truth, for Grimm and Diderot themselves +had a hand in its compilation. + +Thus far we are on firm ground. But what are the conclusions which Mrs. +Macdonald builds up from these foundations? The account, she says, of +Rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, +is hostile to him, but it was not the account which Madame d'Epinay +herself originally wrote. The hostile narrative was, in effect, composed +by Grimm and Diderot, who induced Madame d'Epinay to substitute it for +her own story; and thus her own story could not have agreed with +theirs. Madame d'Epinay knew the truth; she knew that Rousseau's conduct +had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; +until, falling completely under the influence of Grimm and Diderot, she +had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the +reputation of her old friend. Mrs. Macdonald paints a lurid picture of +the conspirators at work--of Diderot penning his false and malignant +instructions, of Madame d'Epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last +touches to the fraud, of Grimm, rushing back to Paris at the time of the +Revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that the +result of all these efforts should reach posterity. Well! it would be +difficult--perhaps it would be impossible--to prove conclusively that +none of these things ever took place. The facts upon which Mrs. +Macdonald lays so much stress--the mutilations, the additions, the +instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts +tell--these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald's +theories; but there are other facts--no less important, and no less +certain--which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald's view, and +over which she passes as lightly as she can. Putting aside the question +of the _Mémoires_, we know nothing of Diderot which would lead us to +entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and +badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a +singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted +his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. We know less +of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of +Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. Is all +this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? Are we to dismiss +it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? Surely +Diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in +the draft of the _Mémoires_. It is quite true that his reputation _may_ +have been ill-founded, that d'Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume _may_ have +been deluded, or _may_ have been bribed, into admitting him to their +friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such +hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of +Diderot's guilt that we _must_ believe them? Mrs. Macdonald declares +that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her +garbled and concocted manuscripts. If there is indeed no explanation of +these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald +puts forward--that they were the outcome of a false and malicious +conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau--then we must admit that +she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations as +to Diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. But, before we +come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other +possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we +sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every +loophole of escape! + +It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay +manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. +Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, +owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the +events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which +will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least +interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the +_Mémoires_, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality +full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely +imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, almost +without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself +actually did describe them in his _Correspondance Littéraire_, as +'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon +this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the +most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. +But she has proved too much. The _Mémoires_, she says, are a fiction; +therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why +should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but +simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as +well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a +narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own +experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of +events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, +fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the +actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had +finished her work--a work full of subtle observation and delightful +writing--she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism +to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been +moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chère Madame, is a very +poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to +have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he +behaved at that time. _C'était un homme à faire peur_. You have missed a +great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' +Whereupon they gave her their own impressions of Rousseau's conduct, +they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they +jotted down some notes for her guidance. She rewrote the story in +accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the +incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought +fit--for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' +If we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, +shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to +common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised integrity +the meanest of frauds? + +To follow Mrs. Macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of her +argument would be a difficult and tedious task. The circumstances with +which she is principally concerned--the suspicions, the accusations, the +anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether +Madame d'Epinay was jealous of Madame d'Houdetot, whether Thérèse told +fibs, whether, on the 14th of the month, Grimm was grossly impertinent, +and whether, on the 15th, Rousseau was outrageously rude, whether +Rousseau revealed a secret to Diderot, which Diderot revealed to +Saint-Lambert, and whether, if Diderot revealed it, he believed that +Rousseau had revealed it before--these circumstances form, as Lord +Morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and Mrs. Macdonald has +done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths or +the horror of the dreams. Her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is +enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus of +appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant +matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an +instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. +Without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns +for us in Mrs. Macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon +one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) +only very slightly--the question of the motives which could have induced +Grimm and Diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies. + +It is, doubtless, conceivable that Grimm, who was Madame d'Epinay's +lover, was jealous of Rousseau, who was Madame d'Epinay's friend. We +know very little of Grimm's character, but what we do know seems to show +that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a +close alliance with Madame d'Epinay may have seemed to him a necessary +step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined +not to rest until his most serious rival in Madame d'Epinay's affections +was utterly cast out. He was probably prejudiced against Rousseau from +the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his view +of Rousseau's character and acts. The violence of the abuse which Grimm +and the rest of the Encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable +Jean-Jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of +the case. Whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something +about _traître_ and _mensonge_ and _scélératesse_. He is referred to as +often as not as if he were some dangerous kind of wild beast. This was +Grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of +his character which Madame d'Epinay finally expressed in her book. The +important question is--did Grimm know that Rousseau was in reality an +honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in +order to drive him out of Madame d'Epinay's affections? The answer, I +think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. If Grimm had +known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which +he had supplied Madame d'Epinay, and which led to the alteration of her +_Mémoires_, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of the +manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been +made. As it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying +the draft, and he did not do so. He came to Paris at the risk of his +life in 1791, and stayed there for four months, with the object, +according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the +Empress Catherine, or, according to Mrs. Macdonald's account, of having +the rough draft of the _Mémoires_ copied out by his secretary. Whatever +his object, it is certain that the copy--that from which ultimately the +_Mémoires_ were printed--was made either at that time, or earlier; and +that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months +of his stay in Paris, from destroying the draft. Mrs. Macdonald's +explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. Grimm, she says, must +have wished to get away from Paris 'without arousing suspicion by +destroying papers.' This is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would +have delighted that good knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Grimm had four +months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should +he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? There can +be only one reply: Why _should_ he? + +If it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which might +conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the case +of Diderot presents difficulties which are quite insurmountable. Mrs. +Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he +was tired of hearing Rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. +Surely Mrs. Macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such +an argument is a little too 'psychological.' The truth is that Diderot +had nothing to gain by attacking Rousseau. He was not, like Grimm, in +love with Madame d'Epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win +for himself a position in the Parisian world. His acquaintance with +Madame d'Epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were +from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. +In fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing Rousseau was +that he believed Rousseau deserved abuse. Whether he was right in +believing so is a very different question. Most readers, at the present +day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet place +in the perspective of Time, would, I think, agree that Diderot and the +rest of the Encyclopaedists were mistaken. As we see him now, in that +long vista, Rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a +distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, +above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his +contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was +modern. Among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth +century, he belonged to another world--to the new world of +self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy +and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of +Nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. Who +can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? Who +can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he +seemed, to the pupils of Voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? +'Cet homme est un forcené!' Diderot exclaims. 'Je tâche en vain de faire +de la poésie, mais cet homme me revient tout à travers mon travail; il +me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais à côté de moi un damné: il est +damné, cela est sûr. ... J'avoue que je n'ai jamais éprouvé un trouble +d'âme si terrible que celui que j'ai ... Que je ne revoie plus cet +homme-là , il me ferait croire au diable et à l'enfer. Si je suis jamais +forcé de retourner chez lui, je suis sûr que je frémirai tout le long du +chemin: j'avais la fièvre en revenant ... On entendait ses cris jusqu'au +bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... Les poètes ont bien fait de mettre +un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En vérité, la main me +tremble.' Every word of that is stamped with sincerity; Diderot was +writing from his heart. But he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' +across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of +what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and +hell, but between the old world and the new. + +1907. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 7: _Jean Jacques Rousseau: a New Criticism_, by Frederika +Macdonald. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall. 1906.] + + + + +THE POETRY OF BLAKE[8] + + +The new edition of Blake's poetical works, published by the Clarendon +Press, will be welcomed by every lover of English poetry. The volume is +worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been +produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to +perpetuate. Blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his +editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the +present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the +case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh +inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result of +accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's text +has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so +habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming +permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since +the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent +admiration of the poet. 'It is not a little bewildering,' says Mr. +Sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic +extolling Blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of +lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the _Songs of Experience_, +while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than +seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and +important changes of meaning.' This is Procrustes admiring the exquisite +proportions of his victim. As one observes the countless instances +accumulated in Mr. Sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to +which the free and spontaneous expression of Blake's genius has been +subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where he +speaks of the beautiful garden in which-- + + Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, + And binding with briers my joys and desires; + +and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that Blake's prophetic +vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' +most of his future editors. Perhaps, though, if Blake's prescience had +extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; and +we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial +efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. The present +edition, however, amply compensates for the past. Mr. Sampson gives us, +in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so printed +as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and +nothing more. At the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he +has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the +variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; +and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through the +labyrinth of Blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those +passages in the _Prophetic Books_, which throw light upon the +obscurities of the poems. The most important Blake document--the +Rossetti MS.--has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the +owner, Mr. W.A. White, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no +common measure; and the long-lost Pickering MS.--the sole authority for +some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems--was, with deserved +good fortune, discovered by Mr. Sampson in time for collation in the +present edition. Thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has not +been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the hand +of Blake. Mr. Sampson's minute and ungrudging care, his high critical +acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of +the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make +his edition a noble and splendid monument of English scholarship. It +will be long indeed before the poems of Blake cease to afford matter for +fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe +to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will +henceforward remain unchanged. There will be no room for further +editing. The work has been done by Mr. Sampson, once and for all. + +In the case of Blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly +important, for more than one reason. Many of his effects depend upon +subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily +lost in reproduction. 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary +version of one of his most celebrated lines. But in Blake's original +engraving the words appear thus--'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'; and who +can fail to perceive the difference? Even more remarkable is the change +which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of one +of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem. + + And what shoulder, and what art, + Could twist the sinews of thy heart? + And when thy heart began to beat, + What dread hand? and what dread feet? + +So Blake engraved the verse; and, as Mr. Sampson points out,'the +terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in the +'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:--'What dread hand and what +dread feet?' It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery +of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present +edition. + +But these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of Blake's +poetry are not--important as they are--the only justification for a +scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was +not guided by the ordinarily accepted rules of writing; he allowed +himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, +with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of +his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. +Thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own +making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. They are the +rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries +of an Unknown God; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox +incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate +afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with +advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven +in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor is +this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has +been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop +there. The emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably +from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from +corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a +penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be +adduced as one instance--out of the enormous number which fill Mr. +Sampson's notes--of the dangers of editorial laxity. + + I told my love, I told my love, + I told her all my heart; + Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, + Ah! she doth depart. + +This is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented with +an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' But their +work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their version +of the last four lines of the poem is as follows: + + Soon after she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly: + He took her with a sigh. + +Reference to the MS., however, shows that the last line had been struck +out by Blake, and another substituted in its place--a line which is now +printed for the first time by Mr. Sampson. So that the true reading of +the verse is: + + Soon as she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly-- + O! was no deny. + +After these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to Rossetti +and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the +poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their +concoction--'Love's Secret'--a title which there is no reason to suppose +had ever entered the poet's mind. + +Besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little poem +is an admirable instance of Blake's most persistent quality--his +triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. His most characteristic +passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, that +the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of +'inspiration.' Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, in his interesting +Introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such +attributions of peculiar powers to Blake, or indeed to any other poet. +'No man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' But even +if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there +are degrees of inspiration; if Mr. F's Aunt was a woman of genius, what +are we to say of Hamlet? And Blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, +stands very high indeed. If one could strike an average among poets, it +would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, +Blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the +street. All poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making +one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'What made him think of +that?' With Blake, one is asking the question all the time. + +Blake's originality of manner was not, as has sometimes been the case, +a cloak for platitude. What he has to say belongs no less distinctly to +a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. In +English literature, as Sir Walter Raleigh observes, he 'stands outside +the regular line of succession.' All that he had in common with the +great leaders of the Romantic Movement was an abhorrence of the +conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the +eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that +exaltation of Nature--the 'Vegetable Universe,' as he called it--from +which sprang the pantheism of Wordsworth and the paganism of Keats. +'Nature is the work of the Devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the Devil is +in us as far as we are Nature.' There was no part of the sensible world +which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. Even the +'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and +strong'; they were 'writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,' and destined to +vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the Everlasting Gospel. + +There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming and +splendid lyrist, as the author of _Infant Joy_, and _The Tyger_, and the +rest of the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_. These poems show but +faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the +Rossetti and Pickering MSS., the presence of a hidden and symbolic +meaning in Blake's words becomes obvious enough--a meaning which +receives its fullest expression in the _Prophetic Books_. It was only +natural that the extraordinary nature of Blake's utterance in these +latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an +inspired idiot--a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. +That belief, made finally impossible by Mr. Swinburne's elaborate Essay, +is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and +indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of Time, which left +Blake for so long in the Paradise of Fools, is now about to place him +among the Prophets. Anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and +Blake's writings, according to Sir Walter Raleigh, contain a complete +exposition of its doctrines. The same critic asserts that Blake was 'one +of the most consistent of English poets and thinkers.' This is high +praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. It is one +thing to give Blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in +the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large +mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could +never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. It is quite +another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a +consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be ordinarily +attributed to a system of philosophy. Does Sir Walter mean to assert +that Blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? It is a little difficult +to discover. Referring, in his Introduction, to Blake's abusive notes on +Bacon's _Essays_, he speaks of-- + + The sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men + indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position + when his gods fall out among themselves. His case [Sir Walter + wittily adds] is not much unlike that of Terah, the father of + Abraham, who (if the legend be true) was a dealer in idols among + the Chaldees, and, coming home to his shop one day, after a brief + absence, found that the idols had quarrelled, and the biggest of + them had smashed the rest to atoms. Blake is a dangerous idol for + any man to keep in his shop. + +We wonder very much whether he is kept in Sir Walter Raleigh's. + +It seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which +would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for +Blake. His treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very +far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are +liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'Plato,' said +Blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. +There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' And +this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'Satan's empire is the +empire of nothing'; there is no such thing as evil--it is a mere +'negation.' And the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate +between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely +'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' Such was one of +the most fundamental of Blake's doctrines; but it requires only a +superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their whole +tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. Every page he +wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings raised +in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists +never surpassed. His epigrams on Reynolds are masterpieces of virulent +abuse; the punishment which he devised for Klopstock--his impersonation +of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'--is unprintable; as for those +who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they +'crucify Christ with the head downwards.' The contradiction is indeed +glaring. 'There is no such thing as wickedness,' Blake says in effect, +'and you are wicked if you think there is.' If it is true that evil does +not exist, all Blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on +the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if +everything, in fact, is _not_ good in God's eyes--then why not say so? +Really Blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.' + +But of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. To judge him +according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal +whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. In +fact, to Blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible +phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the +business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. +Reason is the 'Spectre' of Blake's mythology, that Spectre, which, he +says, + + Around me night and day + Like a wild beast guards my way. + +It is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'Emanation,' or +imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the +universe. Ever since the day when, in his childhood, Blake had seen +God's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the +only reality and the only good. He beheld the things of this world 'not +with, but through, the eye': + + With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey, + With my outward, a Thistle across my way. + +It was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that Blake yielded +the allegiance of his spirit. His attitude towards reason was the +attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. He never +could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'Spectre'; struggle as +he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the +ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if +argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued to +what he worked in. As in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been +locked into a crystal cabinet--the world of the senses and of reason--a +gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had +danced so merrily before. + + I strove to seize the inmost Form + With ardour fierce and hands of flame, + But burst the Crystal Cabinet, + And like a Weeping Babe became-- + + A weeping Babe upon the wild.... + +To be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the +impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the +same time. But Blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. +He would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying Christ +with the head downwards. + +Besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious objection to +Blake's mysticism--and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. +The mystic's creed--even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic +beauty of Blake's verse--comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of +its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and +almost cruel. The sacrifices which it demands are too vast, in spite of +the divinity of what it has to offer. What shall it profit a man, one is +tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? +The mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. The +following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of +inspiration which he never surpassed, Blake's conception of that ideal: + + And throughout all Eternity + I forgive you, you forgive me. + As our dear Redeemer said: + 'This the Wine, & this the Bread.' + +It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for +instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would +have subjected such lines as these. His criticism would have been +irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter +at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of Blake's +words. But that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it +is difficult to doubt. Charles Lamb, perhaps, might have made it; +incidentally, indeed, he has. 'Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary +walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the +delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful +glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent +vanities, and jests, and _irony itself_'--do these things form no part +of your Eternity? + +The truth is plain: Blake was an intellectual drunkard. His words come +down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated +heights. His spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, +it stumbled in the gutter of Felpham. His lips brought forth, in the +same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the _Auguries of Innocence_ +and the epigrams on Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was in no condition to chop +logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. In the imaginary +portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can see +him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the +abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown +back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his +rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we +gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are +almost tempted to go and do likewise. + +But it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that Blake deserves the +highest honours and the most enduring fame. In spite of his hatred of +the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and +spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of +Heaven than the works of man. They have, besides, the two most obvious +characteristics of Nature--loveliness and power. In some of his lyrics +there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a child, +to be unconscious of itself. In his poem of _The Birds_--to mention, out +of many, perhaps a less known instance--it is not the poet that one +hears, it is the birds themselves. + + O thou summer's harmony, + I have lived and mourned for thee; + Each day I mourn along the wood, + And night hath heard my sorrows loud. + +In his other mood--the mood of elemental force--Blake produces effects +which are unique in literature. His mastery of the mysterious +suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete. + + He who torments the Chafer's Sprite + Weaves a Bower in endless Night. + +What dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! And, with the aid +of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to +produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, +and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his +words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm: + + The Guests are scattered thro' the land, + For the Eye altering alters all; + The Senses roll themselves in fear, + And the flat Earth becomes a Ball; + The Stars, Sun, Moon, all shrink away, + A desart vast without a bound, + And nothing left to eat or drink, + And a dark desart all around. + +And sometimes Blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and +infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin +mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to predict +the annihilation of worlds: + + On the shadows of the Moon, + Climbing through Night's highest noon: + In Time's Ocean falling, drowned: + In Aged Ignorance profound, + Holy and cold, I clipp'd the Wings + Of all Sublunary Things: + But when once I did descry + The Immortal Man that cannot Die, + Thro' evening shades I haste away + To close the Labours of my Day. + The Door of Death I open found, + And the Worm Weaving in the Ground; + Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb; + Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb: + Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife, + And weeping over the Web of Life. + +Such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our +weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of ordinary +converse, are enough. For Blake's words will always be strangers on this +earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own +Gods: + + above Time's troubled fountains, + On the great Atlantic Mountains, + In my Golden House on high. + +They belong to the language of Los and Rahab and Enitharmon; and their +mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the Sunflower's desire. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 8: _The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim +text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with +variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces._ By John +Sampson, Librarian in the University of Liverpool. Oxford: At the +Clarendon Press, 1905. + +_The Lyrical Poems of William Blake._ Text by John Sampson, with an +Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905.] + + + + +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN + +The shrine of Poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this +should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. The cult is too +mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no +turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be +fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of +worshippers, and to pass on. Yet, if Apollo were to come down (after the +manner of deities) and put questions--must we suppose to the +Laureate?--as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of +escaping wrath and destruction? Let us hope for the best; and perhaps, +if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be to +watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which +Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many +among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, +indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this +extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is +his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition +whatever. If his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one +or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current +anthologies. But Beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest +upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it +rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank +verse. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the +sixteenth. His proper place was among that noble band of Elizabethans, +whose strong and splendid spirit gave to England, in one miraculous +generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has +known. If Charles Lamb had discovered his tragedies among the folios of +the British Museum, and had given extracts from them in the _Specimens +of Dramatic Poets_, Beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to us +now as those of Marlowe and Webster, Fletcher and Ford. As it happened, +however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had +wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. It is +to very little purpose that Mr. Ramsay Colles, his latest editor, +assures us that 'Beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from +Shelley to Browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to +us a passage in _Death's Jest Book_ which anticipates the doctrines of +_The Descent of Man._ For Beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with his +contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such +after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. We must +take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover and +appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake. + + He hath skill in language; + And knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit, + A palm with winged imagination in it, + Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave; + And on them hangs a lamp of magic science + In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts + Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead. + +If the neglect suffered by Beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in more +ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has +never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. For one reader who +cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing +there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the +history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the +character of Beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, +mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers +to circulating libraries. Yet only one account of his career has ever +been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect as +it is, has long been out of print. It was supplemented some years ago +by Mr. Gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important +circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of Beddoes' +letters. The main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have +been put together by Mr. Ramsay Colles, in his introduction to the new +edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost +complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of +Beddoes' existence--full as those years certainly were of interest and +even excitement. Nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that +strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all. + +Readers of Miss Edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger sister +Anne, married a distinguished Clifton physician, Dr. Thomas Beddoes. +Their eldest son, born in 1803, was named Thomas Lovell, after his +father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_. Dr. Beddoes was a remarkable man, +endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare +independence of character. His scientific attainments were recognised by +the University of Oxford, where he held the post of Lecturer in +Chemistry, until the time of the French Revolution, when he was obliged +to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity +of his liberal opinions. He then settled at Clifton as a physician, +established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics +and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose +merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents +which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, +if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously +suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a +striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. +Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's +inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less +remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. In both cases, this +quality was coupled with a corresponding eccentricity of conduct, which +occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something +very near insanity. Many stories are related of the queer behaviour of +Dr. Beddoes. One day he astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing at +a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it was +East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual +kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves. More extraordinary +were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering cows +to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that +they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' It is easy to imagine the +delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an +invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of _Harpagus_ and +_The Oviparous Tailor_. But 'little Tom,' as Miss Edgeworth calls him, +was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for +Dr. Beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six +years old. + +The genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a rule, +one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous +world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than +the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a distinguished +martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On +the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been a +dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining account +of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school +reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though +his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests were devoted not so +much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. +Cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had +understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years +before he went to Charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading +which he chiefly delighted in was the Elizabethan drama. 'He liked +acting,' says Mr. Bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, and used to give +apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly Kean +and Macready. Though his voice was harsh and his enunciation offensively +conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, that +I was always glad to listen: even when I was pressed into the service as +his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of +curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. +One play in particular, Marlowe's _Tragedy of Dr. Faustus_, excited my +admiration in this way; and a liking for the old English drama, which I +still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' But +Beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; +when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material +himself. A locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock +on his bookcase; Beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man appeared +he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, +his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which was +interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal +torments. Such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the +locksmith, according to Mr. Bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and +execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his +work.' + +Besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, Beddoes' school +compositions included a novel in the style of Fielding (which has +unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an Elizabethan tragedy, +and much miscellaneous verse. In 1820 he left Charterhouse, and went to +Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in the following year, while still a +freshman, he published his first volume, _The Improvisatore_, a series +of short narratives in verse. The book had been written in part while he +was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. It contains no trace of +the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the +sentiment, to use his own expression, 'Moorish.' Indeed, the only +interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that +the singular pre-occupation which eventually dominated Beddoes' mind +had, even in these early days, made its appearance. The book is full of +death. The poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old +men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning +into mouldering heaps of corruption. The boy, with his elaborate +exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' +flesh creep. But the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, when +Beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very much +ashamed of his first publication. So eager was he to destroy every trace +of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of +his friends. The story goes that he amused himself by visiting their +libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the precious +volume, they found the pages gone. + +Beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next publication, +_The Brides' Tragedy_, which appeared in 1822. In a single bound, he had +reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. The line +which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry +itself--that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no +one can explain--Beddoes had not yet crossed. But he had gone as far as +it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, +and he was still in his twentieth year. Many passages in _The Brides' +Tragedy_ seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which +will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has +come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, +whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered +such words as these: + + Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye, + When first it darkened with immortal life + +or a line of such intense imaginative force as this: + + I've huddled her into the wormy earth; + +or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise: + + The day is in its shroud while yet an infant; + And Night with giant strides stalks o'er the world, + Like a swart Cyclops, on its hideous front + One round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze. + +The play was written on the Elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is +disfigured by Beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is +weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the +motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part +curiously remote from the realities of life. Yet, though the merit of +the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in +it that, while Beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless +possessed one important dramatic faculty--the power of creating detached +scenes of interest and beauty. The scene in which the half-crazed +Leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead daughter +lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the +highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of +pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and +absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus: + + ... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel, + Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye'; + Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure + She has the welcome news of some good fortune, + And hoards the telling till her father comes; + ... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then; + Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me, + I must be very angry till you speak. + Now this is silly; some of these young boys + Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport. + 'Tis very like her. I could make this image + Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head: + 'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face + Falls on my neck.--Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed! + I know it all--don't tell me. + +The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, such +as Webster himself might have been proud to write. + +_The Brides' Tragedy_ was well received by critics; and a laudatory +notice of Beddoes in the _Edinburgh_, written by Bryan Waller +Procter--better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry +Cornwall--led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The +connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that +Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his +friends--Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In +the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months, +and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of +his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It +was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, +even to the most fortunate, once and once only--when youth, and hope, +and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and +opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the +harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall +wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' +poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'His +poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more +than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished +act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, +and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, but +filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination +had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right +or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these +very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each +started into form, + + Like the red outline of beginning Adam, + +... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply cut +into their one observer's mind. The fine verse just quoted is the sole +remnant, indelibly stamped on the editor's memory, of one of these +extinct creations.' Fragments survive of at least four dramas, +projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this +time. Beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing +forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet: + + Creep not nor climb, + As they who place their topmost of sublime + On some peak of this planet, pitifully. + Dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly + Until you meet the gods! + +Eighteen months after his Southampton visit, Beddoes took his degree at +Oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action +which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. He determined to +take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established +himself, in 1825, at the University at Göttingen. It is very clear, +however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. He +took with him to Germany the beginnings of a new play--'a very +Gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which I have a jewel of a +name--DEATH'S JEST-BOOK; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read +it'; and, during his four years at Göttingen, he devoted most of his +leisure to the completion of this work. He was young; he was rich; he +was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that he +could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he +settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious occupation +of his life. But, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in +the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not only +a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might +not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. +Engulfed among the students of Göttingen, England and English ways of +life, and even English poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem Anbeter der +seligen Gottheiten der Musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to Kelsall, 'was +Unterhaltendes kann der Liebhaber von Knochen, der fleissige Botaniker +und Phisiolog mittheilen?' In 1830 he was still hesitating between the +two alternatives. 'I sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to +devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in +science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with +him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, +directed towards widely different ends. While he was still in this state +of mind, a new interest took possession of him--an interest which worked +havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: he +became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time +beginning to agitate Europe. The details of his adventures are unhappily +lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a +few scanty references in his rare letters to English friends; but it is +certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous one. +He was turned out of Würzburg by 'that ingenious Jackanapes,' the King +of Bavaria; he was an intimate friend of Hegetschweiler, one of the +leaders of liberalism in Switzerland; and he was present in Zurich when +a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half armed +with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the +liberal government.' In the tumult Hegetschweiler was killed, and +Beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. During the +following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over +Germany and Switzerland, at Berlin, at Baden, at Giessen, a strange +solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling +lampoons upon the King of Prussia, translating Grainger's _Spinal Cord_ +into German, and Schoenlein's _Diseases of Europeans_ into English, +exploring Pilatus and the Titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly +lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his +'Gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, and +giving it--as had been his wont for the last twenty years--just one more +touch before he sent it to the press. He appeared in England once or +twice, and in 1846 made a stay of several months, visiting the Procters +in London, and going down to Southampton to be with Kelsall once again. +Eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his +bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep +depression. He shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their +country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the Procters by starting +out one evening to set fire to Drury Lane Theatre with a lighted +five-pound note. After this last visit to England, his history becomes +even more obscure than before. It is known that in 1847 he was in +Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a +young baker called Degen--'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of +age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and of +a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following +year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the +theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in the +part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the +friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest gloom. +'Il a été misérable,' said the waiter at the Cigogne Hotel, where he was +staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted a deep wound in +his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. He +was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, +until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. The +operation was successful, Beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, +Degen came back to Basel. It seemed as if all were going well; for the +poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his +bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian +journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can +tell? Was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove +him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to +obtain there a phial of deadly poison? On the evening of that day--the +26th of January, 1849--Dr. Ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, +to find Beddoes lying insensible upon the bed. He never recovered +consciousness, and died that night. Upon his breast was found a pencil +note, addressed to one of his English friends. 'My dear Philips,' it +began, 'I am food for what I am good for--worms.' A few testamentary +wishes followed. Kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and--'W. Beddoes +must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet, 1847 growth, to drink +my death in ... I ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome +document concluded, 'a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg, +and that a bad one. Buy for Dr. Ecklin one of Reade's best +stomach-pumps.' It was the last of his additions to Death's Jest Book, +and the most _macabre_ of all. + +Kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary care. +The manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. There were three distinct +drafts of _Death's Jest Book_, each with variations of its own; and from +these Kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared in +1850. In the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical +works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope +and power of Beddoes' genius. They contain reprints of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_, together with two unfinished +tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the +poems are preceded by Kelsall's memoir of his friend. Of these rare and +valuable volumes the Muses' Library edition is almost an exact reprint, +except that it omits the memoir and revives _The Improvisatore_. Only +one other edition of Beddoes exists--the limited one brought out by Mr. +Gosse in 1890, and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. +Mr. Gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those +already published by Kelsall; he made public for the first time the true +story of Beddoes' suicide, which Kelsall had concealed; and, in 1893, he +followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of Beddoes' letters. It +is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of +Beddoes owe so much as to Mr. Gosse. He has supplied most important +materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the +lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of +the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos--_The +Old Ghost_--and one of the most singular examples of his vein of +grotesque and ominous humour--_The Oviparous Tailor_. Yet it may be +doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are +traces in Beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still +come to light. What has happened, one would like to know, to _The Ivory +Gate_, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which Beddoes +talked of publishing in 1837? Only a few fine stanzas from it have ever +appeared. And, as Mr. Gosse himself tells us, the variations in _Death's +Jest Book_ alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition of +that work--'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of +the matter--'if the interest in Beddoes should continue to grow.' + +'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama +must be a bold, trampling fellow--no creeper into worm-holes--no reviver +even--however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words +occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by +critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an +instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they +preach. But the truth is that Beddoes was not a 'creeper into +worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. +Everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and +elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his +spirit. We have Kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his +composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in his +letters and in the history of his life--records of a 'bold, trampling +fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry +itself. For the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped +unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. His mature blank verse +is perfect. It is not an artificial concoction galvanized into the +semblance of life; it simply lives. And, with Beddoes, maturity was +precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult and +dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. Blank verse is like the +Djin in the Arabian Nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, +or the most powerful of slaves. If you have not the magic secret, it +will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change them +into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a +flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. +Beddoes had mastered the 'Open, Sesame' at an age when most poets are +still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. In his twenty-second +year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as +easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. He wishes to compare, for +instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single +eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison +is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast +multiplicity of objects. There could be no better exercise for a young +verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then +to examine these lines by Beddoes--lines where simplicity and splendour +have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art. + + How glorious to live! Even in one thought + The wisdom of past times to fit together, + And from the luminous minds of many men + Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, + Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets + Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered + Into one ray. + +The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the +diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing--that art +by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to +combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, +impossible to do more than touch upon this side--the technical side--of +Beddoes' genius. But it may be noticed that in his mastery of +phrasing--as in so much besides--he was a true Elizabethan. The great +artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead +thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an +eighteenth-century dramatist--Addison, for instance--to understand how +right they were. + +Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had +already begun to show itself in _The Brides' Tragedy_, reached its full +development in his subsequent work. The opening act of _The Second +Brother_--the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies--is a +striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way +that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not +one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next +brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after +years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar--to find his younger +brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay +debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the +duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and +extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While +Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, +Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended +by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. +'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes: + + I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught + Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines. + +Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute his +brother. + + _Orazio_. Insolent beggar! + + _Marcello_. Prince! But we must shake hands. + Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, + Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown + Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks + Of two close planets, catching in the air: + You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, + Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top + Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, + With nothing reigning on my desolate head + But an old spirit of a murdered god, + Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father. + +They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims-- + + Aye, Prince, you have a brother-- + + _Orazio_. The Duke--he'll scourge you. + + _Marcello_. Nay, _the second_, sir, + Who, like an envious river, flows between + Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne.... + + _Orazio_. Stood he before me there, + By you, in you, as like as you're unlike, + Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old, + And many years nearer than him to Death, + The falling brilliancy of whose white sword + Your ancient locks so silverly reflect, + I would deny, outswear, and overreach, + And pass him with contempt, as I do you. + Jove! How we waste the stars: set on, my friends. + +And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish +down the darkened street: + + Strike, you myrtle-crownèd boys, + Ivied maidens, strike together!... + +and Marcello is left alone: + + I went forth + Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes + His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer, + And like its horrible return was mine, + To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat, + Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love, + And take a heart of venom: let me make + A staircase of the frightened breasts of men, + And climb into a lonely happiness! + And thou, who only art alone as I, + Great solitary god of that one sun, + I charge thee, by the likeness of our state, + Undo these human veins that tie me close + To other men, and let your servant griefs + Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in + Salt scorn and steaming hate! + +A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that the +dukedom is his. The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes' +inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed +end. The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with vivid +situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes +away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a +thousand streams. It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was +embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too easily, +and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his +imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. His conception of +Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he +appears in the opening scene. But Beddoes could not leave him there; he +must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once +brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. The +interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio's +character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with +his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and +interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn +becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. But, by +this time, what has happened to the second brother? It is easy to +believe that Beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than +finish an old one. But it is not so certain that his method was quite as +inexcusable as his critics assert. To the reader, doubtless, his faulty +construction is glaring enough; but Beddoes wrote his plays to be acted, +as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I +think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess +that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be +very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of +impertinence, as long as one chooses to write in the form of a play, +and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything +striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely upon the stage +that such faults of construction as those which disfigure Beddoes' +tragedies matter least. An audience, whose attention is held and +delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid +speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a +whole, is worthy of the separate parts. It would be foolish, in the +present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to wish +for the public performance of _Death's Jest Book_; but it is impossible +not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of +that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility +more thin than air.' Then, and then only, shall we be able to take the +true measure of Beddoes' genius. + +Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of +construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the common +realities of existence. Not only is the subject-matter of the greater +part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves +seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the +strange, and the unreal. They have no healthy activity; or, if they +have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are +all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting +the attributes of Death. The central idea of _Death's Jest Book_--the +resurrection of a ghost--fails to be truly effective, because it is +difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest +of the characters. The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of +Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to ponder, +and agonise, and dream: + + And yet how palely, with what faded lips + Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune! + Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter + Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost, + Arisen out of hoary centuries + Where none can speak his language. + +Orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome with the same feelings: + + Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests, + Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike + Marriage or death. + +And his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole +atmosphere of Beddoes' tragedies: + + Voices were heard, most loud, which no man owned: + There were more shadows too than there were men; + And all the air more dark and thick than night + Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more + Than living breaths. + +It would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, for +guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and +things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be +called a 'criticism of life.' If a poet must be a critic of life, +Beddoes was certainly no poet. He belongs to the class of writers of +which, in English literature, Spenser, Keats, and Milton are the +dominant figures--the writers who are great merely because of their art. +Sir James Stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that +Milton might have put all that he had to say in _Paradise Lost_ into a +prose pamphlet of two or three pages. But who cares about what Milton +had to say? It is his way of saying it that matters; it is his +expression. Take away the expression from the _Satires_ of Pope, or from +_The Excursion_, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will leave +behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from +_Hyperion_, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the +better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than a +rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the +other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression +that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many modulations, +of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. +Playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as +this: + + Just now a beam of joy hung on his eyelash; + But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye, + Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings + Into a darkening hole. + +Or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as this: + + I begin to hear + Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing + Of waves, where time into Eternity + Falls over ruined worlds. + +Or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these: + + So fair a creature! of such charms compact + As nature stints elsewhere: which you may find + Under the tender eyelid of a serpent, + Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose, + By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see, + Like water from a crystal overfilled, + Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave + Her fair sides to the ground. + +Or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration: + + My love was much; + My life but an inhabitant of his. + +Or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil: + + I should not say + How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow, + On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm + And soft at evening: so the little flower + Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water + Close to the golden welcome of its breast, + Delighting in the touch of that which led + The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops + Tritons and lions of the sea were warring, + And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood, + Of their own inmates; others were of ice, + And some had islands rooted in their waves, + Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds, + And showers tumbling on their tumbling self, + And every sea of every ruined star + Was but a drop in the world-melting flood. + +He can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the hectic, +dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:-- + + ... What shall I do? I speak all wrong, + And lose a soul-full of delicious thought + By talking. Hush! Let's drink each other up + By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I, + My heavenly wife?... + I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second + By thy cheek's change. + +In that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can almost +hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'Never!' exclaims the duke to his son +Torrismond: + + There lies no grain of sand between + My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, + Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb + Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, + Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! + And may this intervening earth be snow, + And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, + Plunging me, through it all, into the core, + Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, + If I do not--O, but he is my son! + +Is not that tremendous? But, to find Beddoes in his most characteristic +mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the +woof of mortality. One must wander with him through the pages of +_Death's Jest Book_, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution of +reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn +that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask--'Are the ghosts +eaves-dropping?'--one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' Among +the ruins of his Gothic cathedral, on whose cloister walls the Dance of +Death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of +existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean, + + Whose tumultuous waves + Are heaped, contending ghosts, + +one may understand how it is that + + Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful + To man than Life. + +Lingering there, one may watch the Deaths come down from their cloister, +and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque +contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may +sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of Death. + +In private intercourse Beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. His +mind was like one of those Gothic cathedrals of which he was so +fond--mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less +real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and +immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with +grinning gargoyles. His conversation, Kelsall tells us, was full of +humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or +affectation. He loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and +carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. His +letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his +verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had +produced his school-boy novel in the style of Fielding. He was a man +whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so +eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, +and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: not +the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, +Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who +forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a grave, +and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. His tragedy, like +Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will--a will so strong as +to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak +man to be decided--there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, +who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately +Beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so +rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality +beyond price. 'I might have been, among other things, a good poet,' were +his last words. 'Among other things'! Aye, there's the rub. But, in +spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. Perhaps for him, +after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high +nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of +death? There is a thought constantly recurring throughout his +writings--in his childish as in his most mature work--the thought of the +beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. He had +visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' +of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over +the soul. 'Let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his +earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' And, in _Death's +Jest Book_, Sibylla has the same thoughts: + + O Death! I am thy friend, + I struggle not with thee, I love thy state: + Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now; + And let me pass praying away into thee, + As twilight still does into starry night. + +Did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at last +for the one thing stranger than all these--the experience of it? It is +easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at +the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual +dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had +recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, +perhaps, came crowding back upon him--thoughts of the futility of life, +and the supremacy of death and the mystical whirlpool of the unknown, +and the long quietude of the grave. In the end, Death had grown to be +something more than Death to him--it was, mysteriously and +transcendentally, Love as well. + + Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature tells, + When laughing waters close o'er drowning men; + When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells; + When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken + Of those who seek a cure for long despair + Will learn ... + +What learning was it that rewarded him? What ghostly knowledge of +eternal love? + + If there are ghosts to raise, + What shall I call, + Out of hell's murky haze, + Heaven's blue pall? + --Raise my loved long-lost boy + To lead me to his joy.-- + There are no ghosts to raise; + Out of death lead no ways; + Vain is the call. + + --Know'st thou not ghosts to sue? + No love thou hast. + Else lie, as I will do, + And breathe thy last. + So out of Life's fresh crown + Fall like a rose-leaf down. + Thus are the ghosts to woo; + Thus are all dreams made true, + Ever to last! + +1907. + + + + +HENRI BEYLE + + +In the whole of French literature it would be difficult to point to a +figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to +English readers as Henri Beyle. Most of us are, no doubt, fairly +familiar with his pseudonym of 'Stendhal'; some of us have read _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_; but how many of us have +any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment +appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete edition, +every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with +enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary +periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and +appreciation? The eminent critic, M. André Gide, when asked lately to +name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of +France, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one +or other of the novels of Stendhal, his only difficulty was in making +his choice among these; and he finally decided upon _La Chartreuse de +Parme_. According to this high authority, Henri Beyle was indisputably +the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the French language, yet +on this side of the Channel we have hardly more than heard of him! Nor +is it merely as a writer that Beyle is admired in France. As a man, he +seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a +singular devotion. There are 'Beylistes,' or 'Stendhaliens,' who dwell +with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend +with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who +discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal +friendship, and register his opinions with a zeal which is hardly less +than sectarian. But indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his +French devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own +indifference. Beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, most +of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the French character. This +does not mean that he was a typical Frenchman; far from it. He did not, +like Voltaire or Hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius +vibrated in response. He has never been, it is unlikely that he ever +will be, a popular writer. His literary reputation in France has been +confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. +'On me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers 1880'; and the 'Beylistes' +point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost divine +prescience of the great man. But in truth Beyle was always read by the +_élite_ of French critics and writers--'the happy few,' as he used to +call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic +admirers. During his lifetime Balzac, in an enormous eulogy of _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, paid him one of the most magnificent compliments +ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. In the next +generation Taine declared himself his disciple; a little later--'vers +1880,' in fact--we find Zola describing him as 'notre père à tous,' and +M. Bourget followed with elaborate incense. To-day we have writers of +such different tendencies as M. Barrès and M. Gide acclaiming him as a +supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'Beylistes.' Yet, at +the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to +trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. It is the opinion +of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of French life. Thus +Sainte-Beuve, in two characteristic 'Lundis,' poured a great deal of +very tepid water upon Balzac's flaming panegyric. Then Flaubert--'vers +1880,' too--confessed that he could see very little in Stendhal. And, +only a few years ago, M. Chuquet, of the Institute, took the trouble to +compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail +all the known facts concerning the life and writings of a man whom he +forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. +These discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd +differences of taste? How are we to reconcile the admiration of Balzac +with the dislike of Flaubert, the raptures of M. Bourget and M. Barrès +with the sniffs of Sainte-Beuve and M. Chuquet of the Institute? The +explanation seems to be that Beyle occupies a position in France +analogous to that of Shelley in England. Shelley is not a national hero, +not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an Englishman, but +for the opposite reason--because he possessed so many of them in an +extreme degree. The idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the +unconventionality which give Shakespeare, Nelson, and Dr. Johnson their +place in our pantheon--all these were Shelley's, but they were his in +too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will +never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be Englishmen +unable to appreciate him at all. Such, _mutatis mutandis_--and in this +case the proviso is a very large one--is the position of Beyle in +France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French bean +he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French +French writer--too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and +so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet +this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some attention. +An understanding of this very Gallic individual might give us a new +insight into the whole strange race. And besides, the curious creature +is worth looking at for his own sake too. + +But, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the +dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. Even his +most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true +nature of his achievements. Balzac thought of him as an artist, Taine +was captivated by his conception of history, M. Bourget adores him as a +psychologist, M. Barrès lays stress upon his 'sentiment d'honneur,' and +the 'Beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. Certainly very +few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly +and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as Henri Beyle. The +circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity of +his genius. He was born in 1783, when the _ancien régime_ was still in +full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the Napoleonic +wars; he lived to see the Bourbon reaction, the Romantic revival, the +revolution of 1830, and the establishment of Louis Philippe; and when he +died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way +through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world +and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, +preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His +grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner +of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile +'mélangé de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two +representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the +result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty +others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the Republic, and +confined to his house. At the age of sixteen Beyle arrived in Paris, +just after the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Brumaire had made Bonaparte +First Consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin +Daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the +organisation of Napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure +moments--for apparently he had leisure moments--were devoted to the +composition of idylls in the style of Tibullus and to an enormous +correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. It was +as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that Beyle spent nearly +the whole of the next fifteen years of his life--in Paris, in Italy, in +Germany, in Russia--wherever the whirling tempest of the Napoleonic +policy might happen to carry him. His actual military experience was +considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his +friends to understand it had been. For hardly more than a year, during +the Italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: +the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat department. +The descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his adventures +at Marengo, at Jéna, at Wagram, or at the crossing of the Niémen have +been shown by M. Chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. +Beyle was present at only one great battle--Bautzen. 'Nous voyons fort +bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi à trois +heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est à dire rien.' He +was, however, at Moscow in 1812, and he accompanied the army through the +horrors of the retreat. When the conflagration had broken out in the +city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound +copy of the _Facéties_ of Voltaire; the book helped to divert his mind +as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that +followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who +could smile over Akakia and Pompignan in such a situation, one day he +left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow. + +The fall of Napoleon threw Beyle out of employment, and the period of +his literary activity began. His books were not successful; his fortune +gradually dwindled; and he drifted in Paris and Italy, and even in +England, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide +sometimes in his head. But in 1830 the tide of his fortunes turned. The +revolution of July, by putting his friends into power, brought him a +competence in the shape of an Italian consulate; and in the same year he +gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of _Le Rouge +et Le Noir_. The rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of his +official duties at Civita Vecchia, alternating with periods of +leave--one of them lasted for three years--spent in Paris among his +friends, of whom the most distinguished was Prosper Mérimée. In 1839 +appeared his last published work--_La Chartreuse de Parme_; and three +years later he died suddenly in Paris. His epitaph, composed by himself +with the utmost care, was as follows: + + QUI GIACE ARRIGO BEYLE MILANESE VISSE, SCRISSE, AMO. + +The words, read rightly, indicate many things--his adoration of Italy +and Milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society and +the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to +literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of his +experience--in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated +manhood, in his calm old age--there had never been a moment when he was +not in love. + +Beyle's work falls into two distinct groups--the first consisting of his +novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include +several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism and +travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of +the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; +and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is +promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition +which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of Beyle's +writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly +artistic. It was as a novelist that Beyle first gained his celebrity, +and it is still as a novelist--or rather as the author of _Le Rouge et +Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_ (for an earlier work, _Armance_, +some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out +of account)--that he is most widely known to-day. These two remarkable +works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which +they were composed. It was in the full flood of the Romantic revival, +that marvellous hour in the history of French literature when the +tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth +of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of suddenly +burst upon the view. It was the hour of Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Gautier, +Balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric +passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse +towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity +and the manifold comprehension of life. But, if we turn to the +contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a succession +of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact +narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the +eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the +perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his +grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It +is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment with a +_brochure_ attacking Racine at the expense of Shakespeare; but this was +merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent +in his nature; and in reality the whole Romantic movement meant nothing +to him. There is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend +between him and Hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a +couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. No +wonder! But Beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was +hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. As +for Chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like +poison. He used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point +of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a +phrase in _Atala_--'la cime indéterminée des forêts'--was not +intolerable. Probably he was romancing (M. Chuquet says so); but at any +rate the story sums up symbolically Beyle's attitude towards his art. To +him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'--the emphatic phrase, the +picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm--was anathema. The charm that +such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose +thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth +century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an +artificial neatness about the form which imposed itself upon the +substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the +perfect style, and that was the _Code Napoléon_; for there alone +everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of what +was to be said. A statement of law can have no place for irrelevant +beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it +must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be +seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. Beyle declared that +he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the Code every +morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' This again was for long +supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers +among the MSS. at Grenoble have discovered page after page copied out +from the Code in Beyle's handwriting. No doubt, for that wayward lover +of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what _he_ +took quite seriously. + +This attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an official +document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole +tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and +intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of +mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between +his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of +materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, +the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps Balzac's +greatest discovery, Beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. Such +matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no +small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. +In the earlier chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, for instance, he is +concerned with almost the same subject as Balzac in the opening of _Les +Illusions Perdues_--the position of a young man in a provincial town, +brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the +leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a woman +of refinement. But while in Balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete +vision of provincial life down to the last pimple on the nose of the +lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal +problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his +genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of a +surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. In fact, +Beyle's method is the classical method--the method of selection, of +omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central +impression of supreme reality. Zola criticises him for disregarding 'le +milieu.' + + Il y a [he says] un épisode célèbre dans 'Le Rouge et Le Noir,' la + scène où Julien, assis un soir à côté de Mme. de Rénal, sous les + branches noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la + main, pendant qu'elle cause avec Mme. Derville. C'est un petit + drame muet d'une grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analysé + merveilleusement les états d'âme de ses deux personnages. Or, le + milieu n'apparaît pas une seule fois. Nous pourrions être n'importe + où dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scène resterait la même + pourvu qu'il fit noir ... Donnez l'épisode à un écrivain pour qui + les milieux existent, et dans la défaite de cette femme, il fera + entrer la nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptés + molles. Et cet écrivain sera dans la vérité, son tableau sera plus + complet. + +More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? Zola, with his +statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell +a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. +He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol 'nuit,' +to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. Everybody +knows all about the night's accessories--'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses +voluptés molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once in a +way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! And Beyle is perpetually +evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'Comme il insiste +peu!' as M. Gide exclaims. Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence +is his capacity for making a summary. Beyle knew this, and his novels +are full of passages which read like nothing so much as extraordinarily +able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost. + +It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye for +detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was of +the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling +vividness, when he wished. But he very rarely did wish: it was apt to +involve a tiresome insistence. In his narratives he is like a brilliant +talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, +taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here and +there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too +obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and +taking care above all things never to force the note. His famous +description of the Battle of Waterloo in _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is +certainly the finest example of this side of his art. Here he produces +an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with +unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the +loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its +insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses and +indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his +own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero--a young Italian +impelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a volunteer +on the eve of the battle--go through the great day in such a state of +vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that he +really _was_ at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial and +unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by +two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot +from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he crosses +and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks +brandy with a _vivandière_, gallops over a field covered with dying men, +has an indefinite skirmish in a wood--and it is over. At one moment, +having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his +horse to splash into a stream, thereby covering one of the generals +with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good +specimen of Beyle's narrative style: + + En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouvé les généraux + tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla redoubler; ce fut à peine + s'il entendit le général, par lui si bien mouillé, qui criait à son + oreille: + + Où as-tu pris ce cheval? + + Fabrice était tellement troublé, qu'il répondit en Italien: _l'ho + comprato poco fa_. (Je viens de l'acheter à l'instant.) + + Que dis-tu? lui cria le général. + + Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne + put lui répondre. Nous avouerons que notre héros était fort peu + héros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne venait chez lui qu'en + seconde ligne; il était surtout scandalisé de ce bruit qui lui + faisait mal aux oreilles. L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait + une grande pièce de terre labourée, située au delà du canal, et ce + champ était jonché de cadavres. + +How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in +explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial +expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that +'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in +conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of +hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness has +produced? + +It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and +intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is +describing, for instance, the development of Julien Sorel's mind in _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant with +its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the +whirling vortex of life--then we seem to be witnessing not so much the +presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. The +procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the +inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the +demonstration is complete. Here the influence of the eighteenth century +is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of +syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of +Helvétius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its +austerest form--'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables +in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative +style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of the _Code Civil_. + +If this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and +brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the +French genius in an extreme degree, Beyle's position in literature would +present very little difficulty. He would take his place at once as a +late--an abnormally late--product of the eighteenth century. But he was +not that. In his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the +veins of Voltaire. It was the virus of modern life--that new +sensibility, that new passionateness, which Rousseau had first made +known to the world, and which had won its way over Europe behind the +thunder of Napoleon's artillery. Beyle had passed his youth within +earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the +echo of it. It was in vain that he studied Condillac and modelled his +style on the Code; in vain that he sang the praises of _la lo-gique_, +shrugged his shoulders at the Romantics, and turned the cold eye of a +scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained +essentially a man of feeling. His unending series of _grandes passions_ +was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to +the Fine Arts. Though his taste in music and painting was the taste of +his time--the literary and sentimental taste of the age of Rossini and +Canova--he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a +kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. The +'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into Italy he +heard at Novara the _Matrimonio Segreto_ of Cimarosa, marked an epoch in +his life. He adored Mozart: 'I can imagine nothing more distasteful to +me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile walk through the mud; but I would +take one at this moment if I knew that I should hear a good performance +of _Don Giovanni_ at the end of it.' The Virgins of Guido Reni sent him +into ecstasies and the Goddesses of Correggio into raptures. In short, +as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le Beau' in whatever form +he found it. _Le Beau!_ The phrase is characteristic of the peculiar +species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical +man of the world. His whole vision of life was coloured by it. His sense +of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'--his +immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act +or character--an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics +and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic +reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is surprising, +because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and +enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of a +schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? Beyle, for +instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of +himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'Il +respecta un seul homme: Napoléon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he must +have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his +unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, +and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double +nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, as +it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint. + +In his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for +what is best and what is worst. When the two forces work in unison the +result is sometimes of extraordinary value--a product of a kind which it +would be difficult to parallel in any other author. An eye of icy gaze +is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love +are recorded in the language of Euclid. The image of the surgeon +inevitably suggests itself--the hand with the iron nerve and the swift +knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. It is the intensity of +Beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that +makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of +adventure or all the marvels of high romance. The passage in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_ describing Count Mosca's jealousy has this quality, +which appears even more clearly in the chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ +concerning Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. Here Beyle has a +subject after his own heart. The loves of the peasant youth and the +aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, +and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each +other--these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' +which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. The climax +is reached when Mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws +herself into the arms of Julien, who forces himself to make no response: + + Ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort imposé par la politique était + pénible. Je ne dois pas même me permettre de presser contre mon + coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me méprise, ou elle me + maltraite. Quel affreux caractère! + + Et en maudissant le caractère de Mathilde, il l'en aimait cent fois + plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine. + + L'impassible froideur de Julien redoubla le malheur de Mademoiselle + de la Mole. Elle était loin d'avoir le sang-froid nécessaire pour + chercher à deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il sentait pour elle en cet + instant. Elle ne put se résoudre à le regarder; elle tremblait de + rencontrer l'expression du mépris. + + Assise sur le divan de la bibliothèque, immobile et la tête tournée + du côté opposé à Julien, elle était en proie aux plus vives + douleurs que l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire éprouver à une âme + humaine. Dans quelle atroce démarche elle venait de tomber! + + Il m'était réservé, malheureuse que je suis! de voir repoussées les + avances les plus indécentes! Et repoussées par qui? ajoutait + l'orgueil fou de douleur, repoussées par un domestique de mon père. + + C'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle à haute voix. + +At that moment she suddenly sees some unopened letters addressed to +Julien by another woman. + + --Ainsi, s'écria-t-elle hors d'elle-même, non seulement vous êtes + bien avec elle, mais encore vous la méprisez. Vous, un homme de + rien, mépriser Madame la Maréchale de Fervaques! + + --Ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant à ses genoux, + méprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus vivre privée + de ton amour. Et elle tomba tout à fait évanouie. + + --La voilà donc, cette orgueilleuse, à mes pieds! se dit Julien. + +Such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the +concentrated essence of Beyle's genius, and which, in its combination of +high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim +comparison with the great dialogues of Corneille. + +'Je fais tous les efforts possibles pour être _sec_,' he says of +himself. 'Je veux imposer silence à mon coeur, qui croit avoir beaucoup +à dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir écrit qu'un soupir, quand je +crois avoir noté une vérité.' Often he succeeds, but not always. At +times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages +with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his +sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in +an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot keep +up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his +imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the end +they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. When, in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, Fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first action is +to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured by +a cut in the face; and Beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by +it. In the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the +brilliant, worldly, sceptical Duchesse de Sanseverina, and then, not +quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the +reigning Prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. This +really makes her perfect. But the most striking example of Beyle's +inability to resist the temptation of sacrificing his head to his heart +is in the conclusion of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, where Julien, to be +revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down +into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. Not only +is Beyle entranced by the _bravura_ of this senseless piece of +brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial +observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero the +blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of Julien's execution, +even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic +style: 'Jamais cette tête n'avait été aussi poétique qu'au moment où +elle allait tomber.' Just as Beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an +extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he +expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally +characteristic quality of his compatriots--their instinctive +responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in +particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily +unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by the +'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades of +Napoleon, which animated the armies of France to victory, pieces of +nauseous clap-trap. And just now it is this side--to us the obviously +weak side--of Beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with French +critics. To judge from M. Barrès, writing dithyrambically of Beyle's +'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. The +sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this +side of the Channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too! + +The view of Beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen +with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. It is to these +that his most modern admirers devote their main attention--particularly +to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly +characteristic of their author, and--whatever the subject may be, from a +guide to Rome to a life of Napoleon--one gathers in them, scattered up +and down through their pages, a curious, dimly adumbrated +philosophy--an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view--_le +Beylisme_. It is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality that +their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. An +apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his +reflections upon Love. The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of +analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of +being a parody of _L'Esprit des Lois_, is yet full of originality, of +lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have +written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so +stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But +here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is +interesting--one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of +La Bruyère's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of +disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as +one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and +problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any +exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in +spite of his _lo-gique_, ever to have framed a coherent philosophy; it +is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, and +quick visions of flying thoughts. M. Barrès says that what lies at the +bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles énergies.' But +there are many kinds of 'belles énergies,' and some of them certainly do +not fit into the framework of 'le Beylisme.' 'Quand je suis arrêté par +des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande +colère contre le gouvernement et le curé de l'endroit. Quand au voleur, +il me plaît, s'il est énergique, car il m'amuse.' It was the energy of +self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not +interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at +times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an +egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. The +'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was no respectable +epicureanism; it had about it a touch of the fanatical. There was +anarchy in it--a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above +all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. Writing +his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on the +joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at +Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI. His father +announced it: + + --C'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont assassiné. + + Je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai éprouvé + en ma vie. Le lecteur pensera peut-être que je suis cruel, mais tel + j'étais à 5 X 2, tel je suis à 10 X 5 + 2 ... Je puis dire que + l'approbation des êtres, que je regarde comme faibles, m'est + absolument indifférente. + +These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are constantly +recurring in his books. He is always discharging his shafts against some +established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred +for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities--the Roman +Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly +hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, +and whose account of the seminary in _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ is one of the +most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of +the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a +prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern +thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of +Nietzsche. His love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, +his scorn of the Christian virtues, his admiration of the Italians of +the Renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the +herd--these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on +Rossini and the Coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past +and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a +surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of Zarathustra. The creator of +the Duchesse de Sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the +transvaluation of all values. Characteristically enough, the appearance +of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces in +European society--Goethe and the Austrian police. It is clear that +Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was +something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance in +his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal,' he observed to +Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so. He is extremely free and +extremely impertinent, and ... I recommend you to buy all his books.' As +for the Austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. Beyle's +book of travel, _Rome, Naples et Florence_, was, they decided, +pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was +hunted out of Milan in consequence. + +It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private +life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices +were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have +committed an 'espagnolisme.' Perhaps his worst sin was that of +plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely +'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied +several choice extracts culled from the _Edinburgh Review_. On this +occasion he was particularly delighted, since the _Edinburgh_, in +reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very +passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer +should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not +inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his +love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, +so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be +found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, +capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, covering +his papers with false names and anagrams--for the police, he said, were +on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and +less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was +he registered the fact--upon his braces. He dreamed and drifted a great +deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, wrote +the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up his +mind whether Napoleon after all _was_ the only being he respected; +no--there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at +Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite, +me fait songer à ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes rêveries et me +fait venir des idées excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me +dissimuler que j'ai le malheur _of being too great an admirer of Lady +L...._' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui +souvent encore remplissent ma tête à l'âge de _fifty-two_.' He wondered +whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat +scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the +fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until at +last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M. +Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing to +perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough +to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the +satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen by +the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or +the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since +the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more +cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was +never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late +at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be +very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he +said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, où la conversation est +gaie, anecdotique, et où l'on prend du punch léger à minuit et demie, +est l'endroit du monde où je me trouve le mieux.' + +And in such a Paradise of Frenchmen we may leave Henri Beyle. + +1914 + + + + +LADY HESTER STANHOPE + + +The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations +through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under +whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak +upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an +indomitable _hauteur_. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage. +The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the +hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady +Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a +nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some +eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the +air. + +Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the child +of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, +which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate results. +There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing +families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly +ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century +earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this +tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished +suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit was +still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate. + +She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl +Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the +first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the +House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings--'damned aristocratical +nonsense'--from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, Chatham's +daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years +old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her +stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen +Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of a +tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped +from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her +grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later, +Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his +death in 1806. + +Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid power, +were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the +movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her uncle's +household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not +beautiful, she was fascinating--very tall, with a very fair and clear +complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful +expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those +days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you +saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was +devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was +devoted, too--but in a more dangerous fashion--to the intoxicating +Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which she +carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something +overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. Lord +Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could +never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her +distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to Russia; +she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling +everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there were +rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to +_afficher_, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the slightest +provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a +terrible and unexpected catastrophe. Pitt died. And Lady Hester +suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in +Montague Square on a pension of £1200 a year. + +She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued +to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was +announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was +whispered that Canning was 'le régnant'--that he was with her 'not only +all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became +attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry +him--as she seems to have asserted many years later--is doubtful; his +letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly +warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on +his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it +was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from +London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set +sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his +regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England. + +There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought of a +lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she +moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in +England--at last even in Europe--grew distasteful to her; as late as +1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or three +English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private +physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly +and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She was +conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. +After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered +that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted +accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by +Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to visit +Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the +winter of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a violent storm sprang up; the +whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a +bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty hours. +Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in +safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's +career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping +raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman--a dress which she never +afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization. + +She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her appearance in +Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by +the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she +wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, +and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in +gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the +inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, +rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she +turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her +travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on +horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled burnous. +Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she +absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through +various and dreadful sufferings--shipwreck and starvation, rats and +black-beetles unspeakable--but she retained her equanimity. Whatever +her Ladyship might think fit to be, _she_ was an Englishwoman to the +last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr. + +Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most +fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in +man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was +begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. +'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the +city unveiled at midday. The population were thunderstruck; but at last +their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was +hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out +before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not +satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious +and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins of +Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever +seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she +preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs, +who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her courage, +enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their +company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild +enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple crowned +her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee of +Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily +declined. + +The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the year +1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere +as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from +town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she +herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was +uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West--must she return to it? +The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable--but could +she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was suddenly +struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne in +upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the +slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and +took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she +dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began +excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden +treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having unearthed nothing but +an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she +ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to +her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up +Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained +until her death, more than twenty years later. + +Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her +wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her +existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was +sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great +mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying +courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a +rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with +the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one +the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, +through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was +revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over +the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence +brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar +grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature +of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely the +tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of £20 a +year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled +imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been +transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself +believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a +French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the +punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester +actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems +probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady +Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her +terrible neighbour, the Emir Beshyr, she maintained an undaunted front. +She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as +physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might +have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe +admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain +is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and +loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became +at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she +awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter +Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred +horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last +triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an +Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go +there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her +own people.' + +Her expenses were immense--not only for herself but for others, for she +poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and was +swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants +pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of +terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her +habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up +all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who +alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having +withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a +poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and +there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on--talk that scaled +the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an +abolished past--stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations +against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire--mingled +phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and +speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and +lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable +figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the +tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be +robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked +on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that +the time was coming when she should talk no more? + +Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of her +brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends, +except Lord Hardwicke--with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose +kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the +English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and +harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled +her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable +disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, +filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of it +all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady +regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours +together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household +before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more +and more involved--grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the +faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her +affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful, +miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten +the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from +the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the +payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious +missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of +Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return +to Europe, and he--how could he have done it?--obeyed her. Her health +was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, +absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her--we know +no more. She had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her +house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden--that beautiful garden +which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and +its bowers--and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her +servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in +the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her +bed--inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air. + +1919. + + + + +MR. CREEVEY + + +Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone knows, +she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to +be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she +is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have +provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances +she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run +round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good +lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her +drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. +They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of +the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose +function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events +and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is +Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio, +with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is +measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and +the little wretch did his job very well. + +It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of +the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round +belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was +educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years +of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a +habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. In +1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life--a member of +Parliament, a familiar figure in high society, an insatiable gossip +with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place +he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the +greater part of his life his income was less than £200 a year. But those +were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they +were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and +splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, +penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into +Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the +country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole +political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of abuses, +he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and +ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was +relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but Mrs. +Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, +and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence--without a house, +without servants, without property of any sort--wandering from country +mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at +last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with a +pleasant little post which brought him in about £600 a year. Apart from +these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was +static--static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always +on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; +but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by +no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round +into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he would +gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the +wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was +before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an +observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his +tongue, and then--for so the Fates had decided--with his pen. He wrote +easily, spicily, and persistently; he had a favourite stepdaughter, +with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have +preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of +course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's +exhilarating _pas de chat_. + +Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There are +no great names in his vocabulary--only nicknames: George III. is 'Old +Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell +'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is +sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old +Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog +along on £40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of the great +Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his +scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his +own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course--Canning was all +perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual +confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious and +hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne +was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' +'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them--they were either knaves or +imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides +passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership of +the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man. + +Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or other, it +was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick +of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, at +Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical +moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during +Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the +Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; +one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. Blücher +and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing--the +nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't +think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the +Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, and +without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at +other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject. +'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he +speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not +ashamed to walk into the room with him.' + +When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was +inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in the +front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call +her Majesty, are characteristic: + + Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown + open, and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance + and manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe + she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is + therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest + resemblance I can recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy + which you used to call Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another + toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, + and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air. + The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of + the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once + into the House, made a _duck_ at the throne, another to the Peers, + and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. Her + dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, + &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white + veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near + to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and + inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling + ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their appearance + were not her Majesty's own property. + +Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the +presence of Royalty. + +But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of +his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat +pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself +extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest +during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose +hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable _verve_. 'This house,' he +says at Raby, 'is itself _by far_ the most magnificent and unique in +several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of +anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in +one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of +the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At Knowsley +'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height +that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are +two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles +over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about +the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground +floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow +furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which +cost £4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest yellow +satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and +there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and the +doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a +succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants +stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient Ports. Wine +had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it +was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous +living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon +him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect. +Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a +little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for +a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain--except, to be sure, at King +Jog's. There, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved. This was +too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for +breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as +could be,' fairly lost his temper. + + My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell + me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he + replied in the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I + turned to Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the + fuss and jaw of the thing, I would leave the room and the house + this instant'; and dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He + hears every word you say': to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It + was a regular scene. + +A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding himself +in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a +piece--excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat +butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., +wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.' + +It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six Acts, +of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed, +could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious +of the existence--of the possibility--of any mode of living other than +his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, broiled +bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a +part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and +the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only +once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, +something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The +occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes: + + I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is _insane._ He + quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in + support of this infernal nuisance--the loco-motive Monster, + carrying _eighty tons_ of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke + and sulphur, coming thro' every man's grounds between Manchester + and Liverpool. + +His perturbation grew. He attended the committee assiduously, but in +spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The +loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led +the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May +31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the +Monster. + + Well--this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we + had a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters + of the Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us. + +With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities of +which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having 12 +oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.' + +Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he +discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his silk +ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed to +increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr. +Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how +useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night +in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in +the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a +certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are +endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the +pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one +wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue +indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But +it could not be. + + Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame; + Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons. + +It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should catch +a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, laughing, eating, and +showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the +piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that was +preparing for very different characters, and with a very different style +of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey. + +1919. + + + + +INDEX + +Algarotti, 144, 145, 152 +Anne, Queen, 106 +Arnold, Matthew, 10 +Arouet. _See_ 'Voltaire' + +Bailey, Mr. John, 4-7, 9-12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22 +Balzac, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227 +Barrès, M., 220, 21, 234 +Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 194-196 +Beddoes, Thos. Lovell, 193-216 +Beethoven, 237 +Berkeley, 106 +Bernhardt, 23 +Bernières, Madame de, 96, 107 +Bernstorff, 76 +Berry, Miss, 67, 68 +Beshyr, Emir, 247 +Bessborough, Lady, 243 +Bevan, Mr. C.D., 196 +Beyle, Henri, 219-238 +Blake, 36, 63, 179-190 +Blücher, 255 +Boileau, 62 +Bolingbroke, 99, 101, 103, 104, 111 +Bonaparte, 222 +Boswell, 59 +Boufflers, Comtesse de, 76 +Boufflers, Marquise de, 75 +Bourget, M., 220, 221 +Brandes, Dr., 43, 51 +Brink, Mr. Ten, 43 +Broome, Major, 101 +Brougham, 255 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 27-28 +Buffon, 80, 154 +Burke, 76 +Butler, Bishop, 29, 106 + +Canning, George, 243, 247, 255 +Canning, Stratford, 243, 247 +Caraccioli, 76 +Carlyle, 93, 137, 144, 160 +Caroline, Queen, 256 +Carteret, 106 +Castlereagh, 255 +Cellini, 68 +Chasot, 152, 153 +Chateaubriand, 225 +Châtelet, Madame du, 113, 141-143 +Chatham, Lady, 242 +Chatham, Lord, 241 +Chesterfield, Lord, 63 +Choiseul, Duc de, 79 +Choiseul, Duchesse de, 70, 85, 86 +Chuquet, M., 220, 221, 223, 238 +Cicero, 68 +Cimarosa, 230 +Claude, 17 +Coleridge, 16, 30, 62, 63 +Colles, Mr. Ramsay, 194, 195 +Collins, Anthony, 110, 111 +Collins, Churton, 93, 98, 103 +Condillac, 230 +Congreve, 101 +Conti, Prince de, 96 +Corneille, 80, 129 +Correggio, 231 +Cowley, 196 +Creevey, Mr., 253-260 + +D'Alembert, 70, 75, 131, 162, 166 +Dante, 10 +d'Argens, 152 +d'Argental, 72 +Darget, 152 +Daru, 222 +Davy, Sir Humphry, 195 +Deffand, Madame du, 67-89, 97 +Degen, 203 +d'Egmont, Madame, 72 +Denham, 62 +Denis, Madame, 149, 150 +d'Epinay, Madame, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171-174 +Descartes, 113 +Desnoiresterres 93 +Devonshire, Duchess of, 247 +d'Houdetot, Madame, 171 +Diderot, 70, 166-175 +Diogenes, 115 +Donne, 62 +Dowden, Prof., 42, 43, 45, 49, 51 +Dryden, 4, 22, 29, 62 +Durham, Lord, 255 + +Ecklin, Dr., 203, 204 +Edgeworth, Miss, 195, 196 +Euler, 154, 155 + +Falkener, Everard, 98 +Fielding, 80, 197 +Flaubert, 220, 221 +Fleury, Cardinal, 112 +Fontenelle, 73, 222 +Foulet, M. Lucien, 93, 94, 96, 98, 103, 105 +Fox, Charles James, 76, 78 +Frederick the Great, 137 +Fry, Mrs., 243, 244, 247 +Furnivall, Dr., 42, 43 + +Gautier, 225 +Gay, 102 +George III, 247, 255 +Gibbon, 29, 76, 80 +Gide, M. André, 219, 220, 227 +Goethe, 237 +Gollancz, Sir I., 43, 49 +Goncourts, De, 10 +Gosse, Mr., 27-31, 35, 115, 204, 205 +Gramont, Madame de, 79 +Granville, Lord, 242 +Gray, 60, 62 +Grey, Lord, 255 +Grimm, 166-174 + +Hardwicke, Lord, 248 +Hegetschweiler, 202 +Helvétius, 230 +Hénault, 72, 75 +Herrick, 38 +Higginson, Edward, 100 +Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, 59, 63 +Hill, Mr., 243 +Hugo, Victor, 62, 225 +Hume, 30, 112, 114, 167, 169 +Huskisson, 255 + +Ingres, 3 + +Johnson, Dr., 22, 28-30, 32, 59-63, 103, 221 +Jordan, 140 +Jourdain, Mr., 154 + +Keats, 211 +Kelsall, Thomas Forbes, 200, 203, 204, 209 +Klopstock, 186 +Koenig, 155 + +La Beaumelle, 154 +Lamb, Charles, 30, 188, 194 +Lambton, 258 +La Mettrie, 152-154, 158 +Lanson, M., 93, 100 +Latimer, 31 +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 95 +Lee, Sir Sidney, 43 +Leibnitz, 155 +Lemaître, M., 4-6, 17, 18 +Lemaur, 70 +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 70, 71, 75, 86, 238 +Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, 242 +Locke, 29, 110, 112, 113, 115 +Louis Philippe, 222 +Louis XIV., 71 +Lulli, 70 +Luxembourg, Maréchale de, 77, 83 + +Macaulay, 137 +Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, 164-173 +Maine, Duchesse du, 71, 74 +Malherbe, 62 +Marlborough, Duke of, 105 +Marlborough, Duchess of, 101 +Marlowe, 197 +Massillon, 74 +Matignon, Marquis de, 84 +Maupertuis, 153-156, 158, 159, 161 +Mehemet Ali, 244 +Mérimée, Prosper, 223 +Meryon, Dr., 243, 247, 248 +Middleton, 111 +Milton, 10, 16, 211 +Mirepoix, Bishop of, 142 +Mirepoix, Maréchale de, 76 +Molière, 134 +Moncrif, 72 +Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 241 +Montespan, Madame de, 74 +Montesquieu, 78, 107, 230, 238 +Moore, Sir John, 243 +Morley, Lord, 110, 167, 172 +Moses, 115 +Mozart, 23, 230 +Musset, 225 + +Napoleon, 67, 230, 231, 234, 238 +Necker, 84 +Nelson, 221 +Newton, Sir Isaac, 100, 106, 112, 113 + +Pascal, 36, 112 +Pater, 31 +Peterborough, Lord, 102, 103 +Pitt, William, the younger, 241-243, 247 +Plato, 185 +Pöllnitz, 152 +Pompadour, Madame de, 143 +Pont-de-Veyle, 72, 75 +Pope, 4, 22, 34, 38, 103, 106, 211 +Prie, Madame de, 71, 94, 96 +Prior, 63 +Proctor, Bryan Waller, 200, 203 +Puffendorf, 76 + +Quinault, 70 + +Racine, 3-24, 80, 129-131, 225, 237 +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 45, 179, 183, 185 +Regent, the Prince, 255 +Reni, Guido, 231 +Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 30, 186, 188 +Richardson, 80 +Richelieu, 73 +Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier de, 94, 96, 98 +Rossetti, 183 +Rousseau, 85, 165-175, 230 +Rubens, 34 +Russell, Lord John, 255 + +Sainte-Beuve, 10, 12, 18, 61, 167, 220 +Saint-Lambert, 172 +Saint-Simon, 80, 179-183 +Sampson, Mr. John, 179-183 +Sanadon, Mlle., 84 +Shaftesbury, 110 +Shakespeare, 3, 4, 14, 34, 41-56, 80, 112, 132, 221, 225 +Shelley, 23, 38 +Sheridan, 257 +Sophocles, 132 +Spenser, 211 +Stanhope, Lady Hester, 241-249 +'Stendhal.' _See_ Beyle, Henri +Stephen, Sir James, 211 +Sully, Duc de, 95, 105 +Swift, 29, 101, 104, 106 +Swinburne, 184 + +Taine, 220, 221 +Thévenart, 70 +Thomson, 63 +Tindal, 111 +Toland, 110, 111 +Tolstoi, 228 +Toynbee, Mrs. Paget, 67-69, 75 +Turgot, 70, 169 + +Velasquez, 34 +Vigny, 225 +Virgil, 14, 23 +Voltaire, 69, 70, 72, 75, 79-81, 83, 93-117, 121-134, 137-162, 174, 188 + +Walpole, Horace, 30, 63, 67, 68, 69-71, 75, 76, 78-80, 86-89, 103, 104, 106 +Webster, 36 +Wellington, Duke of, 255 +White, W.A., 180 +Winckelmann, 237 +Wolf, 138 +Wollaston, 111 +Woolston, 111 +Wordsworth, 16, 62, 63, 184 +Würtemberg, Duke of, 156 + +Yonge, Miss, 134 +Young, Dr., 101 + +Zola, 220, 227, 228 + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12478 *** diff --git a/12478-h/12478-h.htm b/12478-h/12478-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..486ef92 --- /dev/null +++ b/12478-h/12478-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9542 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Books & Characters, by +LYTTON STRACHEY.</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + a {text-decoration: none;} + + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i11 {display: block; margin-left: 11em;} + .poem span.i18 {display: block; margin-left: 18em;} + .poem span.i20 {display: block; margin-left: 20em;} + .poem span.i25 {display: block; margin-left: 25em;} + .poem span.i26 {display: block; margin-left: 26em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em;} + .poem span.i9 {display: block; margin-left: 9em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12478 ***</div> + +<h1>BOOKS & CHARACTERS</h1> +<h2>FRENCH & ENGLISH</h2> +<h3><i>By</i></h3> +<h1>LYTTON STRACHEY</h1> +<br> +<h3>LONDON</h3> +<h3>First published May 1922</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="TO_JOHN_MAYNARD_KEYNES"></a> +<h2>TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<p><i>The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the +Editors +of the Independent Review, the New Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the +Edinburgh Review.</i></p> +<p><i>The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a +manuscript, +apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his English +period</i>.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONTENTS"></a> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<div style="margin-left: 160px;"><a href="#RACINE">RACINE </a><br> +<a href="#SIR_THOMAS_BROWNE">SIR THOMAS BROWNE </a><br> +<a href="#SHAKESPEARES_FINAL_PERIOD">SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_LIVES_OF_THE_POETS">THE LIVES OF THE POETS </a><br> +<a href="#MADAME_DU_DEFFAND">MADAME DU DEFFAND </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRE_AND_ENGLAND">VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND </a><br> +<a href="#A_DIALOGUE">A DIALOGUE </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRES_TRAGEDIES">VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRE_AND_FREDERICK_THE_GREAT">VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE +GREAT</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_ROUSSEAU_AFFAIR">THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR </a><br> +<a href="#THE_POETRY_OF_BLAKE">THE POETRY OF BLAKE</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_LAST_ELIZABETHAN">THE LAST ELIZABETHAN</a> <br> +<a href="#HENRI_BEYLE">HENRI BEYLE </a><br> +<a href="#LADY_HESTER_STANHOPE">LADY HESTER STANHOPE</a> <br> +<a href="#MR_CREEVEY">MR. CREEVEY </a><br> +<a href="#INDEX">INDEX </a><br> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="RACINE"></a> +<h2>RACINE</h2> +<a name="Page_3"></a><br> +<p>When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, +grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient +and +modern worlds, with a single exception—Shakespeare. After some +persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a <i>part</i> +of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the Louvre can now +see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather +less than half of the author of <i>King Lear</i> just appearing at the +extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has +changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be +advanced—though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty—to the very steps +of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a +similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged +as the most characteristic representative of the literature of France? +Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would +more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, +whisking away into the outer darkness?</p> +<p>There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national +tastes +and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, +I +could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, +as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the +matter. But alas! <i>nous avons changé tout cela</i>. Now we +are each of us +obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, +ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on +different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either that I +am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen +that while on one side of that 'span of waters' Racine is despised and<a + name="Page_4"></a> +Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and +Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and +illustrated in a singular way. Mr. John Bailey, in a volume of essays +entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of +Racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the +second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the +merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages +of +Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance +of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant +critic, M. Lemaître, published a series of lectures on Racine, in +which +the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from +beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting +criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated +classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of +these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to +the +opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue +along lines so different and so remote that they never come into +collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side +the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French +critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the +romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that +England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was +to +be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaître, on +the +other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. +Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's +supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. +Lemaître +never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of +his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness +already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaître's +book, one +begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find +it +difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. <a + name="Page_5"></a>It is no +paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find +so eminent a critic as M. Lemaître observing that Racine 'a +vraiment +"achevé" et porté à son point suprême de +perfection <i>la tragédie</i>, cette +étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la +trouve +peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to +the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of +this +kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful +consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the +susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a +French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue, +he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether +he +willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the +difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate +a +writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is +least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this +essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. +Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the +average +English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to +the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense +value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some +important general questions of literary doctrine will have been +discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to +vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that +English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, +brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost +personal +distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to +think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of +an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, +comes +fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared +by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice +of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, +and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have <a + name="Page_6"></a>discovered +something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious +boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be +grateful? +Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may +enjoy, and render thanks?</p> +<p>M. Lemaître, starting out, like a native of the mountains, +from a point +which can only be reached by English explorers after a long journey and +a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series +of brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on +one side almost altogether the questions connected both with Racine's +dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very +questions by which English readers are most perplexed, and which they +are most anxious to discuss. His style in particular—using the word in +its widest sense—forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. +Bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of Mr. +Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet +can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric +of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. Before, +however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well +to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because +the +English reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very +outset +of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the +Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he +should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. +After +the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our +early +tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of +life +and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of +Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of +setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their +spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give +one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious +pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, +after one has been rambling through an open <a name="Page_7"></a>forest. +'La scène est à +Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'—could +anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? Here is +nothing +for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no +wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here +is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five +acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to +meet in and make their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of +the +'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself quite +unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a +critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those +antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, +believes +that Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great +advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the +once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of +time and place are of no importance in themselves.' So far as critics +are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that +plays +can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance +with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any +rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in +effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and +justifies the unities of time and place? Surely it is not, as Mr. +Bailey +would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for +it +is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must +possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen—as in +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, for instance—that the very essence of this +interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local +activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true +justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the +conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis—the vision, +thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final +catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the +views of the Elizabethan <a name="Page_8"></a>tragedians, who aimed at +representing not only +the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it +was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the +rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great +persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in +the +literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have +become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along +totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more +consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the +crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is +narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come +more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of +form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather +than +that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of <i>Macbeth</i> +have been superseded by plays of the type of <i>Britannicus</i>. +<i>Britannicus</i>, no less than <i>Macbeth</i>, is the tragedy of a +criminal; but +it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the +fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the +precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is +taken, and the criminal is made. The method of <i>Macbeth</i> has +been, as it +were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of <i>Britannicus</i> +still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more +rigorously +and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his +attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of +importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the +English reader—the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the +absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action—was no more +than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and +for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. +His dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, +supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact +that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to +the ground. Approached in this light, even <a name="Page_9"></a>the +'salle du palais de +Pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. We come to realise that, if it is +nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the +invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one +little room an everywhere.' It will show us no views, no spectacles, it +will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it +will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the +closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of +human hearts.</p> +<p>It is remarkable that Mr. Bailey, while seeming to approve of the +classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him +for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical +form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in +the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of +human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects +which +Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the +range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction +of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; +and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into +his +compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to +find fault with a Mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration +of +Wagner. But it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise +nature of Mr. Bailey's criticism. When he speaks of Racine's vision not +including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that Racine cannot be +reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat +different ground and discussing a more general question. All truly +great +poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of +life'—a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the +universe; and, since Racine is without this quality, his claim to true +poetic greatness must be denied. But, even upon the supposition that +this view of Racine's philosophical outlook is the true one—and, in its +most important sense, I believe that it is not—does Mr. Bailey's +conclusion really follow? Is it possible to test a <a name="Page_10"></a>poet's +greatness by +the largeness of his 'view of life'? How wide, one would like to know, +was Milton's 'view of humanity'? And, though Wordsworth's sense of the +position of man in the universe was far more profound than Dante's, who +will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? The truth is that +we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only +of +Mr. Bailey's criticism of Racine, but of an entire critical method—the +method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in +general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it +possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. How often this +method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously +fallacious! For, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, +amenable to the rules of scientific induction. Its component parts +cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which +defies foreknowledge. When Matthew Arnold declared that the value of a +new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in +the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this +very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself +a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto +itself? It is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle +expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a +precedent. Thus Mr. Bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from +Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Goethe, the qualities without which no poet +can be great, and his condemnation of Racine because he is without +them, +is a fallacy in criticism. There is only one way to judge a poet, as +Wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, +has +pointed out—and that is, by loving him. But Mr. Bailey, with regard to +Racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of Wordsworth. Let us +look a little more closely into the nature of his attack.</p> +<p>'L'épithète rare,' said the De Goncourts,'voilà +la marque de +l'écrivain.' Mr. Bailey quotes the sentence with approval, +observing +that if, with Sainte-Beuve, we extend the phrase to <a name="Page_11"></a>'le +mot rare,' we +have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may +test +the merit of poetry. And doubtless most English readers would be +inclined to agree with Mr. Bailey, for it so happens that our own +literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge +of +extravagance, reigns supreme. Owing mainly, no doubt, to the double +origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between +the highly-coloured crudity of the Saxon words and the ambiguous +splendour of the Latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national +taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and +penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie—the Hebrew +Prophets—our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of +writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the +extraordinary, and the bold. No one in his senses would regret this, +for +it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, +of +course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the +bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example +and its final justification. But the result is that we have grown so +unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to +believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an +impossibility. The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, +and +of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but +coldness +and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the +bravado that we love so well. It is as if we had become so accustomed +to +looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an +exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us +as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the +dancers, +which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. But let +us be patient, and let us look again.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessée,<br> +</span><span>Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes +laissée.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to <a + name="Page_12"></a>catch the mind +or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, +plainly set forth. But is there not an enchantment? Is there not a +vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the +ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is +precisely this—that he brings about, by what are apparently the +simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to +produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a +proof +of his amazing art. In the following passage, for instance, what a +sense +of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice:<br> +</span><span>C'est faire à vos beautés un triste sacrifice<br> +</span><span>Que de vous présenter, madame, avec ma foi,<br> +</span><span>Tout l'âge et le malheur que je traîne avec +moi.<br> +</span><span>Jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire mêmes<br> +</span><span>Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diadèmes.<br> +</span><span>Mais ce temps-là n'est plus: je régnais; et +je fuis:<br> +</span><span>Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is that wonderful 'trente' an 'épithète rare'? Never, +surely, before or +since, was a simple numeral put to such a use—to conjure up so +triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! But these are subtleties which +pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals +of the great romantic poets. As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison +between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is +like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At +first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'éclatante +vérité pittoresque du +grand maître flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste français +qu'un ton assez +uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pâle et douce lumière. +Mais qu'on +approche de plus près et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances +fines +vont éclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont +sortir de ce +tissu profond et serré; on ne peut plus en détacher ses +yeux.'</p> +<p>Similarly when Mr. Bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more +general +questions of style, declares that there is no <a name="Page_13"></a>'element +of fine +surprise' in Racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of +Pindar and the Greek choruses—the reply is that he would find what he +wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'Who will forget,' he says, +'the comparison of the Atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty +nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human +bodies, of Helen to the lion's whelps?... Everyone knows these. Who +will +match them among the formal elegances of Racine?' And it is true that +when Racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the +romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters +of +the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and +anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his +pages +will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the +daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out +of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus +many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration +of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in +the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'était pendant l'horreur d'une +profonde nuit.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might +pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after +vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. But, sometimes, +the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate +and +terrific force—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'est Vénus toute entière +à sa proie attachée!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>A few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having.</p> +<p>But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognise the +beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack +of +extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis +and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic +of +his style to which <a name="Page_14"></a>we are perhaps even more +antipathetic—its +suppression of detail. The great majority of poets—and especially of +English poets—produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of +details—details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty +or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details +Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words +which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our +minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have +been +accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of +significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is +more +marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few +expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate +reality. When Shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so +with a single stroke of detail—'not a mouse stirring'! And Virgil adds +touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque +volucres,<br> +</span><span>Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis<br> +</span><span>Rura tenent, etc.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Racine's way is different, but is it less masterly?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les +vents, et Neptune.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the Englishman's first +thought—with the conventional 'Neptune,' and the vague 'armée,' +and the +commonplace 'vents.' And he forgets to notice the total impression +which +these words produce—the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and +vastness and ominous hush.</p> +<p>It is particularly in regard to Racine's treatment of nature that +this +generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'Is he so much as aware,' +exclaims Mr. Bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, +that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear +will +never have enough of the music of the sea? He might have written every +page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of <a + name="Page_15"></a>his +study.' The accusation gains support from the fact that Racine rarely +describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, +we +know, was not his plan. But he is constantly, with his subtle art, +suggesting them. In this line, for instance, he calls up, without a +word +of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Déjà le jour plus grand nous +frappe et nous éclaire.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! He can +give +us the desolation of a calm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">La rame inutile<br> +</span><span>Fatigua vainement une mer immobile;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Voyez tout l'Hellespont blanchissant sous nos +rames;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Quoi! pour noyer les Grecs et leurs mille +vaisseaux,<br> +</span><span>Mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux!<br> +</span><span>Quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recèle,<br> +</span><span>L'Aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle,<br> +</span><span>Les vents, les mêmes vents, si longtemps +accusés,<br> +</span><span>Ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brisés!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a +triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Prêts à vous recevoir mes +vaisseaux vous attendent;<br> +</span><span>Et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter,<br> +</span><span>Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this +line, +where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long +syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect.</p> +<p>But it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like Mr. +Bailey +are unable to find in Racine—they miss in him no less suggestions of +the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our +English habit of associating <a name="Page_16"></a>these qualities +with expressions which are +complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of +fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>we are apt not to hear that it is there. But there is another +reason—the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism +ever since the triumph of Wordsworth and Coleridge at the beginning of +the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. It would be easy to +prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of +'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that Mr. Bailey's +criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects +of +this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the +unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the +key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find +in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he +is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious +when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind +of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' +in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and that <i>Paradise Lost</i> is one of the +greatest +poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory, +however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which +may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in +its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity +and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine—that is to say, +there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the +transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the +constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere +rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking +what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will +not +our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put +out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical +suggestion, the <a name="Page_17"></a>more we examine Racine, the more +clearly we shall +discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually +console us for the loss of the first—the mystery of the mind of man. +This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it +adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how +much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with +the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, +wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies—Hermione and +Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phèdre—seem to +emerge for +a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose +depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we +shall +find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure +infinities of the heart.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous +taire.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. +That +is all affection; and this all desire—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je +faisais couler.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or let us listen to the voice of Phèdre, when she learns that +Hippolyte +and Aricie love one another:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher?<br> +</span><span>Dans le fond des forêts alloient-ils se cacher?<br> +</span><span>Hélas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence;<br> +</span><span>Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence;<br> +</span><span>Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux;<br> +</span><span>Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This last line—written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious +rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window—does it not +seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty +of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul?</p> +<p>It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most +remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a +critic as M. Lemaître has chosen to devote the <a name="Page_18"></a>greater +part of a volume +to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's +portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and +vitality +with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending +more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the +combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, +and +his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaître, in fact, goes so far +as to +describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in +him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no +doubt, +but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to +compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous +kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And +there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never +tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and +monotonous; while M. Lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' +and +Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' The +explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the +two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When +Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and +depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a +directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the +utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon +stroke, +swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her +tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher +l'empereur?<br> +</span><span>Ne le verrai-je plus qu'à titre d'importune?<br> +</span><span>Ai-je donc élevé si haut votre fortune<br> +</span><span>Pour mettre une barrière entre mon fils et moi?<br> +</span><span>Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi?<br> +</span><span>Entre Sénèque et vous disputez-vous la gloire<br> +</span><span>A qui m'effacera plus tôt de sa mémoire?<br> +</span><span>Vous l'ai-je confié pour en faire un ingrat,<br> +</span><span>Pour être, sous son nom, les maîtres de +l'état?<br> +</span><span>Certes, plus je médite, et moins je me figure<br> +</span><span>Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre créature;<br> +</span><a name="Page_19"></a><span>Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir +l'ambition<br> +</span><span>Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque légion;<br> +</span><span>Et moi, qui sur le trône ai suivi mes ancêtres,<br> +</span><span>Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mère de vos +maîtres!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the +hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on +other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, +artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of +high-sounding words and elaborate inversions.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides<br> +</span><span>Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses frères perfides.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her +brothers' +conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison +ce gage trop sincère.' It is obvious that this kind of +expression has +within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century +tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got +out of the difficulty by referring to—'De la fidélité le +respectable +appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts +Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based +upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the +spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense—physical +objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that +go to make up the machinery of existence—these must be kept out of the +picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have +ruined +the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, +they +must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the +entire +attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the +composition—the spiritual states of the characters—which, laid bare +with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly +imprint themselves upon the mind. To condemn Racine on the score of his +ambiguities and his <a name="Page_20"></a>pomposities is to complain +of the hastily dashed-in +column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention +the face. Sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own +conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with +a wonderful significance. Thus when the Sultana, Roxane, discovers her +lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge +and +death, and she exclaims—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est +extrême<br> +</span><span>Que le traître une fois se soit trahi lui-même.<br> +</span><span>Libre des soins cruels où j'allais m'engager,<br> +</span><span>Ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'à se venger.<br> +</span><span>Qu'il meure. Vengeons-nous. Courez. Qu'on le saisisse!<br> +</span><span>Que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice;<br> +</span><span>Qu'ils viennent préparer ces noeuds +infortunés<br> +</span><span>Par qui de ses pareils les jours sont terminés.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>To have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and +Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis +in +such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. +She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of +virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally +orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of +speech.</p> +<p>But, as a rule, Racine's characters speak out most clearly when they +are +most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an +intensity of directness unknown in actual life. In such moments, the +phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed +significance of character and situation; the 'Qui te l'a dit?' of +Hermione, the 'Sortez' of Roxane, the 'Je vais à Rome' of +Mithridate, +the 'Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!' of Athalie—who can forget these +things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? Very different is the +Shakespearean method. There, as passion rises, expression becomes more +and more poetical and vague. Image flows into image, thought into +thought, until <a name="Page_21"></a>at last the state of mind is +revealed, inform and +molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. Such revelations, +no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of Racine. +In life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; +and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and +agglomerated rather than compact and defined. But Racine's aim was less +to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon +its +inmost being and to give expression to that. One might be tempted to +say +that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, +after all, reality has no degrees. Who can affirm that the wild +ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical +existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and +'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'?</p> +<p>It would be nearer the truth to rank Racine among the idealists. The +world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and +rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an +ampler ether, a diviner air.' It is a world where the hesitations and +the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a +world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown +ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love +the beginning and the end of all. It is, too, the world of a poet, so +that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through +the +poet's sweet articulation—through verse. Upon English ears the rhymed +couplets of Racine sound strangely; and how many besides Mr. Bailey +have +dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! But to his lovers, to those who +have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are +impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. +Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep +enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu +de ma part le roi de Comagène?'—How is it that words of such +slight +import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. +And, as to his <a name="Page_22"></a>rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the +true worshipper, the +final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet is only +fit +for satire. Has he forgotten <i>Lamia</i>? And he asks, 'How is it +that we +read Pope's <i>Satires</i> and Dryden's, and Johnson's with enthusiasm +still, +while we never touch <i>Irene</i>, and rarely the <i>Conquest of +Granada</i>?' +Perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our <i>a priori</i> +theories, even the fiery art of Dryden's drama may remain dead to us, +and that, if we touched <i>Irene</i> even once, we should find it was +in +blank verse. But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. +Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: +'Suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more +displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see +there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the +confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce +anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your +sight ... 'Tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the +shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, +cannot +be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we +attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the +rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as +bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' In this exquisite passage +Dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the +central argument for rhyme—its power of creating a beautiful +atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the +associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For Racine, +with +his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier +between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his +art. His rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which +we +can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the +forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' +And truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing +them'!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_23"></a><span>Oui, prince, je +languis, je brûle pour Thésée ...<br> +</span><span>Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage,<br> +</span><span>Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage,<br> +</span><span>Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots,<br> +</span><span>Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos.<br> +</span><span>Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte,<br> +</span><span>Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il +l'élite?<br> +</span><span>Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors<br> +</span><span>Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords?<br> +</span><span>Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète,<br> +</span><span>Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite:<br> +</span><span>Pour en développer l'embarras incertain<br> +</span><span>Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main.<br> +</span><span>Mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancée;<br> +</span><span>L'amour m'en eût d'abord inspiré la +pensée;<br> +</span><span>C'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours<br> +</span><span>Vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les +détours.<br> +</span><span>Que de soins m'eût coûtés cette +tête charmante!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is difficult to 'place' Racine among the poets. He has affinities +with many; but likenesses to few. To balance him rigorously against any +other—to ask whether he is better or worse than Shelley or than +Virgil—is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is +too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets—with +Virgil's for instance—Racine wrote for the stage. Virgil's poetry is +intended to be read, Racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the +theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. In +a +sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of +Mozart with silent eyes. But, when the strings begin, when the whole +volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we +understand and feel! And so, at the theatre, before one of those high +tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations +of the greatest actresses of France, we realise, with the shock of a +new +emotion, what we had but half-felt before. To hear the words of +Phèdre +spoken by the mouth of Bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror +of +crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of <a + name="Page_24"></a>despair, +all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when +the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic +urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground—that indeed is to come +close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, +and +to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light.</p> +<p>1908.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="SIR_THOMAS_BROWNE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_27"></a>SIR +THOMAS BROWNE</h2> +<p>The life of Sir Thomas Browne does not afford much scope for the +biographer. Everyone knows that Browne was a physician who lived at +Norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one +must +call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient +summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty +and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what +Sir +Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what +he +wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so +many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those +half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the +pleasantest kind of criticism is composed.</p> +<p>Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the 'English Men of +Letters' Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. He has +not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he +has simply gone 'about it and about.' The result is a book so full of +entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary +tact, +that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the +obvious—though surely irrelevant—truth, that the general impression +which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite +presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow +indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. It would be rash +indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse's example; after his +luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne's life at Norwich, on the +<i>Vulgar Errors</i>, and on the self-revelations in the <i>Religio +Medici</i>, +there seems to be no room for further comment. One can only admire in +silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour.</p> +<p><a name="Page_28"></a>There is, however, one side of Browne's work +upon which it may be worth +while to dwell at somewhat greater length. Mr. Gosse, who has so much +to +say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very +small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the +most important thing about the author of <i>Urn Burial</i> and <i>The +Garden of +Cyrus</i>—his style. Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as +a +master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered. Why then +does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about +his +family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his +porridge, +and who fished up the <i>murex</i>?</p> +<p>Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of +Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his +book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. +Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In +spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid +and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat +acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is +so +ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He +ranks the <i>Hydriotaphia</i> among the gems of English literature; +and the +prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as +fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be +little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal +homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks +upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough +the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely +misleading a preconceived theory may be.</p> +<p>The study of Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Gosse says, 'encouraged Johnson, +and +with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth +century, +to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned +but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being +dispelled.' Such is Mr. Gosse's account of the influence of <a + name="Page_29"></a>Browne and +Johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. But to +dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is +surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which +he +brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the +pre-Johnsonian prose style—the style which Dryden first established and +Swift brought to perfection—are obvious enough. Its advantages are +those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are +unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of +the +second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, or of +Bishop +Butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave +defects. +It is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, +no +balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. Johnson, there can be no +doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the +texture of English prose; and he went back for a model to Sir Thomas +Browne. Now, as Mr. Gosse himself observes, Browne stands out in a +remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and +predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. +He was, says Mr. Gosse, 'never carried away. His effects are closely +studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; +and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who +compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> +with +any page in <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>. The peculiarities of +Browne's +style—the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its +tendency towards sonorous antithesis—culminated in his last, though not +his best, work, the <i>Christian Morals</i>, which almost reads like +an +elaborate and magnificent parody of the Book of Proverbs. With the +<i>Christian Morals</i> to guide him, Dr. Johnson set about the +transformation of the prose of his time. He decorated, he pruned, he +balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting +the Doric order of Swift into the Corinthian order of Gibbon. Is it +quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of +rhetorical <a name="Page_30"></a>writers' was encouraged 'to avoid +circumlocution' by the +invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that +gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly +all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century—that +of Johnson himself, of Hume, of Reynolds, of Horace Walpole—which can +be traced even in Burke, and which fills the pages of Gibbon? It is, +indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the +facts, that the <i>Decline and Fall</i> could not have been precisely +what it +is, had Sir Thomas Browne never written the <i>Christian Morals</i>.</p> +<p>That Johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of +the +writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by +Mr. Gosse, who adds that Browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and +asserted by Coleridge and Lamb.' But we have already observed that Mr. +Gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. +His view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of Dr. Johnson's; +he swallows the spirit of Browne's writing, and strains at the form. +Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the +terminology of late Latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical +extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it +is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not +studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of +Latin and Greek.' He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he +meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; +and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of +Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' Attacks +of this kind—attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's +style—are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who +holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with +the subject as to make argument all but impossible. To the true Browne +enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state +of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hang<a name="Page_31"></a>ing,' +and 'asperous' +for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and +'quodlibetically' +altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between +those +who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. +There +is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the +more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had +better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the +jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, +a spectacle of curious self-contradiction.</p> +<p>If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no +attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be +valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms +without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary +part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a +mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might +never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been +a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that +classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which +interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated +man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that +if +he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only +legitimate ones, the <i>Hydriotaphia</i> would have been as free from +words +of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little +reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken +this +view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered +all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, +is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are +full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this +the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be +written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A +striking phrase from the <i>Christian Morals</i> will suffice to show +the +deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:—'the +<a name="Page_32"></a>areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If +Browne had thought the +Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to +use +it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The +truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which +would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery +and +secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. He did not +choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which +he +wished them to have. Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme +contrast +between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct +antithesis to classical ones. In the last sentence of <i>Urn Burial</i>, +we +are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as +content +with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus.' How could Browne have produced +the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if +his +vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to +words of a single stock?</p> +<p>There is, of course, no doubt that Browne's vocabulary is +extraordinarily classical. Why is this? The reason is not far to seek. +In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with +thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be +expressed in Latinistic language. The state of mind which he wished to +produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were +to +be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense +of mystery and awe. 'Let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things +which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long +past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the +stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. Let intellectual +tubes +give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a +glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts +but +tenderly touch.' Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, 'uncommon +sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of +pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? Not only is <a + name="Page_33"></a>the Saxon form +of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is +still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce +(by +some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, +though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex +or +the remote. To understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for +the highly subtle and rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only +necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of Saxon +prose.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same +down at Doctor Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this +manner: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall +this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust +shall never be put out.'</p> +</div> +<p>Nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this +passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. But who could +conceive +of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of +these sentences from the <i>Hydriotaphia</i>?</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, +and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in +the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, +whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are +providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being +necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally +constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably +decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids +pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.</p> +</div> +<p>Here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous +Latin +substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense +succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, +the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. The +entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity +and +subtlety which is utterly alien to Saxon prose. It would be foolish to +claim a superiority for either of the two <a name="Page_34"></a>styles; +it would be still +more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by +means of the other.</p> +<p>Wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a +highly +Latinised vocabulary conferred on Browne. Without it, he would never +have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic <i>bravura</i>, +which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in +his finest passages. The precise quality cannot be easily described, +but +is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to +be +curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork +in +a Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled +in +English literature, except by the very greatest masters of +sophisticated +art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer +technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but +pyramidally extant'—'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful +voices'—'predicament of chimaeras'—'the irregularities of vain glory, +and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'—are examples of this +consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of +others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days +of +absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long +walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the +ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to +go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon +the +inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that +one +begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to +have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English.</p> +<p>One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be +mentioned, +because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of +the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain +classical +words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, +possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of +Saxon +derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyrami<a name="Page_35"></a>dally,' +gives one at +once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something +extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And +this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only +Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. +The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was +visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him +simply +and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has +flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of +humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference +in +the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and +general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The +Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were +altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When +they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or +embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' +they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, +like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a +multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are +discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd.</p> +<p>There can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for +curious +details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. For +Browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of +detail ends, and its coordination begins. He knew little or nothing of +general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. And +the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. He was +always ready to begin some strange inquiry. He cannot help wondering: +'Whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose +bellies?' 'Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace +book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how +warrantable +his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything +but treacle in the day, may <a name="Page_36"></a>admit of great +doubt.' To inquire thus is, +perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of +which great scientific theories are made. Browne, however, used his +love +of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a +scientific theory, but into a work of art. His method was one which, to +be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a +technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. Everyone +knows Pascal's overwhelming sentence:—'Le silence éternel de ces +espaces infinis m'effraie.' It is overwhelming, obviously and +immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. Browne's ultimate object +was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down +blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, +by +an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a +mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles +drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of +heaven. His success gives him a place beside Webster and Blake, on one +of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, +Browne's peak is—or so at least it seems from the plains below—more +difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road +skirts +the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one +is +merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He +who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star +to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, +and tossed forever in the Paradise of Fools.</p> +<p>Browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing +in +the <i>Religio Medici</i> which reaches the same level of excellence +as the +last paragraphs of <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> and the last chapter of <i>Urn +Burial</i>. A long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the +background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. +His strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. +His +art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could +have produced this perfect sentence in <i>The <a name="Page_37"></a>Garden +of Cyrus</i>, so well +known, and yet so impossible not to quote?</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in +sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable +odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight +raise up the ghost of a rose.</p> +</div> +<p>This is Browne in his most exquisite mood. For his most +characteristic, +one must go to the concluding pages of <i>Urn Burial</i>, where, from +the +astonishing sentence beginning—'Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's +hell'—to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to +be found. The subject—mortality in its most generalised aspect—has +brought out Browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his +art—elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of +suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination—are accumulated in every +paragraph. To crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a +multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of +them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions +from the unknown depths of the past. As one reads, an extraordinary +procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes—Moses, +Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and +Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the +Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a +mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar +and +ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, +almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is—who can doubt?—the +only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. But it would be vain +to +dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note +the +extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. Browne never +states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe +actually are. He speaks of everything but that; and yet, with +triumphant +art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the +vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul.</p> +<p><a name="Page_38"></a>It is interesting—or at least amusing—to +consider what are the most +appropriate places in which different authors should be read. Pope is +doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, Herrick in an +orchard, and Shelley in a boat at sea. Sir Thomas Browne demands, +perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. One could read him floating down the +Euphrates, or past the shores of Arabia; and it would be pleasant to +open the <i>Vulgar Errors</i> in Constantinople, or to get by heart a +chapter +of the <i>Christian Morals</i> between the paws of a Sphinx. In +England, the +most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some +habitation consecrated to learning, some University which still smells +of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. The present writer, at +any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of Browne's syllables +amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few +happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the +<i>Hydriotaphia</i> out to the darkness and the nightingales through +the +studious cloisters of Trinity.</p> +<p>But, after all, who can doubt that it is at Oxford that Browne +himself +would choose to linger? May we not guess that he breathed in there, in +his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which +pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in +the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his +footstep +beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid +that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, +the circumference of the Sheldonian.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="SHAKESPEARES_FINAL_PERIOD"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_41"></a>SHAKESPEARE'S +FINAL PERIOD</h2> +<br> +<p>The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been +fundamentally +affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, +for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, +or +at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a +coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that <i>The Tempest</i> +was +written before <i>Romeo and 'Juliet</i>; that <i>Henry VI.</i> was +produced in +succession to <i>Henry V.</i>; or that <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +followed close +upon the heels of <i>Julius Caesar</i>. Such theories were sent to +limbo for +ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external +evidence revealed the fact that, as Shakespeare's life advanced, a +corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his +verse. The establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate +position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once +followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics +became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the +whole +succession of the works of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to +build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological order, +showed something more than a mere development in the technique of +verse—a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of +characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those +characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was +easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of +Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly +drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit +assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true +index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The <a + name="Page_42"></a>validity +of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for +instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually +merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact +that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, +during +that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the +awful +problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose of this +essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the +artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally +accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that +of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this +hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of +Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable.</p> +<p>What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as +follows:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness +and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, to +the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of middle age, +to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so many men) in later +life, when, though outwardly successful, the world seemed all against +him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on scenes of faithlessness of +friends, treachery of relations and subjects, ingratitude of children, +scorn of his kind; till at last, in his Stratford home again, peace +came to him, Miranda and Perdita in their lovely freshness and charm +greeted him, and he was laid by his quiet Avon side.</p> +</div> +<p>And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet +entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace.</p> +</div> +<p>Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon +Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at +last—it is the universal opinion—a state of quiet serenity in which he +died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives the +most <a name="Page_43"></a>popular expression to this view, a view +which is also held by Mr. +Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr. Brandes. +Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period +with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition to the +preceding +one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir Sidney Lee, too, +seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in Shakespeare's mind, the +orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of +meditative romance.</p> +<p>Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of +Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually +attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy—it +is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some +reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford +the +light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear +in +some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly +the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, +perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it be true that +Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last attain to the +serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent +effort'; +that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of +the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, +in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's level meads, Shakespeare +closed his life on earth'—we have obtained a piece of knowledge which +is both interesting and pleasant. But if it be not true, if, on the +contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually +the +case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our +judgment +as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole +drift and bearing of Shakespeare's 'inner life'?</p> +<p>The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate +serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final +retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It consists +of three plays—<i>Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The Tempest</i>—and +three fragments—the <a name="Page_44"></a>Shakespearean parts of <i>Pericles, +Henry VIII.</i>, +and <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>. All these plays and portions of +plays form +a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and +they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all Shakespeare's +previous work.</p> +<p>One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do +resemble in +some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding +them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new +method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they +immediately succeed—that great series of tragedies which began with +<i>Hamlet</i> in 1601 and ended in 1608 with <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. +In the +latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an +astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied +with +a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to +the highest point of excellence—the tragedy of character. Every one of +his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon +character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his +greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has +made them what they are. Yet, after <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +Shakespeare +deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past +career. There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year +after year, to produce <i>Othellos, Hamlets</i>, and <i>Macbeths</i>; +instead, he +turned over a new leaf, and wrote <i>Coriolanus</i>.</p> +<p><i>Coriolanus</i> is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an +intolerable play: +remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the +Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible +to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick with +situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of +sudden +disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles +between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge +and egotism on the other—these would have made a tragic and tremendous +setting for some character <a name="Page_45"></a>worthy to rank with +Shakespeare's best. But +it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in +the +play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve +merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. +For +rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the +beginning and the middle and the end of <i>Coriolanus</i>. The hero is +not a +human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, +which +roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, +through a melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is +true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So +far and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties +of <i>Cleopatra</i>. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one +wonders, +as one beholds it, what will happen next.</p> +<p>At about the same time, some of the scenes in <i>Timon of Athens</i> +were in +all probability composed: scenes which resemble <i>Coriolanus</i> in +their +lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it +in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of +foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably +unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if +draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of +furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we +are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to +blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, +like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of +Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before +him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable +ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of Prince +Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind was restored, +gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in <i>The +Tempest</i>, and so ended.</p> +</div> +<p>This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be +admitted at +once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are <a name="Page_46"></a>charming +creatures, that +Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but +why +is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our +attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? Modern +critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful +and +good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is +another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that +these +plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose +wickedness +finds expression in language of extraordinary force. Coming fresh from +their pages to the pages of <i>Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The +Tempest</i>, one is astonished and perplexed. How is it possible to fit +into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow +Iachimo,' or Cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the +'crafty +devil,' his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these +figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them +comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda +dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the +presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and +vigorous as that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's +violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle +utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a +torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from +'pastoral love,' exclaiming to Leontes:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?<br> +</span><span>What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling<br> +</span><span>In leads or oils? what old or newer torture<br> +</span><span>Must I receive, whose every word deserves<br> +</span><span>To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,<br> +</span><span>Together working with thy jealousies,<br> +</span><span>Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle<br> +</span><span>For girls of nine, O! think what they have done,<br> +</span><span>And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all<br> +</span><span>Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.<br> +</span><span>That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;<br> +</span><a name="Page_47"></a><span>That did but show thee, of a fool, +inconstant<br> +</span><span>And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much<br> +</span><span>Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour,<br> +</span><span>To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,<br> +</span><span>More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon<br> +</span><span>The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter<br> +</span><span>To be or none or little; though a devil<br> +</span><span>Would have shed water out of fire ere done't.<br> +</span><span>Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death<br> +</span><span>Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,<br> +</span><span>Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart<br> +</span><span>That could conceive a gross and foolish sire<br> +</span><span>Blemished his gracious dam.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does +he +verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel +coarseness. +Iachimo tells us how:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">The cloyed will,<br> +</span><span>That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub<br> +</span><span>Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb,<br> +</span><span>Longs after for the garbage.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and talks of:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">an eye<br> +</span><span>Base and unlustrous as the smoky light<br> +</span><span>That's fed with stinking tallow.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her +husband in an access of hideous rage.</p> +<p>What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene +self-possession,' +of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? English +critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, +have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in +<i>Pericles</i> but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the +grossnesses +of <i>The Winter's Tale</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Is there no way for men to be, but women<br> +</span><span>Must be half-workers?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_48"></a><span class="i11">We are all +bastards;<br> +</span><span>And that most venerable man, which I<br> +</span><span>Did call my father, was I know not where<br> +</span><span>When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools<br> +</span><span>Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed<br> +</span><span>The Dian of that time; so doth my wife<br> +</span><span>The nonpareil of this—O vengeance, vengeance!<br> +</span><span>Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained<br> +</span><span>And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with<br> +</span><span>A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't<br> +</span><span>Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her<br> +</span><span>As chaste as unsunned snow—O, all the devils!—<br> +</span><span>This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?<br> +</span><span>Or less,—at first: perchance he spoke not; but,<br> +</span><span>Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,<br> +</span><span>Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition<br> +</span><span>But what he looked for should oppose, and she<br> +</span><span>Should from encounter guard.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no +less +to the point.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">There have been,<br> +</span><span>Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now,<br> +</span><span>And many a man there is, even at this present,<br> +</span><span>Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,<br> +</span><span>That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence<br> +</span><span>And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by<br> +</span><span>Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't,<br> +</span><span>Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened,<br> +</span><span>As mine, against their will. Should all despair<br> +</span><span>That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind<br> +</span><span>Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none;<br> +</span><span>It is a bawdy planet, that will strike<br> +</span><span>Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,<br> +</span><span>From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,<br> +</span><span>No barricade for a belly, know't;<br> +</span><span>It will let in and out the enemy<br> +</span><span>With bag and baggage: many thousand on's<br> +</span><span>Have the disease, and feel't not.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to <a + name="Page_49"></a>agree +with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the beautiful +pathetic light is always present.'</p> +<p>But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has +been so +completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be +found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming, Brutus +is +grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that <i>Hamlet</i>, +and +<i>Julius Caesar</i>, and <i>King Lear</i> give expression to the same +mood of +high tranquillity which is betrayed by <i>Cymbeline, The Tempest</i>, +and +<i>The Winter's Tale</i>? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, +'for +you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not tragedies; +they all end happily'—'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz, 'of +forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not only +virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more?</p> +<p>But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of +Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty +triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of +horror and of gloom. For, in <i>Measure for Measure</i> Isabella is no +whit +less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as +complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of <i>Measure +for Measure</i> was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What +is +it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in +one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes +matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is +rewarded or not?</p> +<p>The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. <i>Measure for Measure</i> +is, +like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before <i>Coriolanus</i>, +essentially +realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to +them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and +women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their +wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible +enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just +as +we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in the plays of the +final period, all this has <a name="Page_50"></a>changed; we are no +longer in the real world, +but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of +shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which +anything may happen next. The pretences of reality are indeed usually +preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is supposed to be the king +of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is supposed to demand tribute +of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience +with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for +war:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i9">Remember, sir, my liege,<br> +</span><span>The Kings your ancestors, together with<br> +</span><span>The natural bravery of your isle, which stands<br> +</span><span>As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in<br> +</span><span>With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters,<br> +</span><span>With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats,<br> +</span><span>But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest<br> +</span><span>Caesar made here; but made not here his brag<br> +</span><span>Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame—<br> +</span><span>The first that ever touched him—he was carried<br> +</span><span>From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping—<br> +</span><span>Poor ignorant baubles!—on our terrible seas,<br> +</span><span>Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd<br> +</span><span>As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof<br> +</span><span>The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point—<br> +</span><span>O giglot fortune!—to master Caesar's sword,<br> +</span><span>Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright<br> +</span><span>And Britons strut with courage.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of +poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other +person than the Octavius of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>; and the +contrast is +the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation +and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between Octavius, +Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and Enobarbus on the +other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage +of Antony and Octavia.</p> +<p>Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's <a + name="Page_51"></a>latest period; and +it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally +unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate +princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost +princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy +land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the +prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever +afterwards, +or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the +goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it is clear that +such +happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be +taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; +they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories +ought to end.</p> +<p>Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming +heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics +to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban, are to be +left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are +forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious +fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages +never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met +Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia? In this +land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In this world of +dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is it fair to say +that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil +mood,' when he was creating the Queen in <i>Cymbeline</i>, or writing +the +first two acts of <i>The Winter's Tale</i>?</p> +<p>Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other +characteristic +of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and +Dr. Brandes—the singular carelessness with which great parts of them +were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the +<i>dénouement</i> of <i>Cymbeline</i>? And with what perversity +is the great +pastoral scene in <i>The Winter's Tale</i> interspersed with +long-winded +intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! <a name="Page_52"></a>For +these blemishes are unlike +the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier +plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in +themselves; +they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are +sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it cannot be denied, often bored, +and occasionally irritated, by Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and +Gonzalo and Belarius; these personages have not even the life of +ghosts; +they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance +to +involution upon involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of +Shakespeare's earlier works!</p> +<p>It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored +himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, +bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He +is +no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says +what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, +unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this +mood +he must have written his share in <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>, +leaving the +plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and +reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this +mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of +<i>Henry VIII</i>.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all +the +resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of <i>Pericles</i>.</p> +<p>Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years +of +his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half +bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the +singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust +to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent +speech? +If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is +surely this.</p> +<p>And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a +consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of +Shakespeare's later work, and the one which <a name="Page_53"></a>critics +most consistently +point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity—<i>The +Tempest</i>. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics +which +distinguish <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>The Winter's Tale</i> from the +dramas of +Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In <i>The +Tempest</i>, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the principal +characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action +passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which +can +only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, +peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of +persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, +and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did +Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights +than +in some of the speeches of Prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty +than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions +that the triumph of his language asserts itself. It finds as splendid a +vent in the curses of Caliban:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All the infection that the sun sucks up<br> +</span><span>From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him<br> +</span><span>By inch-meal a disease!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and in the similes of Trinculo:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks +like a foul<br> +</span><span>bombard that would shed his liquor.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The <i>dénouement</i> itself, brought about by a +preposterous piece of +machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg +for fine writing.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">O, it is monstrous, monstrous!<br> +</span><span>Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;<br> +</span><span>The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,<br> +</span><span>That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced<br> +</span><span>The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.<br> +</span><span>Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and<br> +</span><span>I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,<br> +</span><span>And with him there lie mudded.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_54"></a>And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance +from the mouth of the pale +phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play.</p> +<p>A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the +last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first +gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points +of +resemblance between <i>The Tempest</i> and <i>A Midsummer Night's +Dream</i>, their +common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of +their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the +delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the +<i>verve</i> of their vulgar comedy—these, of course, are obvious +enough; +but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison +striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near +Athens—it is full of life. The persons that haunt it—though most of +them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and +all of them are too agreeable to be true—are nevertheless substantial +creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough +sympathy; and the air they breathe—the lords and the ladies, no less +than the mechanics and the elves—is instinct with an exquisite +good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from +Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out +of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions +have +vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too +delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the +gaiety +of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. +Prospero is the central figure of <i>The Tempest</i>; and it has often +been +wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author—an embodiment of +that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo +over Shakespeare's later life. But, on closer inspection, the portrait +seems to be as imaginary as the original. To an irreverent eye, the +ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty +personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had +developed an <a name="Page_55"></a>inordinate propensity for talking. +These may have been the +sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to +risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is +sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also +self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for +pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, +during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his +Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. +'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of +Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she +would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of +Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and +Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. At all events, there can be +little doubt that they would not have had the entrée at Athens.</p> +<p>The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best +measured +by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his +companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are +interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the +hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and +deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. +Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, +Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies +between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the +'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, +eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of +disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The physical vigour of +the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'I left them,' +says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,<br> +</span><span>There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake<br> +</span><span>O'erstunk their feet.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell <a + name="Page_56"></a>like the +'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You taught me language, and my profit on't<br> +</span><span>Is, I know how to curse.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may +be +either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the +Heights.'</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_LIVES_OF_THE_POETS"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_59"></a>THE +LIVES OF THE POETS<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>No one needs an excuse for re-opening the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>; +the book +is too delightful. It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but +who re-opens Boswell? Boswell is in another category; because, as every +one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. But, on +its different level, the <i>Lives</i> will always hold a firm and +comfortable +place in our affections. After Boswell, it is the book which brings us +nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson. That is its primary +import. We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that +our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we +go +to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, +we +are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these +benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a +mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; +but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is +Samuel +Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and +admired, +that further description would be superfluous. It is sufficient for us +to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that +is +due. In one of Emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to +discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant +conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can +crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. The parallel is +close enough between this impudence and the attitude—implied, if not +expressed—of too much modern criticism towards the sort of +qualities—the easy, indolent <a name="Page_60"></a>power, the +searching sense of actuality, +the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence +of thought—which went to the making of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. +There +is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular +instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than +any squirrel that ever lived.</p> +<p>That the <i>Lives</i> continue to be read, admired, and edited, is +in itself +a high proof of the eminence of Johnson's intellect; because, as +serious +criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far +removed from the futile. Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost +invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good +quality +to recommend them—except one: they are never right. That is an +unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up +for it, and that his wit has saved all. He has managed to be wrong so +cleverly, that nobody minds. When Gray, for instance, points the moral +to his poem on Walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that +glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to +the purpose; if <i>what glistered</i> had been <i>gold</i>, the cat +would not have +gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been +drowned.' +Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously +true? But then, to use Johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less +'relation to the purpose'? It is his wit—and we are speaking, of +course, of wit in its widest sense—that has sanctified Johnson's +peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has +put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the +reach +of time.</p> +<p>For it is not only in particular details that Johnson's criticism +fails +to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. Our +judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, +but because our whole method of judging has changed. Thus, to the +historian of letters, the <i>Lives</i> have a special interest, for +they +afford a standing example of a great dead tradition—a tradition whose +<a name="Page_61"></a>characteristics throw more than one curious light +upon the literary +feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the +most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth +century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. +The +most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged +authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every +infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, +which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson +never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at +discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of +poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon +one +condition—that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry +were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of +arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets +themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to +bow +to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that +his +first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his +criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of +Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater +width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its +drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set +of +errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this +was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, +and +how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and +tastes—that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in +question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the +Johnsonian black cap.</p> +<p>But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the <i>Lives of +the +Poets</i>. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson +might +have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the +masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. +Whatever critical <a name="Page_62"></a>method he might have adopted, +he still would have +been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our +minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion +of <i>Lycidas</i> is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and +therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in <i>Comus</i> he remarks: 'they +are +harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He +could +see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering +accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of +Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a +writer could be so absurd. Such preposterous judgments can only be +accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; Johnson had no ear, +and +he had no imagination. These are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a +critic. What could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is +sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry?</p> +<p>The answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change +which +has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when +Johnson wrote. It has often been stated that the essential +characteristic of that great Romantic Movement which began at the end +of +the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of Nature into the +domain of poetry. Incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly +every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return +to Nature. No less than the school of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the +school of Denham, of Dryden, and of Pope, proclaimed itself as the +champion of Nature; and there can be little doubt that Donne +himself—the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the +seventeenth century—wrote under the impulse of a Naturalistic reaction +against the conventional classicism of the Renaissance. Precisely the +same contradictions took place in France. Nature was the watchword of +Malherbe and of Boileau; and it was equally the watchword of Victor +Hugo. To judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the +development +of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the +<a name="Page_63"></a>more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more +and more natural as it +grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at +least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be +called +Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the +operations +of the external world—'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it—as +subject-matter for poetry. But it would have done very little, if it +had +done nothing more than this. Thomson, in the full meridian of the +eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it +would +be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a +fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more +than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation +of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i> is a landmark in the history of letters, not +because of +its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the +poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it +was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i>; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which +suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and +imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because +they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be +invoked. +But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord +Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was +nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was +disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have +expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, +be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough.</p> +<p>The new edition of the <i>Lives</i>, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill +prepared for +publication before his death, and which has been issued by the +Clarendon +Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have +astonished +Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and +appendices <a name="Page_64"></a>might have surprised him, it would +not have put him to +shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific +conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of +Dr. +Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their +voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a +little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the +weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the +compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the +margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. +The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like +edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, +where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one +another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the +paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and, +as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the +Past, with the friendliness of a conversation.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Lives of the English Poets</i>. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. +Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, +1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="MADAME_DU_DEFFAND"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_67"></a>MADAME +DU DEFFAND<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia, he ordered +the +proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some +disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his +carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it +might +be necessary to make. 'Je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et +j'écrirai de Mayence ce qu'il y aura à faire.' The +volumes thus chosen +to beguile the imperial leisure between Paris and Mayence contained the +famous correspondence of Madame du Deffand with Horace Walpole. By the +Emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book—reprinted +from Miss Berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier +in England—was published almost at once. The sensation in Paris was +immense; the excitement of the Russian campaign itself was half +forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the Convent of +Saint Joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning +of Moscow and the passage of the Berezina. We cannot wonder that this +was so. In the Parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of +Madame +du Deffand must have exercised a double fascination—on the one hand as +a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to +many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant +record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and +become historical. The letters were hardly more than thirty years old; +but the world which they <a name="Page_68"></a>depicted in all its +intensity and all its +singularity—the world of the old régime—had vanished for ever +into +limbo. Between it and the eager readers of the First Empire a gulf was +fixed—a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the +volcanic fires of the Revolution. Since then a century has passed; the +gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us +to-day seems hardly less remote—from some points of view, indeed, even +more—than that which is revealed to us in the Memoirs of Cellini or the +correspondence of Cicero. Yet the vision is not simply one of a strange +and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the +letters +which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to +ourselves. The soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and +these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the +eighteenth century, can never be out of date.</p> +<p>A fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate +them in their completeness. The late Mrs. Paget Toynbee, while +preparing +her edition of Horace Walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the +original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a +country house in Staffordshire. The publication of these manuscripts in +full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which Mrs. Toynbee's +well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is +an event of no small importance to lovers of French literature. A great +mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. The +original edition produced by Miss Berry in 1810, from which all the +subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, +turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small +fraction of the whole correspondence; of the 838 letters published by +Mrs. Toynbee, 485 are entirely new, and of the rest only 52 were +printed +by Miss Berry in their entirety. Miss Berry's edition was, in fact, +simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. +It skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves +the main outline of the <a name="Page_69"></a>story which the letters +reveal. No doubt that +was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the +more +exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in +the closely packed 2000 pages of Mrs. Toynbee's volumes. Enthusiasm +alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be +rewarded. In place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we +have now the truth itself—the truth in all its subtle gradations, all +its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable +obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in +black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. Probably Miss Berry's +edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to +become acquainted with a celebrated figure in French literature; but +Mrs. Toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, +and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste +for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the +heart.</p> +<p>The Marquise du Deffand was perhaps the most typical representative +of +that phase of civilisation which came into existence in Western Europe +during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most +concentrated and characteristic form about the year 1750 in the +drawing-rooms of Paris. She was supremely a woman of her age; but it is +important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, +half +of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the Regent Orleans, +Fontenelle, and the young Voltaire; not that of Rousseau, the +'Encyclopaedia,' and the Patriarch of Ferney. It is true that her +letters to Walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written +between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and +they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the +whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new +forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, +in +sentiment, in action—which for us form its peculiar interest and its +peculiar glory—were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her letters to +Walpole, <a name="Page_70"></a>whenever she compares the present with +the past her bitterness +becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs +indicibles aux opéras de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de +Thévenart et +de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me paraît détestable: +acteurs, +auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais +goût, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards +intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the +'Encyclopaedia' and the <i>Philosophes</i> was the object of her +particular +detestation. She saw Diderot once—and that was enough for both of them. +She could never understand why it was that M. de Voltaire would persist +in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as +religion. Turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a +'sot animal.' His dismissal from office—that fatal act, which made the +French Revolution inevitable—delighted her: she concealed her feelings +from Walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the +Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Le renvoi du Turgot me plaît +extrêmement,' she +wrote; 'tout me paraît en bon train.' And then she added, more +prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurément, nous n'en +resterons pas +là.' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their +works was +in part a matter of personal pique—the result of her famous quarrel +with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert +and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly +ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a +deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for +influence between two rival <i>salonnières</i>. There are +indications that, +even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'Alembert +was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and +her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'Il y a de certains +articles,' she complained to Voltaire in 1763—a year before the final +estrangement—'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur +lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' The truth is that +<a name="Page_71"></a>d'Alembert and his friends were moving, and +Madame du Deffand was +standing still. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse simply precipitated and +intensified an inevitable rupture. She was the younger generation +knocking at the door.</p> +<p>Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common +with +that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met +together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de +Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come +into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and +licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and +bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a +fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's +mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. Then +she became the intimate friend of Madame de Prie—the singular woman +who, for a moment, on the Regent's death, during the government of M. +le +Duc, controlled the destinies of France, and who committed suicide when +that amusement was denied her. During her early middle age Madame du +Deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of Sceaux, where +the Duchesse du Maine, the grand-daughter of the great Condé and +the +daughter-in-law of Louis XIV., kept up for many years an almost royal +state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. It was at +Sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and +conversations—supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked +balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of +the park—that Madame du Deffand came to her maturity and established +her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. +The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters +and +the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast +representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no +longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the +glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern +life had <a name="Page_72"></a>not yet begun. It was an intermediate +period, and the +comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and +intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity +and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since, +have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and +for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle +years +of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those +days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found +all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however +fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of +the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a +society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that +there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms +of +personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of +the +eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was +expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, +those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run +smoothly—the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of +delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation—with the result that +a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and +obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those +persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it +in an unequivocal way—by the tenacity with which they clung to the +scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they +almost +refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have +been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the +furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire, +d'Argental, Moncrif, Hénault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand +herself—all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived +to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities +unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young—at the age of +seventy-seven. Another <a name="Page_73"></a>contemporary, Richelieu, +who was famous for his +adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within +a +year of the opening of the States-General. More typical still of this +singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in +his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in +existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so.</p> +<p>Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring +smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of +trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was +no +light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being +blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, +realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a +peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le +commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly +true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were +those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, +over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so +charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the +rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion—the kind that +lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in +their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious +orders—the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of +personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour—these things must be +left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow +sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised +as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself +should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and +absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be +tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew +serious +and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for +literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for +recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat +<a name="Page_74"></a>such trifles as if they had a value of their own? +Only one thing; and +that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the +inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation +was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not +even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of +perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the +solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared +to +the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a +convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to +instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered +serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a +preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful +heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the +generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still +believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange +indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. +The +Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a +threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the case +was hopeless.</p> +<p>An innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm +that +wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving +devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse—such +were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who +had +spent their youth at the Court of the Regent, and dallied out their +middle age down the long avenues of Sceaux. About the middle of the +century the Duchesse du Maine died, and Madame du Deffand established +herself in Paris at the Convent of Saint Joseph in a set of rooms which +still showed traces—in the emblazoned arms over the great +mantelpiece—of the occupation of Madame de Montespan. A few years later +a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she +became +totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a +transition, among the ranks of the old. <a name="Page_75"></a>For the +rest of her life she +hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most +celebrated in Europe. The thirty years of her reign there fall into two +distinct and almost equal parts. The first, during which d'Alembert was +pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse. During the second, which lasted for the rest of her +life, +her salon, purged of the Encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly +worldly tone; and the influence of Horace Walpole was supreme.</p> +<p>It is this final period of Madame du Deffand's life that is +reflected so +minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of Mrs. Toynbee +have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. Her +letters +to Walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of +fifteen years (1766-1780). They allow us, on the one hand, to trace +through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, +and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps +the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed +society. For the circle which came together in her drawing-room during +those years had the hand of death upon it. The future lay elsewhere; it +was simply the past that survived there—in the rich trappings of +fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety—but still irrevocably the past. +The radiant creatures of Sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. We see +them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to +amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. Pont-de-Veyle, the +youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what +a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go +the +rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard +no more. Hénault—once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for +having +written an historical treatise—which, it is true, was worthless, but he +had written it—Hénault was beginning to dodder, and Voltaire, +grinning +in Ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre délabré +Président.' Various +dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. The Marquise de Boufflers +was gambling <a name="Page_76"></a>herself to ruin; the Comtesse de +Boufflers was wringing +out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; +the Maréchale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the +Maréchale +de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous +attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: +'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a +shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage que le Saint +Esprit eût aussi peu de goût!' Then there was the floating +company of +foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at Madame +du +Deffand's: Caraccioli, for instance, the Neapolitan Ambassador—'je +perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en +dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and Bernstorff, the +Danish +envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and +fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'à travers tous +ces +éloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler Puffendorf,' and Puffendorf the +poor +man remained for evermore. Besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign +traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned <i>salon</i>; +Englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar +figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to +Walpole +are Burke, Fox, and Gibbon. Sometimes influential parents in England +obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of +Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced +by +his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle +of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and +orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the +fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the +leading word or smile or nod of an ancient Sibyl, who seemed to survey +the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. It is +easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. Madame du +Deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not +know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the +same +difficulty. To an English <a name="Page_77"></a>youth, unfamiliar with +the language and shy +as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old +lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the +stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, +from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the +pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. +As a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony—or rather, not the days, +but the nights. For Madame du Deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in +the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past +the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived—the moment of +supper. Upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. Supper, she +used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three +were she could never remember. She lived up to her dictum. She had an +income of £1400 a year, and of this she spent more than +half—£720—on +food. These figures should be largely increased to give them their +modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could +only just manage to rub along. Her parties varied considerably in size; +sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper—sometimes twenty +or thirty. No doubt they were elaborate meals. In a moment of economy +we +find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer +give 'des repas'—only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at +which there should be served nothing more than two entrées, one +roast, +two sweets, and—mysterious addition—'la pièce du milieu.' This +was +certainly moderate for those days (Monsieur de Jonsac rarely provided +fewer than fourteen entrées), but such resolutions did not last +long. A +week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, +day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty +guests. But she did not always have supper at home. From time to time +she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of +Paris to one of her still extant dowagers—a Maréchale, or a +Duchesse—or the more and more 'délabré Président.' +There the same +company awaited her <a name="Page_78"></a>as that which met in her own +house; it was simply a +change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper +every night with the same half-dozen persons. The entertainment, apart +from the supper itself, hardly varied. Occasionally there was a little +music, more often there were cards and gambling. Madame du Deffand +disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a +choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of +seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing +vingt-et-un with Charles Fox. But distractions of that kind were merely +incidental to the grand business of the night—the conversation. In the +circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two +or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk +continually flowed. For those strange creatures it seemed to form the +very substance of life itself. It was the underlying essence, the +circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had +their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men +might go, but talk went on for ever. It is difficult, especially for +those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to +realise the nature of such conversation. Brilliant, charming, +easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never +intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, +never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most +vigorous flow of language. 'Écoutez! Écoutez!' Walpole +used constantly +to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling +cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part—to +drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, +exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the +pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a +breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at +moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of +radiant +jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to +us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great <a name="Page_79"></a>book—'C'est +de l'esprit sur les +lois'—is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so +dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A +garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint +Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and +carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what +was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his +head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint +Denis—a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du +Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui +coûte.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests +began to +go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened +to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred +going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a +chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and +stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to +hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it +was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was +ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home.</p> +<p>It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to +bed, +for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part +of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she +devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that +she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed—all bound +alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat—she had only +read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually +complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In +nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours +than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How +the +eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our +biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge +and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! <a + name="Page_80"></a>In those days, +even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to +read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from +catholic—they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that +Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once—in +<i>Athalie</i>. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the +whole he +was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de +Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was +enraptured by the style—but only by the style—of <i>Gil Blas</i>. And +that +was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or +insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it, +but she soon gave it up—it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon, +but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une +monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne +s'occupe +que des bêtes; il faut l'être un peu soi-même pour se +dévouer à une +telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in +manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted +by +the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she +embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was +unexpected; she was positively pleased. <i>Coriolanus</i>, it is true, +'me +semble, sauf votre respect, épouvantable, et n'a pas le sens +commun'; +and 'pour <i>La Tempête</i>, je ne suis pas touchée de ce +genre.' But she was +impressed by <i>Othello</i>; she was interested by <i>Macbeth</i>; +and she admired +<i>Julius Caesar</i>, in spite of its bad taste. At <i>King Lear</i>, +indeed, she +had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle pièce! +Réellement la +trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'âme à un point que +je ne puis +exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader +was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning +early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the +cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous +company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and +Lady Macbeth?</p> +<p><a name="Page_81"></a>Often, even before the arrival of the old +pensioner, she was at work +dictating a letter, usually to Horace Walpole, occasionally to Madame +de +Choiseul or Voltaire. Her letters to Voltaire are enchanting; his +replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole +correspondence has never been collected together in chronological +order, +and published as a separate book. The slim volume would be, of its +kind, +quite perfect. There was no love lost between the two old friends; they +could not understand each other; Voltaire, alone of his generation, had +thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to Madame du Deffand +progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an +unpleasant necessity. She distrusted him profoundly, and he returned +the +compliment. Yet neither could do without the other: through her, he +kept +in touch with one of the most influential circles in Paris; and even +she +could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. +Besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other +genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long +familiarity. The result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. If +they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to +write so well. They were on their best behaviour—exquisitely courteous +and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. His cajoleries +are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, +have almost the quality of a caress. She replies in the tone of a +worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her +'Monsieur de Voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. +He rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he +alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. Sometimes one +just +catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the +smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one +is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat.</p> +<p>Madame du Deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely +than +that of Voltaire himself, the common-sense <a name="Page_82"></a>of +the eighteenth century. +Its precision is absolute. It is like a line drawn in one stroke by a +master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. There is no +breadth in it—no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. One +cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her +blindness. What did she lose by it? Certainly not</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">The sweet approach of even or morn,<br> +</span><span>Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at +their +clearest? Her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating +glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere +irrelevance. The kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may +seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of +the Romantic school. Yet it will repay attention. The vocabulary is +very +small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, +who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote—and spelt—by the +light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary +accomplishments—'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' +The object of all art is to make suggestions. The romantic artist +attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling +up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the +reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the +classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring +everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact +propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame +du +Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never +strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such +is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on +their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the +dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to Walpole +is +characteristic:</p> +<a name="Page_83"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Nous eûmes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la +harpe à merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du +regret que vous ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. +Nous eûmes aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fût +touché avec une grande perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison +de la harpe. Je fus fort triste toute la soirée; j'avais appris +en partant que Mme. de Luxembourg, qui était allée samedi +à Montmorency pour y passer quinze jours, s'était +trouvée si mal qu'on avait fait venir Tronchin, et qu'on l'avait +ramenée le dimanche à huit heures du soir, qu'on lui +croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. L'ancienneté de la +connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitié; voir +disparaître ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-même; +sentir que l'on ne tient à rien, que tout fuit, que tout +échappe, qu'on reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgré +cela on craint de le quitter; voilà ce qui m'occupa pendant la +musique.</p> +</div> +<p>Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases—only the most flat and +ordinary expressions—'un instrument admirable'—'une grande +perfection'—'fort triste.' Nothing is described; and yet how much is +suggested! The whole scene is conjured up—one does not know how; one's +imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, +by +a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless +rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old +harp seems to be lingering still.</p> +<p>While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant +exterior +of Madame du Deffand's mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of +her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, +pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair—these are the feelings +that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's +lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed +the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the +rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was +surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? +The +harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little +appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a +feast; +the finer the dishes that <a name="Page_84"></a>were set before her, +the greater her +distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act +of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from +her for ever. Yet—and this intensified her wretchedness—though the +banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself +away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts +of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was +out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and +there she must remain. 'Je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de +me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' She was extremely +lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her +life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'Je ne +vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which +were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in +analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she +lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, +Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her—'elle fait +des définitions,' she wails—to that of the lady who hoped to +prove her +friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears—'comme je n'y +tâte +pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de goût que j'ai pour +elle.' Then +there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. +'Tous les Matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the Regent, +'excepté le Marquis de Matignon.' 'Cela est vrai,' the Regent +replied, +'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' +Madame +du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, +there +was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet—what was +it? Something was the matter—yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool +yourself—'l'on est plus bête avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout +seul.' As +she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentée d'arracher les +masques +qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out +unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked +behind the gravest or the most <a name="Page_85"></a>fascinating +exterior; then her fingers +began to itch, and she could resist no longer—she gave way to her +besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with +Rousseau's +remark about her—'J'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fléau de sa +haine +qu'à celui de son amitié.' There, sitting in her great +Diogenes-tub of +an armchair—her 'tonneau' as she called it—talking, smiling, +scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the +remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces +that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed +itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and +meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>J'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui était chez +moi; hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines à ressorts, +qui allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans +réfléchir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son rôle par +habitude: Madame la Duchesse d'Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de +Forcalquier dédaignait tout, Mme. de la Vallière jabotait +sur tout. Les hommes ne jouaient pas de meilleurs rôles, et moi +j'étais abîmée dans les réflexions les plus +noires; je pensai que j'avais passé ma vie dans les illusions; +que je m'étais creusée tous les abîmes dans +lesquels j'étais tombée.</p> +</div> +<p>At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual +hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Je ramenai la Maréchale de Mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, +je causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mécontente. Elle +hait la petite Idole, elle hait la Maréchale de Luxembourg; +enfin, sa haine pour tous les gens qui me déplaisent me fit lui +pardonner l'indifférence et peut-être la haine qu'elle a +pour moi. Convenez que voilà une jolie société, un +charmant commerce.</p> +</div> +<p>Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had +found +in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But +there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she <i>was</i> +perfect!—'Elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand défaut qu'on +ne +pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' At last one day the inevitable +happened—she <a name="Page_86"></a>went to see Madame de Choiseul, and +she was bored. 'Je +rentrai chez moi à une heure, pénétrée, +persuadée qu'on ne peut être +content de personne.'</p> +<p>One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final +irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop +that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had +come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within +a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such +a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die +quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and +she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was +embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she +experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. +Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an +ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways +of +worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, +and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. +Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of +a +holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, +hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blasé bachelor of fifty, +should +have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have +treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him +which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in +a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest +fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our +knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; +nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and +painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an +inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that +letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived +in +terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with <a + name="Page_87"></a>a blind +old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his +friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the +laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less +terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the +object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his +London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France +with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him +by +turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by +the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand—so far as he could like +anyone—and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her +letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was +probably +the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute +rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the +most +ordinary friendship—on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to +continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du +Deffand. She accepted them—what else could she do?—but every line she +wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. +Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on +her +side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. +Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked +by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the +same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the +charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a +miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he +had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a +good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was +the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had +been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing +searchlight +of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole +too would have felt 'le fléau de son amitié'? His mask, +too, would have +been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, <a name="Page_88"></a>his +absence saved +him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his +brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of +about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks—just long enough to +rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was +that +she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of +which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once +or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in +plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most +violent +and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and +for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and +pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some +satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a +peculiarly painful attack of the gout.</p> +<p>About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, +after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After +seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was +broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully +accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she +resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, +her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more +complete. +She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations +on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'âme,' +she +says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est +le +ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est +l'avant-goût du +néant, mais le néant lui est préférable.' +Her existence had become a +hateful waste—a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been +uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le +répète sans +cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'être né.' The +grasshopper had +become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. +'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie +aussi triste?' When Death did come at last, <a name="Page_89"></a>he +came very gently. She +felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in +her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: +'Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez +point de mon état, nous étions presque perdus l'un pour +l'autre; nous ne +nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien +aise de se savoir aimé.' That was her last word to him. Walpole +might +have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he +realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would +have +been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived—her +room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her +ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one +attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it +is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. +Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such +an +unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an +uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing +that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was +she perhaps right after all?</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole</i> +(1766-80). Première Edition complète, augmentée +d'environ 500 Lettres +inédites, publiées, d'après les originaux, avec +une introduction, des +notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, +1912.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRE_AND_ENGLAND"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_93"></a>VOLTAIRE +AND ENGLAND<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></small></h2> +<p>The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the +history of +civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of +interaction—big with momentous consequences—between the French and +English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance +and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire +planted +a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile +influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on +good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native +country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, +so +that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his +was +the hand which did the work.</p> +<p>It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in +Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a +hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could +find +nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's +day +the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long +Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate +the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the +publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>, the work in which Voltaire gave to the +world +the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien +Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the +period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which +he +has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and +disputed points. M. Lanson's great <a name="Page_94"></a>attainments +are well known, and to +say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to +the edition of the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> is simply to say that +he is +a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and +perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories +of +European culture.</p> +<p>Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure +for +England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The +story, +as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official +documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the +early +days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, +occupied +a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could +hardly +have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising +poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of +Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been +rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, +his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of +the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his +middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his +middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his +ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank +and jested, and for whose wives—it was <i>de rigueur</i> in those +days—he +expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was +his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One +night +at the Opéra the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and +powerful +family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, +whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to +taunt the poet upon his birth—'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire—what +<i>is</i> your name?' To which the retort came quickly—'Whatever my +name may +be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered +something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had +let +his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, <a + name="Page_95"></a>and he was to +pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty +with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those <i>grands seigneurs</i> +to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at +dinner to-night, <i>je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons.</i>' It +was +dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such +privileged persons, but to do so at their expense——! A few days later +Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in +Adrienne +Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and +'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan +lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, +and +the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the +arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's, +where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, +received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went +out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of +Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he +shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, +according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which +had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to +everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into +Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood +of +words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up +to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the +signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted +itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, +if +they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then +the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age—the +convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule—came +into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, +perhaps—until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at +him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was <a + name="Page_96"></a>received with +icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de +Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he +placed +the author of <i>Oedipe</i> side by side with the authors of <i>Le Cid</i> +and +<i>Phèdre</i>, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that +'ces coups +de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' +'Nous serions bien +malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of +snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' Such +friends as +remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing. +'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le +fond il a +raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, +and +she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, +lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two +months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised +swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation +was +cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally +rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long +term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did +not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those +days to a man of honour in such circumstances—to avenge the insult by a +challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, +began +to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so +soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One +day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for +Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police +reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and +making +no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec +éclat M. +le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly +on +the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the <i>Police Gazette</i>, +'le sieur Arrouët de Voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, +and +conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille.</p> +<p>A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de +Bernières while he +was still in hiding, reveals the effect which <a name="Page_97"></a>these +events had produced +upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected +correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit. +The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting +smile—these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are +informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, +for the first time in his life, is serious.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>J'ai été à l'extrémité; je +n'attends que ma convalescence pour abandonner à jamais ce +pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre que vous avez eue pour +moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par un mot de votre +main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je vous envoi, +en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance. +Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand; dites +à Thieriot que je veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je +serai mort, ou quand je serai heureux; jusque-là, je lui +pardonne son indifférence. Dites à M. le chevalier des +Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité de +ses procédés pour moi. Comptez que tout +détrompé que je suis de la vanité des +amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais +précieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir à Paris que pour +vous voir, vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma +constance dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs.</p> +</div> +<p>'Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand!' Strange +indeed are the +whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernières was then living in none +other +than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai +des Théatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century +later, +the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of +an +enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; +where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with +the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to +the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, +which—so it seemed to her as she sat entranced—could never, never grow +old.<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_98"></a>Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. +For some time he had +entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged +for +permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was +to prevent an unpleasant <i>fracas</i>, were ready enough to +substitute exile +for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux +poète' was released on condition that he should depart +forthwith, and +remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty +leagues from Versailles.</p> +<p>It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and +confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is +generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. +His +subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at +Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the +interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object—in which +he did not succeed—of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel. +Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was +not +in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in +doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned +secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length +of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, +however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over +all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters +during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary +English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend +upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We +know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard +Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in +English—an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of +another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned +Jew +was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a +Jewish broker.)</p> +<a name="Page_99"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, +alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to nobody; +my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could not make +bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I had never +undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all the +misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among all its +direful influences pours allways on me some kind refreshment, sent to +me an English gentleman unknown to me, who forced me to receive some +money that I wanted. Another London citisen that I had seen but once at +Paris, carried me to his own country house, wherein I lead an obscure +and charming life since that time, without going to London, and quite +given over to the pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and +generous affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life +brings me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp +indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady +Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even increased +in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, their money, +their house; but I have refused all, because they are lords, and I have +accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a single gentleman.</p> +</div> +<p>We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but +as +to who or what Everard Falkener was—besides the fact that he was a +'single gentleman'—we have only just information enough to make us wish +for more.</p> +<p>'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, +neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect +health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, +without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all +this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' +This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame +his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first +Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General—has anyone, +before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?—and +to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of +sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.'</p> +<p><a name="Page_100"></a>We have another glimpse of Voltaire at +Wandsworth in a curious document +brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at +a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to +argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' +until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed +conclusive.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in Fulham, +with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on the subject of +water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a quaker, and at length +came to mention that assertion of Paul. They questioned there being +such an assertion in all his writings; on which was a large wager laid, +as near as I remember of £500: and Voltaire, not retaining where +it was, had one of the Earl's horses, and came over the ferry from +Fulham to Putney.... When I came he desired me to give him in writing +the place where Paul said, <i>he was not sent to baptize</i>; which I +presently did. Then courteously taking his leave, he mounted and rode +back—</p> +</div> +<p>and, we must suppose, won his wager.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out +the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be very +exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it might, he +would give it on condition I would yield to be his companion, keeping +the same company, and I should always, in every respect, fare as he +fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal value: telling me then +plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were most of the noblemen in France +and in England; deriding the account given by the four Evangelists +concerning the birth of Christ, and his miracles, etc., so far that I +desired him to desist: for I could not bear to hear my Saviour so +reviled and spoken against. Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, +and left me with some reluctance.</p> +</div> +<p>In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager +gesticulating +figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square—'Belitery +Square' he calls it—or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane, +Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in +Westminster Abbey, <a name="Page_101"></a>or to pay a call on +Congreve, or to attend a +Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he +found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the +'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and +delivering a harangue beginning—'Brave Englishmen! Am I not +sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are +one or two stories of him in the great country houses—at Bubb +Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the +episode of Sin and Death in <i>Paradise Lost</i> with such vigour that +at +last Young burst out with the couplet:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You are so witty, profligate, and thin,<br> +</span><span>At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure +him +into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had +scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I +thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom +either +a fool or a philosopher.'</p> +<p>It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at +its +scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, +and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might +have +been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, +and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His +correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose +presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to +England—a correspondence which must have been considerable—has +completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which +passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there +any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark +raises +our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many +years +later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to +Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary:</p> +<a name="Page_102"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very +old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots on +it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke all the +time in English.... His house is not very fine, but genteel, and stands +upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall and very thin, has a +very piercing eye, and a look singularly vivacious. He told me of his +acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with whom he lived for three months at +Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who first showed him the <i>Beggar's +Opera</i> before it was acted. He says he admires Swift, and loved Gay +vastly. He said that Swift had a great deal of the ridiculum acre.</p> +</div> +<p>And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' +at +Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision +has +he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from +our gaze in that brief parenthesis—'with whom he lived for three months +at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than +one +or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk +which flowed then with such a careless abundance!—that prodigal stream, +swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of +forgetfulness and the long night of Time!</p> +<p>So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated +information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of +Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a +very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to +suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a +purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire +himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the +great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he +was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not +that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and <i>réclame</i>, +with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold +of +those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is +even +less evidence to support it than there is to support <a name="Page_103"></a>Voltaire's +own +story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire +was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is +only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at +him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in +England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody +else—'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'—that 'M. de +Voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en +Angleterre: qu'il s'y est +fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui +n'accordaient pas avec les +principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England +'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an +infuriated +publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of +money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the +miscreant, +who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more +circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, +it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of +betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale +first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it +from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton +Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by +the +'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in +Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom +'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. +There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no +law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' +Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy +premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth +century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has +examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with +conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without +foundation.</p> +<p>It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not +limited +to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which <a name="Page_104"></a>centred +about the +disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London +with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English +Ambassador +at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, +a +poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the +favour +and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to +support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.," +which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and +the +priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and +Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London +edition of the <i>Henriade</i>, there was hardly a great name in +England +which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the +poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of £240. Now +it is +also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were +suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act +in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' +who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But +to +conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was +known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the +inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, +owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves +subscribers +to the <i>Henriade</i>—Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty +copies—and +that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of +Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition +of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have +had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can +conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very +summit +of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew +to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of +himself +and his friends?</p> +<p>Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in +England as during every other period of his career. <a name="Page_105"></a>Besides +the edition +of the <i>Henriade</i>, which was considerably altered and +enlarged—one of +the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its +pages—he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon +the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of +<i>Julius Caesar</i> for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of +his +tragedy of <i>Brutus</i>, and he collected a quantity of material for +his +History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged +with the preparations for his <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>. The <i>Henriade</i> +met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition +was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as +many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. +M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly +successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in +some +town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the +completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it +may, +he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he +applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th +of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more +than three years before came to a close.</p> +<p>It was not until five years later that the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> +appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which +Voltaire +gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a +focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the +nation +into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had +scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the +culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the +Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to +England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration +which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the +hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, +like +most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar +<a name="Page_106"></a>attribute of being deep-rooted in popular +traditions and popular +sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The +agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign +of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of +intellectual +activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed +to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime +the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of +the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State. +Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly +English; +never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence +of +judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and +complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of +Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the +whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those +elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of +the national genius—'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'—both +appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of +the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were +visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets—in the +Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into +English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy +Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of +English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny +fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable +silence, over their English beef and English beer.</p> +<p>It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful +stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it +with +the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the +narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the +result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for +what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, <a + name="Page_107"></a>Voltaire +makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, +the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible +not +to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment +which was not published until after his death, describing his first +impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a +fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of +Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would +have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be +painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the +master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in +reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher +and +more important, something more original and more profound. He +determined +to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an +ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of +faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's +dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note +to Madame de Bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of +England, +into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and +follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he +was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter +in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was +now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great +blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu +in his <i>Lettres Persanes</i>; the second was struck by Voltaire in +the +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous +precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work +appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as +its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections +upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common +point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England +is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of +which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy <a name="Page_108"></a>is +brought into operation. The +book is an extremely short one—it fills less than two hundred small +octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy +gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it—a set of private letters +to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an +extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a +hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance—from the +theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the +effects +of inoculation to the immortality of the soul—and every touch tells. It +is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential +point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this +quality +of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The +matters +treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed +so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder +whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been +expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been +expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an +exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial +trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough. +Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop +of some strange liquor—is it a poison or is it an elixir of +life?—whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the +remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French +readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were +looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had +begun +among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid +frame-work of society—of life itself—the hard, dark, narrow, +antiquated structure of their existence—had suddenly, in the twinkling +of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing.</p> +<p>It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a +work +would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to +those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been +crowned with <a name="Page_109"></a>triumph, and all that was best in +English life was founded +upon the political institutions which had been then established. The +moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a +free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and +incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by +Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; +he +gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly +mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the +responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or +even +the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, +whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the +importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the +constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to +the reader than the famous lines in the <i>Henriade</i>:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Aux murs de Westminster on voit +paraître ensemble<br> +</span><span>Trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les +rassemble.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the +English +edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be +inserted in the preface:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Some of his <i>English</i> Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at +his not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which +most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is an +effect of <i>M. de Voltaire's</i> Judgment. He contented himself with +giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which is +entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the <i>British</i> +Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible for a +Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy Labyrinth, in +which such of the <i>English</i> themselves as are best acquainted +with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and lost?</p> +</div> +<p>Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of +Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later +eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They +turned +away in disgust from the 'gloomy <a name="Page_110"></a>labyrinth' of +practical fact to take +refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts, +'the Cast of which was entirely new'—and the conclusion of which was +also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution.</p> +<p>It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the <i>Lettres +Philosophiques</i> should have been condemned by the authorities, not +for +any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in +question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the <i>ancien +régime</i> was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its +immediate +effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was +increased. And the <i>ancien régime</i> itself was not slow to +realise the +danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the +unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La +seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite +bagatelle de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop +de conséquence pour la traiter sérieusement. Il a fallu +l'égorger pour ne pas heurter de front nos seigneurs les +théologiens, gens qui voient si clairement la +spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils +pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent.</p> +</div> +<p>Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so +gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then +beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly +perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names +of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In +this +connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the +writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord +Morley +says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of +the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian +theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is +certain +both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that +his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England. +There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous <a name="Page_111"></a>letter, +preserved +among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the +police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Vous venez de mettre à la Bastille [says the writer, who, it +is supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il +y a plus de 15 années.</p> +</div> +<p>The writer goes on to speak of the</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le +déisme tout à découvert aux toilettes de nos +jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu +de contes et de fables, les apôtres étaient de bonnes gens +idiots, simples, et crédules, et les pères de l'Eglise, +Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le plus, n'étaient que +des charlatans et des suborneurs.</p> +</div> +<p>'Je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un +jour seulement, +afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa +vie.' That +Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such +pious +ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn +from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of +England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and +Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of +second-rate +and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was +only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and +fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused +rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may +each +and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and +suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. +Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal +relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and +superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in +his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions +and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; +but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and +far-<a name="Page_112"></a>reaching speculations of Hume belong, of +course, to a totally +different class.</p> +<p>Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in +which +the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> did pioneer work of a highly +important +kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. +The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best—succinct, lucid, +persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other +hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention +his existence—a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely +afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's +nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high +Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such +aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition +for +matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he +had +never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see +before him. All was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, +d'ordre, de +vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and +elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the +true +significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind.</p> +<p>Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his +best to +reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by +slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, +quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions +upon +some of the <i>Pensées</i> of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that +these +reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious +venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his +subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and +intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the +aged +Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice +extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of +his +book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt +<a name="Page_113"></a>that it would be safer to skip the best +parts—'the poor man!' he said +afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'—but the permission +never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit +publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> were officially condemned; the book was +declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux +bonnes +moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to +be +publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might +have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from +putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps +and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. +Loke +and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de +Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered +message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was +carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete.</p> +<p>He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath +of +the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's +country +house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, +and +a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work +of +the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, +and +condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of +Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of +orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard. +But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton <i>was</i> heard. The men +of +science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much +to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which +took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century +were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire.</p> +<p>With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English +influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never +lost his interest in England; he was <a name="Page_114"></a>never +tired of reading English +books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in +the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of +that +deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so +foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But +it +is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's +nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central +standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in +England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has +ever +trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found +its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially +conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of +Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising +passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the +nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the +careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and +explicit, +and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez +l'infâme!' +was enough for him.</p> +<br> +<p>1914.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Correspondance de Voltaire</i> (1726-1729). By Lucien Foulet. +Paris: Hachette, 1913.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 'Il est aussi animé qu'il ait jamais été. Il a +quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en vérité je le crois +immortel; il jouit de +tous ses sens, aucun même n'est affaibli; c'est un être +bien singulier, +et en vérité fort supérieur.' Madame du Deffand to +Horace Walpole, 12 +Avril 1778.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="A_DIALOGUE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_115"></a>A DIALOGUE</h2> +<h2>BETWEEN</h2> +<h2>MOSES, DIOGENES, AND MR. LOKE</h2> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess, oh <i>Moses</i>! Your Miracles were but conjuring-tricks, +your +Prophecies lucky Hazards, and your Laws a <i>Gallimaufry</i> of +Commonplaces +and Absurdities.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the Vulgar than in +ascertaining the Truth, and that your Reputation in the World would +never have been so high, had your Lot fallen among a Nation of +Philosophers.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess that when you taught the <i>Jews</i> to spoil the <i>Egyptians</i> +you +were a sad rogue.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that it was a Fable to give Horses to Pharaoh and an +uncloven +hoof to the Hare.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess that you did never see the <i>Back Parts</i> of the Lord.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that your style had too much Singularity and too little +Taste to +be that of the Holy Ghost.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>All this may be true, my good Friends; but what are the Conclusions +you +would draw from your Raillery? Do you suppose that I am ignorant of all +that a Wise Man might urge against my <a name="Page_116"></a>Conduct, +my Tales, and my +Language? But alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by Choice but by +Necessity. I had not the Happiness of living in <i>England</i> or a <i>Tub</i>. +I +was the Leader of an ignorant and superstitious People, who would never +have heeded the sober Counsels of Good Sense and Toleration, and who +would have laughed at the Refinements of a nice Philosophy. It was +necessary to flatter their Vanity by telling them that they were the +favour'd Children of God, to satisfy their Passions by allowing them to +be treacherous and cruel to their Enemies, and to tickle their Ears by +Stories and Farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a +Nursery or <i>Bedlam</i>. By such Contrivances I was able to attain my +Ends +and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is +not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must +fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from +Expediency. It is his Duty to <i>sacrifice</i> the Best, which is +impossible, +to a <i>little Good</i>, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay +down a +Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in +a +few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and +Superstitious, the <i>Jews</i> would never have escaped from the +Bondage of +the <i>Egyptians</i>.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES.</p> +<p>Perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming Disaster. But, in +truth, you are right. There is no viler Profession than the Government +of Nations. He who dreams that he can lead a great Crowd of Fools +without a great Store of Knavery is a Fool himself.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Are not you too hasty? Does not History show that there have been +great +Rulers who were good Men? Solon, Henry of <i>Navarre</i>, and Milord +Somers +were certainly not Fools, and yet I am unwilling to believe that they +were Knaves either.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>No, not Knaves; but Dissemblers. In their different degrees, they +all +juggled; but 'twas not because Jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because Men +cannot be governed without it.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>I would be happy to try the Experiment. If Men were told the Truth, +might they not believe it? If the Opportunity of <a name="Page_117"></a>Virtue +and Wisdom is +never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be +willing to take it? Let Rulers be <i>bold</i> and <i>honest</i>, and +it is +possible that the Folly of their Peoples will disappear.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>A pretty phantastick Vision! But History is against you.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>And Prophecy.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>And Common Observation. Look at the World at this moment, and what +do we +see? It is as it has always been, and always will be. So long as it +endures, the World will continue to be rul'd by Cajolery, by Injustice, +and by Imposture.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>If that be so, I must take leave to lament the <i>Destiny</i> of +the Human +Race.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRES_TRAGEDIES"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_121"></a>VOLTAIRE'S +TRAGEDIES</h2> +<p>The historian of Literature is little more than a historian of +exploded +reputations. What has he to do with Shakespeare, with Dante, with +Sophocles? Has he entered into the springs of the sea? Or has he walked +in the search of the depth? The great fixed luminaries of the firmament +of Letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more +than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes +of +an ordinary mortal. His business is with the succeeding ages of men, +not +with all time; but <i>Hyperion</i> might have been written on the +morrow of +Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The +literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the +geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of +forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great +men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer +great—mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the +siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is +for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the +platitudes of Cicero. It is for him to sit up all night with the +spectral heroes of Byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable +alexandrines with the faded heroines of Voltaire.</p> +<p>The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly +indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of +him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, +and +not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of <i>Candide</i>, +of +<i>Akakia</i>, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass +of his +productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons +now +living have travelled through <i>La Henriade</i> or <a name="Page_122"></a><i>La +Pucelle</i>? How many +have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of <i>L'Esprit des +Moeurs</i>? <i>Zadig</i> and <i>Zaïre, Mérope</i> and <i>Charles +XII</i>. still linger, +perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of <i>Oreste</i>, and +of +<i>Mahomet</i>, and of <i>Alzire</i>? <i>Où sont les neiges +d'antan</i>?</p> +<p>Though Voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as +a +precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a +poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, +not +only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every +scribbler, +every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to +the +censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded +houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and +Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got +by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf +which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a +comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our +feelings +and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing—a tragedy by +Voltaire. For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, +as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort +to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets +our +eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to +its forgotten corner—to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the +scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same +words must have conjured up. The splendid gaiety, the refined +excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion—all these things have +vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, +the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had +their being. It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to +examine +one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may +do +so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the +footsteps of Voltaire himself. His examination of <i>Hamlet</i> +affords a +precedent which is particularly <a name="Page_123"></a>applicable, +owing to the fact that the +same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which +divides +ourselves from him. One point of difference, indeed, does exist between +the relative positions of the two authors. Voltaire, in his study of +Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our +interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. +At +the present moment,<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> +a literal translation of <i>King Lear</i> is drawing +full houses at the Théâtre Antoine. As a rule it is rash +to prophesy; +but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of +them—hundred years hence a literal translation of <i>Zaïre</i> +will not be +holding the English boards.</p> +<p>It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the +worst, of +Voltaire's tragedies. Our object is to review some specimen of what +would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of +the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in +<i>Alzire, ou Les Américains</i>, first produced with great +success in 1736, +when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist +already well established.</p> +<p><i>Act I</i>.—The scene is laid in Lima, the capital of Peru, some +years +after the Spanish conquest of America. When the play opens, Don Gusman, +a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the +Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and +just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of +his +countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the +work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's +temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, +harsh, headstrong, and bigoted.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>L'Américain farouche est un monstre +sauvage<br> +</span><span>Qui mord en frémissant le frein de l'esclavage ...<br> +</span><span>Tout pouvoir, en un mot, périt par l'indulgence,<br> +</span><span>Et la sévérité produit +l'obéissance.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_124"></a>Such were the cruel maxims of his +government—maxims which he was only +too ready to put into practice. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded +his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and that, as he +epigrammatically put it, 'Le vrai Dieu, mon fils, est un Dieu qui +pardonne.' To enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of +how his own life had been spared by a virtuous American, who, as he +said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' But Don Gusman +remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was +one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. He +was in love with Alzire, Alzire the young and beautiful daughter of +Montèze, who had ruled in Lima before the coming of the +Spaniards. 'Je +l'aime, je l'avoue,' said Gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne +veux.' With these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes +plain to the spectator. The wicked Spanish Governor is in love with the +virtuous American princess. From such a state of affairs, what +interesting and romantic developments may not follow? Alzire, we are +not +surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a Peruvian +prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the +tyranny of Don Gusman. Yet, for the sake of Montèze, her +ambitious and +scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the Governor. She +consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to Zamore. +'Sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to Don Gusman, 'il eut pour moi +des charmes.'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Il m'aima: son trépas me coûte +encore des larmes:<br> +</span><span>Vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur,<br> +</span><span>Jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The ruthless Don did not allow these pathetic considerations to +stand in +the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should +be immediately performed. But, at the very moment of his apparent +triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes.</p> +<p><i>Act II</i>.—It was only natural to expect that a heroine <a + name="Page_125"></a>affianced to a +villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. The hero adored by +Alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural +than his resurrection? The noble Zamore was not dead; he had escaped +with his life from the torture-chamber of Don Gusman, had returned to +avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying +imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved +princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe.</p> +<p>In this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable +Alvarez, +who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's +release. In the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to +distinguish the features of Zamore; but the old man at last discovered +that he was addressing the very American who, so many years ago, +instead +of hitting him, had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this +extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, +behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let +us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to +state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, +hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the +Governor.</p> +<p><span style="font-style: italic;">Act III.</span>—Meanwhile, Alzire +had been married. But she still could not +forget her Peruvian lover. While she was lamenting her fate, and +imploring the forgiveness of the shade of Zamore, she was informed that +a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'Admit him.' He was +admitted. 'Heaven! Such were his features, his gait, his voice: +Zamore!' +She falls into the arms of her confidante. 'Je succombe; à peine +je +respire.'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant.<br> +</span><span>ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire!<br> +</span><span class="i8">Est-ce une illusion?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to +confess +to her lover that she was already married <a name="Page_126"></a>to +Don Gusman. Zamore was at +first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still +struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and +Don Gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room.</p> +<p>A double recognition followed. Zamore was no less horrified to +behold in +Don Gusman the son of the venerable Alvarez, than Don Gusman was +infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had +consented was no other than Zamore. When the first shock of surprise +was +over, the Peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him +with the tortures he had inflicted. The Governor replied by ordering +the +instant execution of the prince. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded his son of Zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that Alzire +herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. Zamore was +dragged from the apartment; and Alzire and Don Alvarez were left alone +to bewail the fate of the Peruvian hero. Yet some faint hopes still +lingered in the old man's breast. 'Gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, +'je le sais, j'en frémis;</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Mais il est ton époux, il t'aime, il +est mon fils:<br> +</span><span>Son âme à la pitié se peut ouvrir +encore.'<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>'Hélas!' (replied Alzire), 'que n'êtes-vous le +père de Zamore!'</p> +<p><i>Act IV</i>.—Even Don Gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel +itself +entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and +he consented to allow a brief respite to Zamore's execution. Alzire was +not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for +she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of +bribing the warder of the dungeon. Zamore was free. But alas! Alzire +was +not; was she not wedded to the wicked Gusman? Her lover's +expostulations +fell on unheeding ears. What mattered it that her marriage vow had been +sworn before an alien God? 'J'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe +à quel +dieu!'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_127"></a><span>ZAMORE: Ta promesse +est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu.<br> +</span><span>Périssent tes serments et ton Dieu que j'abhorre!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>ALZIRE: Arrête; quels adieux! +arrête, cher Zamore!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his +lips +than an oath to be revenged upon the Governor. Alzire, perplexed, +deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned +for comfort to that God, who, she could not but believe, was, in some +mysterious way, the Father of All.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Great God, lead Zamore in safety through the desert places. ... Ah! +can it be true that thou art but the Deity of another universe? Have +the Europeans alone the right to please thee? Art thou after all the +tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... No! The conquerors +and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all are equally the +work of thy hands....</p> +</div> +<p>Her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. She heard +shrieks; +she heard a cry of 'Zamore!' And her confidante, rushing in, confusedly +informed her that her lover was in peril of his life.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ah, chère Emire [she exclaimed], +allons le secourir!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>ALZIRE: Je puis mourir.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an +emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself +under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately +removed to the lowest dungeon.</p> +<p><i>Act V</i>.—It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt +the +reason of her arrest. Zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight +from +her apartment into the presence of Don Gusman, and had plunged a dagger +into his enemy's breast. The hero had then turned to Don Alvarez and, +with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_128"></a><span>J'ai fait ce que j'ai +dû, j'ai vengé mon injure;<br> +</span><span>Fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Before Don Alvarez could reply to this appeal, Zamore had been haled +off +by the enraged soldiery before the Council of Grandees. Don Gusman had +been mortally wounded; and the Council proceeded at once to condemn to +death, not only Zamore, but also Alzire, who, they found, had been +guilty of complicity in the murder. It was the unpleasant duty of Don +Alvarez to announce to the prisoners the Council's sentence. He did so +in the following manner:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! My own liberator +is the assassin of my son. Zamore!... Yes, it is to thee that I owe +this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal +gift.... I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy fury, +in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance from my +agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy benefactions. And +thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our misery I yet call by a +name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how far is it from thy father's +wishes to add to the agony which he already feels the horrible pleasure +of vengeance. I must lose, by an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my +liberator, my daughter, and my son. The Council has sentenced you to +death.</p> +</div> +<p>Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the +culprits were to be spared—that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. +What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for +a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while +Alzire +added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by +hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was +just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor +of death upon his features, was carried into the room. The implacable +Governor was about to utter his last words. Alzire was resigned; +Alvarez +was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last. But lo! when +the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change +had +come over his mind. He was no longer proud, he was no longer <a + name="Page_129"></a>cruel, he +was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, +he +had repented. Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the +truth +of Christianity. And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don +Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in +the +arms of Don Alvarez. For thus were the guilty punished, and the +virtuous +rewarded. The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, +and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her +lover +to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. That they +were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don +Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave.</p> +<p>Such is the tragedy of <i>Alzire</i>, which, it may be well to +repeat, was in +its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. It was +upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries +recognised Voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic +triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and +Racine. With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and +it +is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of <i>Alzire</i> +was +a worthy successor of the author of <i>Athalie</i>. At first sight, +indeed, +the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a +closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be +spanned +by any superficial likeness.</p> +<p>A careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere +<i>tours de force</i>; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. +For, +as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly +unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere +<i>tour de force</i>' carries with it something more than the idea of +technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is +technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and +nothing +more. The problem before a writer of a Chant Royal is to overcome +certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his +<i>tour de force</i>, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is +accomplished. But Racine's problem was <a name="Page_130"></a>very +different. The technical +restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary +was +cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic +movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every +conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the +alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he +was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a <i>mot bas</i>. +But his +triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it +was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of +them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and +enchanting work of art. To have brought about this amazing combination, +to have erected, upon a structure of Alexandrines, of Unities, of Noble +Personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia +of the Classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite +poetry, of overwhelming passion—that is a <i>tour de force</i> whose +achievement entitles Jean Racine to a place among the very few +consummate artists of the world.</p> +<p>Voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, +when he took up the mantle of Racine, he put it, not upon a human +being, +but upon a tailor's block. To change the metaphor, Racine's work +resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted +our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming +tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire +was +able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and +the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut +into +curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one +instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same +pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of +similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. It is amusing to +note the exclamations which rise to the lips of Voltaire's characters +in +moments of extreme excitement—<i>Qu'entends-je? Que vois-je? Où +suis-je? +Grands Dieux! Ah, c'en est trop, Seigneur! Juste Ciel! Sauve-toi de ces +<a name="Page_131"></a>lieux! Madame, quelle horreur</i> ... &c. +And it is amazing to discover +that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to +express +all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his +best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing +hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly +falls +within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, +of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'est ce même guerrier dont la main +tutélaire,<br> +</span><span>De Gusman, votre époux, sauva, dit-on, le +père,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or as</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en +eux-mêmes,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends +pas.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his +predecessors. Alzire's 'Je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious +reminiscence of the 'Qu'il mourût!' of le vieil Horace; and the +cloven +hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'O ciel!' with which Alzire's +confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. Many of these +blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for +Voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'This +tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'Alembert, enclosing +<i>Olympie</i>. 'You should not have rested on the seventh,' was +d'Alembert's +reply. But, on the whole, Voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a +high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very +clever +man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most +palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a +real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can +only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains +and +his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for +a +moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and +they are all put back into their box. The <a name="Page_132"></a>glance +which the reader has +taken into the little case labelled <i>Alzire</i> has perhaps given +him a +sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes.</p> +<p>Voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate +incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It +is +only possible to write good plays without the power of +character-drawing, upon one condition—that of possessing the power of +creating dramatic situations. The <i>Oedipus Tyrannus</i> of +Sophocles, for +instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of +horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of +persons. +One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the +manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire +himself. The guilt of Oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience +very early in the play; and, when the <i>dénouement</i> at last +arrives, it +comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the King. There can be no +doubt that Voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those +underlying causes which make the <i>Oedipus</i> perhaps the most awful +of +tragedies. To know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon +one +after another of the characters, to see Oedipus at last alone in +ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his +struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable +moment, the appalling revelation—few things can be more terrible than +this. But Voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an +effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own +sense +of the dramatic. 'Nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que Sophocle n'avait +pas perfectionné son art.'</p> +<p>More detailed evidence of Voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight +is +to be found, of course, in his criticisms of Shakespeare. Throughout +these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which Voltaire +seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great +predecessor, +and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as Shakespeare +himself +was by Voltaire. It is unnecessary to dwell further upon so <a + name="Page_133"></a>hackneyed a +subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this +dramatic insensibility of Voltaire's was able to go—his adaptation of +<i>Julius Caesar</i> for the French stage. A comparison of the two +pieces +should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the +degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. Particular +attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral +oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of +the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent +sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>ANTOINE: Brutus ... où suis-je? O +ciel! O crime! O barbarie!'<br> +</span><span class="i9">Chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits +...<br> +</span><span class="i9">Brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre +était son fils!<br> +</span><span>ROMAINS: Ah dieux!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If Voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits +were +equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not +perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. The weight of +a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere—it is so +universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came +to a performance of <i>Alzire</i> unconscious of the burden of the +Classical +rules. They found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes +just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of +startling +incidents, of happy <i>mots</i>. They were dazzled by an easy display +of +cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it +was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a +distance, and under artificial light. When, in <i>Mérope</i>, +one saw La +Dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote Voltaire himself, 'les yeux +égarés, la +voix entrecoupée, levant une main tremblante, elle allait +immoler son +propre fils; quand Narbas l'arrêta; quand, laissant tomber son +poignard, +on la vit s'évanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle +sortit de +cet état de mort avec les transports d'une mère; lorsque, +ensuite, +s'élançant aux yeux de Polyphonte, traversant en un clin +d'oeil tout le +<a name="Page_134"></a>théâtre, les larmes dans les yeux, +la pâleur sur le front, les sanglots +à la bouche, les bras étendus, elle s'écria: +"Barbare, il est mon +fils!"'—how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one +question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? +Alas! to us, who know not La Dumesnil, to us whose <i>Mérope</i> +is nothing +more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our +forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. Its +glittering +was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the +manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, Voltaire was able to make +up +for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a +great deal of 'go.'</p> +<p>And to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. His +vivacity, +indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. +He introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to +write +tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he +was so bold as to rhyme 'père' with 'terre.' The wild diversity +of his +incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under +happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose +path which ended in the bonfire of 1830.</p> +<p>But it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of +decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as +would be—let us say—that of a shilling shocker written by Miss Yonge. +His heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in +inversions. Amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his +cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able +to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. The Classical +tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous +achievement was that it prevented Molière from being a great +tragedian. +But there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have +taken—if only for some scattered moments—the sense of the ridiculous +from Voltaire.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> April, 1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRE_AND_FREDERICK_THE_GREAT"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_137"></a>VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT</h2> +<br> +<p>At the present time,<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a + href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> when it is so difficult to +think of anything but +of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast +occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least +prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be +instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that +Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless +to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely +active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would +be as well for him <i>not</i> to live in France. For, just as modern +Germany +dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so +modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of +the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms +one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in +history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few +brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's +masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of +<i>The History of Friedrich II</i>. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty +years +have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of +new +material—including the valuable edition of the correspondence between +Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the +Archives at Berlin—has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite +of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another +rapid +review of it will not be out of place.</p> +<p><a name="Page_138"></a>Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and +already one of the most famous +men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the +Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence +which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over +forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose +personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed +to +lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the +secondary +European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his +nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was +moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a +smattering +of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted +with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his +admiration for the author of the <i>Henriade</i> and <i>Zaïre</i> +was unbounded.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour +tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font +espérer que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous +trouvez dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de +lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être +pensant. J'ose même avancer, sans déroger au mérite +d'autrui, que dans l'univers entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception +à faire de ceux dont vous ne pourriez être le maître.</p> +</div> +<p>The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that +graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his +correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' +and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion +of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had +commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' +For the next +four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It +was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his +passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured +out +with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and <i>la raison +suffisante</i>, odes <i>sur la Flatterie</i>, and epistles <i>sur +l'Humanité</i>, +<a name="Page_139"></a>while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no +less enormous +philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal +Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, +though +the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young +Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but +extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it +possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs +of feeling or of character. Voltaire's <i>empressement</i> seems to +take on, +once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one +notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with +'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly +into +'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his +'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a +little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que +vous ne vous y mépreniez plus ... J'ai peu de mérite et +peu de savoir; mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds +inépuisable d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une +vertu distinguée, et avec cela je suis capable de toute la +constance que la vraie amitié exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour +vous rendre toute la justice que vous méritez; mais je n'en ai +pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de mauvais vers.</p> +</div> +<p>But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the +place +of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of +comparing +Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of +proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus +d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est +Frédéric +que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow +of +protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez +pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... Je +crois, +par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je +crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un +Voltaire pour +le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments <a + name="Page_140"></a>were too +emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said +afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; +yet neither was +without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered +upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope +that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a +crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love +of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening.</p> +<p>In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the +relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both +sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered +that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes +heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His <i>prince philosophe</i> +started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and +turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was +at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than +Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the +King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed +a +good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, +remarkably +rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in +Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his +accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no +more, and its place is taken—at once and for ever—by the +self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In +this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of +Voltaire should lose some of its glitter—especially since Frederick now +began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh +with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is +noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the +part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse +Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only +been +sent him on the condition of <i>un secret inviolable</i>. He writes to +Jordan +complaining of Voltaire's <a name="Page_141"></a>avarice in very +stringent terms. 'Ton avare +boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... Son +apparition de +six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante +écus. C'est bien +payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' +He declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi +légère que le style de +ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man +<i>extraordinaire en tout</i>.</p> +<p>Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing +more +and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. +For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, +Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised +in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for +years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would +<i>posséder</i>—for so he put it—the author of the <i>Henriade</i>, +would keep +him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, +would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own +verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish +would +be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was +dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his +surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the +Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was +Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Châtelet. He had lived +with her +for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of +friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would +never +leave her—no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is +true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a +solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of +ladies—even of ladies like Madame du Châtelet—learned enough to +translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the +Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to <i>posséder</i> +Voltaire +either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated +temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first <a + name="Page_142"></a>time, poor +Madame du Châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters +from +Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew +nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her +distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she +dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But +suddenly +Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at +her feet once more.</p> +<p>What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of +the +King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found +the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an +insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial +way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he +should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France +for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the +Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick +had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, +he +had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that +of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an +opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give +verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded +the +Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly +sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix +would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever +to return to France; and in that case—well, Voltaire would have no +other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and +Madame +du Châtelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, +Frederick's +plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had +happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to +stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had +been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to +stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he +forgave <a name="Page_143"></a>Frederick. But the King was most +anxious to patch up the +quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing +Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more +immediate desire—to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous +work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet +and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates—<i>La +Pucelle</i>.</p> +<p>Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more +flattering +than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point +injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de +badiner +sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '<i>La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La +Pucelle!</i> et encore <i>La Pucelle</i>!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour +de Dieu, +ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' And at +last +Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his +<i>Pucelle</i>—just enough to whet Frederick's appetite—and he declared +himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in +March +1749; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous +ai pardonné, et actuellement +je vous aime à la folie.' Within a year of this date his +situation had +undergone a complete change. Madame du Châtelet was dead; and his +position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de +Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to +have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this +time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good +bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at +Berlin +in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin +and +Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of +Merit, together with a pension of £800 a year. These arrangements +caused +considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying +prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien! +Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the +Quays.</p> +<p>The curious drama that followed, with its farcical <a + name="Page_144"></a>περιπετἑια +and its tragi-comic <i>dénouement</i>, can hardly be understood +without a +brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief +actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had +now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem +which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He +frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year +before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most +urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a +letter +to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He +had +been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's +letters).</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au Parnasse. +C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie +à un aussi beau génie. Il a les gentillesses et les +malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que c'est, lorsque je vous +reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de rien, car j'en ai besoin +pour l'étude de l'élocution française. On peut +apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. Je veux savoir +son français; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouvé +le moyen de réunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en +même temps qu'on méprise son caractère.</p> +</div> +<p>There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he +was a +scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of +<i>l'élocution française</i>; therefore it was necessary +that he should come +and live in Berlin. But as for anything more—as for any real +interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of +respect, or even of regard—all that was utterly out of the question. +The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, +and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. +In +the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude +which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle—that he was the victim of +an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, +and +that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly +disappointed—becomes obviously untenable. <a name="Page_145"></a>If +any man ever acted with +his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin.</p> +<p>Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in +more +than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to +<i>l'élocution française</i> is easy enough to +understand; but Frederick's +devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense +that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, +or +by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and +constant proximity of—what?—of a man whom he himself described as a +'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and +despicable character. +And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it +quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but +delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted +roguery, +so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less +undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange; +but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue—a vogue, +indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern +reader +to realise it—enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and +literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick +was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of +any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady +and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the +social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid +to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole +standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast +majority +of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was +concentrated +in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French +poetry +meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French +poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this +curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The <i>Grand +Siècle</i> +was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of +Boileau.</p> +<p><a name="Page_146"></a>Frederick's library, still preserved at +Potsdam, shows us what +literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed +entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the +masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. +But +Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; +he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after +the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred +sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. +It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of +the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his +own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept +him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled +volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most +complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb—<i>Poeta +nascitur, non fit</i>. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with +her +feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible +conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and +now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or +pathetic—one hardly knows which—were it not so certainly neither the +one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, +from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. +Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong—something, but +not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; +and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it—Voltaire, the one true +heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of +Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over +<i>Mahomet</i> as over <i>Britannicus</i>?), the epic poet who had +eclipsed Homer +and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read +the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the +lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed +(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la +Fare. +Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just <a name="Page_147"></a>what +was needed; he +would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German +Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of +rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last <i>nuances</i> +of +correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the +blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes +choses +d'un scélérat.'</p> +<p>And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite +convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the +master's whip—a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage +of the pension—and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon +enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the +possession +of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an +ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the +ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to +Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no +delusion +as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great +writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner +of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi +lâche +soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' <i>C'est bien dommage</i>!—as +if there was +nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty +woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little +tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that <i>beau +génie</i>, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was +wrong: it +was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing.</p> +<p>A devil—or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the +complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so +mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the +elements +of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold +within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the +more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at +least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable <a + name="Page_148"></a>or whether it +was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to +realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to +Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of +publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood +the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. +He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still +before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was +to +take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his +consciousness, +aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at +this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth +into the unknown?</p> +<p>What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure +it +is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with +Paris—he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless +literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his +countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not +appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he +admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. +'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de +plus, il +était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, +attendu la +faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal +intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased +consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his +order—to say nothing of the addition of £800 to his income. Yet, +on the +other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for +servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would +make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in +his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however +successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to +Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he +had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened +by +the uses of the world he had grown to be <a name="Page_149"></a>completely +what in essence he +always was—a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without +remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes—however dubious +those purposes may have been.</p> +<p>And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his +niece, +Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris +establishment and in whom he confided—in so far as he can be said to +have confided in anyone—he repeatedly states that there is nothing +permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is +only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on +to +Italy to visit 'sa Sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville +souterraine,' that +he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads +are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they +will +be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will +certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of +finishing his <i>Siècle de Louis XIV</i>.; he really must wait +just a few +weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris +until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying +and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers +on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. +Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried +official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other +friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could +see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true +intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret +corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a +premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems +to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room +through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when +all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window +which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery +fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going +after all.</p> +<p><a name="Page_150"></a>In any case, it is evident to the impartial +observer that Voltaire's +visit could only have ended as it did—in an explosion. The elements of +the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two +confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house +together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of +mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or +later human nature will assert itself, and the <i>ménage</i> +will break up. +And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such +cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them +was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very +thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he +might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and +perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the +incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the +gist +of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the +skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked +how +much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on +his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses +were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man +expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well +enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and +uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very +few +weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible +on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take +place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and +one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling +each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he +opens all our letters in the post'—Voltaire, whose light-handedness +with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The +monkey,' +mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his +friends'—Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's +letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. <a name="Page_151"></a>'How happy I +should be here,' +exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing—his Majesty is +utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a +farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was +busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire.</p> +<p>It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the +first +really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the +temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of +illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in +a +series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with +the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and +countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost +his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the +court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it +is almost certain—the evidence is not quite conclusive—that he +committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was +furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from +Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not +part +with his <i>beau génie</i> so soon. He cracked his whip, and, +setting the +monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the +shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu +tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once +more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, +came out and basked again in those refulgent beams.</p> +<p>And the beams were decidedly refulgent—so much so, in fact, that +they +almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite. +For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's +admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses—there is a +letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein +the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, +she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'—though he +had ample +leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the +brilliant conversation of the King, though he <a name="Page_152"></a>could +often forget for +weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot—yet, in +spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, +and +he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's +court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of +persons—foreigners for the most part—whose business it was to instruct +him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out +of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one +of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant +dabbler in scientific matters—he had written a book to explain Newton +to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull +free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many +debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love +affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for +atheism and bad manners; and Pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, +under +stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his +religion six times.</p> +<p>These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend +his +leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange +rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with +d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of <i>La +Pucelle</i>. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith +prove +the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout +with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the +salt, +and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place +where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times +Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of +Pöllnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long +and +serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a +Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough, +Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his +little +menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and <a + name="Page_153"></a>Chasot +both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to +visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow +their +example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to +return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch +was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his +escape in a different manner—by dying after supper one evening of a +surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jésus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt +the pains +of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous +voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' La +Mettrie, with an oath, +expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, +remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.'</p> +<p>Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single +figure +whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast +from +the rest—that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of +the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate +fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then +recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very +anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing +measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to +Lapland, +and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the +Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He +possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was +energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories +of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to +come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply +justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in +his +earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once +overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited +Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an <i>homme d'esprit</i>, +and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal +supper-parties. It was <a name="Page_154"></a>the happy—the too +happy—President who was the +rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other +slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest +admiration +for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a +severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces +deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer +ensemble dans la même chambre.' And indeed to the vain and +sensitive +poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden +enemies, +intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at +supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior +to +the shady mediocrities who sat around—that sight was gall and wormwood; +and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing +eyes +began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its +work.</p> +<p>Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to +conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was +very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five +years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he +was +deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who +could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?—Voltaire, who as +obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and +Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the +length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, +La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and +war was not long in coming.</p> +<p>Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an +important mathematical law—the 'principle of least action.' The law +was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the +development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a +recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without +realising +its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it +was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, <a + name="Page_155"></a>however, was very +proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the +principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was +therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in +Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir +attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support +of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law +was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the +case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, +and +that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When +Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He +summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig +was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should +solemnly +pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious +and +false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions +depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler +was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful +condemnation.</p> +<p>Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had +put +himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in +attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was +wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he +was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper +subject +for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck +now, +he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to +give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon +this +matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick +certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive +of +the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would +certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who +himself +drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. +But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two +years in Berlin, <a name="Page_156"></a>and the atmosphere of a Court +was beginning to weigh +upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for +a +fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick +combined—he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered +himself that he would settle the hash of the President.</p> +<p>As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from +Berlin, +and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement +ordre à mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September +18, +1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled +'Réponse +d'un Académicien de Berlin à un Académicien de +Paris.' It was a +statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its +concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President +must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The +terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, +and that man was receiving a royal pension of £800 a year and +carrying +about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his +writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be +published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble +work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy +invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely +compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Réponse d'un +Académicien +de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans +génie,' an +'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the +'Réponse' itself +was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an +'action malicieuse, +lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the +royal +insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le +sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien +étonnés de se trouver là.' But one thing was now +certain: the King had +joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind +of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear—he +would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever. +<a name="Page_157"></a>And it so happened that just then an unexpected +opportunity occurred +for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that +weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,' +he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.'</p> +<p>Meanwhile the life of the Court—which passed for the most part at +Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built +for himself—proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life, +half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the +ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do +here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb +<i>s'ennuyer</i>,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a +verb +unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still +preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the +formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly +coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable +old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his <i>Pucelle</i>, +and +his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill—very ill; he was +probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed +to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. +He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he +was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But +he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found +him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,' +remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up +from +the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques +meurent l'oeil enflammé?' When the evening came it was time to +dress, +and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to +the +little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, +was +preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered +together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the +sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little <a + name="Page_158"></a>space, +to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the +royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, +and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of +Rossbach drew tears from the author of <i>Candide</i>. But a moment +later it +was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid +laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of +Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations +of Voltaire.</p> +<p>Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the +rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but +nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, +but +still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's +enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours, +the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number +of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly +speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very +unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and +Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The +famous <i>Diatribe du Docteur Akakia</i> is still fresh with a +fiendish +gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the +skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have +glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted +with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' +<i>rêveries</i> have been detected, dragged forth into the light +of day, and +nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The <i>Diatribe</i>, +however, +is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For +instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that +Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B +divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well +founded. 'Lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la +géometrie,' Voltaire +wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui +entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des +ténèbres'; and +Maupertuis <a name="Page_159"></a>had in fact vitiated his treatment +of the 'principle of +least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through +Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific +principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the +experimental method, a consistent attack upon <i>a priori</i> +reasoning, +loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all +this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of +effervescent raillery—cruel, personal, insatiable—the raillery of a +demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed +till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade +Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. +Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, +under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book +appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within +bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them +privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he +flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the +President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est +finie. J'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai +lavé si bien la tête que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, +et je connais son âme lache, incapable de sentiments d'honneur. +Je l'ai intimidé du côté de la boursse, ce qui a +fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai déclaré +enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et non +une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent +des poissons.</p> +</div> +<p>Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had +come +a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and +by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick +wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe +qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait +fouetté.' But now the monkey +<i>had</i> been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems +strange +that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close +observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He +might as well have <a name="Page_160"></a>supposed that he could stop +a mountain torrent in +spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose +obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a +threat 'du côté de la boursse.' Before the month was out +all Germany was +swarming with <i>Akakias</i>; thousands of copies were being printed +in +Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is +difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who +thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the +enraged +master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'étonne,' +fulminated +Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all +Europe +was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the +President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly +espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. +'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper, +'dans l'état où je suis!' (He was, of course, once more +dying.) 'Quoi! +vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.' +Frederick replied by having copies of <i>Akakia</i> burnt by the +common +hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his +Order, +his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the +final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed +before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and +to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's +suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of +Voltaire +to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly +controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's +accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually +went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. +But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at +Potsdam—'soupers de Damoclès' Voltaire called them; and then, on +March +26, 1753, the two men parted for ever.</p> +<p>The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in +the +wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters <a name="Page_161"></a>of +Plombières, stopped at +Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises +to +the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of +<i>Akakia</i>. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to +Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued +yet another edition of <i>Akakia</i>, appended a somewhat unauthorised +version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and +cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a +vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which +figure so freely in the comedies of Molière. This stroke was the +<i>coup +de grâce</i> of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he +dragged himself +from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple +of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In +the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had +suddenly +remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few +privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had +spent +so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several +passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that +those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious +Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which +he +now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by +feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered +uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have +been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident +in +Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet +in +arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange +blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much +controversial +and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German +biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little +comedy +of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame—that +Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian +Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was <a + name="Page_162"></a>careless in his +orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need +any +Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government +in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the +rule +of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd.</p> +<p>After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free—free in +every sense of the word—free from the service of Kings and the clutches +of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He +hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of +Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the +profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering +and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to +and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time +even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were +almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was +submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose +compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. +But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier +and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even +Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of +Ferney +something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He +actually came to respect the author of <i>Akakia</i>, and to cherish +his +memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told +d'Alembert, +when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin +Voltaire, <i>ora pro nobis</i>.'</p> +<p>1915.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> October 1915.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_ROUSSEAU_AFFAIR"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_165"></a>THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR</h2> +<br> +<p>No one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and +fascinating country, Eighteenth-Century France, can have come away from +it without at least <i>one</i> impression strong upon him—that in no +other +place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. France +in +the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been—however splendid +in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour—was +certainly not a quiet place to live in. One could never have been +certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was +out, one would not be in the Bastille for something one had said at +dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one +had +never said at all.</p> +<p>Of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more +remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, +which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly +affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the +most potent of the precursors of the Revolution. The affair is +constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a +prominent place in the later books of the <i>Confessions</i>; and +there is an +account of its earlier phases—an account written from the anti-Rousseau +point of view—in the <i>Mémoires</i> of Madame d'Epinay. The +whole story is +an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been +satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers +has been decidedly hostile to Rousseau, though it has not subscribed to +all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of +the +quarrel. This, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an +unprejudiced +reader of the <i>Confessions</i> would <a name="Page_166"></a>naturally +come to. Rousseau's story, +even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. He would have +us +believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of +which Grimm and Diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in +alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included +all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does +such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but +the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems +totally +insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the +unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by +rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded +mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given +by +contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own +writings subsequent to the <i>Confessions</i>, where his endless +recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear +all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years; +and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for +reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a +recently-published work<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a + href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a>, has produced some new and +important +evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts +of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For +it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely +overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot, +and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told +in the <i>Confessions</i> is simply the truth.</p> +<p>If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's +newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value +of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a +revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of +the +eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a +cheat, that d'Alembert <a name="Page_167"></a>was a dupe, and Hume a +liar—that, surely, were +no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from +Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the +data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may +be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' +as +she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all +students of that remarkable age.</p> +<p>Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the <i>Mémoires</i> +of +Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the +concluding +quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most +detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It +has, however, always been doubtful how far the <i>Mémoires</i> +were to be +trusted as accurate records of historical fact. The manuscript +disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed +book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in +the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted +known events. Had Madame d'Epinay merely intended to write a <i>roman +à +clef</i>? What seemed, so far as concerned the Rousseau narrative, to +put +this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel +as it appears in the <i>Mémoires</i> is, in its main outlines, +substantiated +both by Grimm's references to Rousseau in his <i>Correspondance +Littéraire</i>, and by a brief memorandum of Rousseau's +misconduct, drawn +up by Diderot for his private use, and not published until many years +after Madame d'Epinay's death. Accordingly most writers on the subject +have taken the accuracy of the <i>Mémoires</i> for granted; +Sainte-Beuve, for +instance, prefers the word of Madame d'Epinay to that of Rousseau, when +there is a direct conflict of testimony; and Lord Morley, in his +well-known biography, uses the <i>Mémoires</i> as an authority +for many of +the incidents which he relates. Mrs. Macdonald's researches, however, +have put an entirely different complexion on the case. She has +discovered the manuscript from which the <i>Mémoires</i> were +printed, and +she has examined <a name="Page_168"></a>the original draft of this +manuscript, which had been +unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably +neglected by previous scholars. From these researches, two facts have +come to light. In the first place, the manuscript differs in many +respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a +conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; +the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies +of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a +fiction. And in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript +turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in +those portions which concern Rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and +notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the +corrections were made by Madame d'Epinay herself; but in nearly every +case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the +notes themselves are in the handwriting of Diderot and Grimm. Mrs. +Macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, +which +amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before +long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the +<i>Mémoires</i>, with all the manuscript alterations clearly +indicated; for +until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the +text. However, it is now beyond dispute both that Madame d'Epinay's +narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its +agreement with the statements of Grimm and Diderot is by no means an +independent confirmation of its truth, for Grimm and Diderot themselves +had a hand in its compilation.</p> +<p>Thus far we are on firm ground. But what are the conclusions which +Mrs. +Macdonald builds up from these foundations? The account, she says, of +Rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, +is hostile to him, but it was not the account which Madame d'Epinay +herself originally wrote. The hostile narrative was, in effect, +composed +by Grimm and Diderot, who induced Madame d'Epinay to substitute it for +her own story; and <a name="Page_169"></a>thus her own story could not +have agreed with +theirs. Madame d'Epinay knew the truth; she knew that Rousseau's +conduct +had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; +until, falling completely under the influence of Grimm and Diderot, she +had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the +reputation of her old friend. Mrs. Macdonald paints a lurid picture of +the conspirators at work—of Diderot penning his false and malignant +instructions, of Madame d'Epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last +touches to the fraud, of Grimm, rushing back to Paris at the time of +the +Revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that +the +result of all these efforts should reach posterity. Well! it would be +difficult—perhaps it would be impossible—to prove conclusively that +none of these things ever took place. The facts upon which Mrs. +Macdonald lays so much stress—the mutilations, the additions, the +instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts +tell—these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald's +theories; but there are other facts—no less important, and no less +certain—which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald's view, and +over which she passes as lightly as she can. Putting aside the question +of the <i>Mémoires</i>, we know nothing of Diderot which would +lead us to +entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and +badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a +singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted +his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. We know less +of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of +Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. Is all +this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? Are we to dismiss +it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? Surely +Diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in +the draft of the <i>Mémoires</i>. It is quite true that his +reputation <i>may</i> +have been ill-founded, that d'Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume <i>may</i> +have +been deluded, or <i>may</i> <a name="Page_170"></a>have been bribed, +into admitting him to their +friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such +hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of +Diderot's guilt that we <i>must</i> believe them? Mrs. Macdonald +declares +that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her +garbled and concocted manuscripts. If there is indeed no explanation of +these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald +puts forward—that they were the outcome of a false and malicious +conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau—then we must admit that +she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations +as +to Diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. But, before +we +come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other +possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we +sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every +loophole of escape!</p> +<p>It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay +manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. +Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, +owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the +events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which +will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least +interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the +<i>Mémoires</i>, so far from being historically accurate, were +in reality +full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely +imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, +almost +without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself +actually did describe them in his <i>Correspondance Littéraire</i>, +as +'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays +emphasis upon +this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the +most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue +one. +But she has proved too much. The <i>Mémoires</i>, she says, are +a fiction; +therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why +should we <a name="Page_171"></a>not suppose that the writers were not +liars at all, but +simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as +well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a +narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own +experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of +events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, +fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the +actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had +finished her work—a work full of subtle observation and delightful +writing—she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism +to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been +moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chère Madame, is +a very +poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to +have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he +behaved at that time. <i>C'était un homme à faire peur</i>. +You have missed a +great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' +Whereupon they gave her their own impressions of Rousseau's conduct, +they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they +jotted down some notes for her guidance. She rewrote the story in +accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the +incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought +fit—for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ébauche d'un long +roman.' +If we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, +shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to +common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised +integrity +the meanest of frauds?</p> +<p>To follow Mrs. Macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of +her +argument would be a difficult and tedious task. The circumstances with +which she is principally concerned—the suspicions, the accusations, the +anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether +Madame d'Epinay was jealous of Madame d'Houdetot, whether +Thérèse told +fibs, whether, on the 14th of the month, <a name="Page_172"></a>Grimm +was grossly impertinent, +and whether, on the 15th, Rousseau was outrageously rude, whether +Rousseau revealed a secret to Diderot, which Diderot revealed to +Saint-Lambert, and whether, if Diderot revealed it, he believed that +Rousseau had revealed it before—these circumstances form, as Lord +Morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and Mrs. Macdonald +has +done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths +or +the horror of the dreams. Her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is +enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus +of +appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant +matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an +instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. +Without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns +for us in Mrs. Macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon +one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) +only very slightly—the question of the motives which could have induced +Grimm and Diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies.</p> +<p>It is, doubtless, conceivable that Grimm, who was Madame d'Epinay's +lover, was jealous of Rousseau, who was Madame d'Epinay's friend. We +know very little of Grimm's character, but what we do know seems to +show +that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a +close alliance with Madame d'Epinay may have seemed to him a necessary +step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined +not to rest until his most serious rival in Madame d'Epinay's +affections +was utterly cast out. He was probably prejudiced against Rousseau from +the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his +view +of Rousseau's character and acts. The violence of the abuse which Grimm +and the rest of the Encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable +Jean-Jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of +the case. Whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something +about <i>traître</i> and <i>mensonge</i> and <i>scélératesse</i>. +He is referred to as +often as not <a name="Page_173"></a>as if he were some dangerous kind +of wild beast. This was +Grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of +his character which Madame d'Epinay finally expressed in her book. The +important question is—did Grimm know that Rousseau was in reality an +honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in +order to drive him out of Madame d'Epinay's affections? The answer, I +think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. If Grimm had +known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which +he had supplied Madame d'Epinay, and which led to the alteration of her +<i>Mémoires</i>, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of +the +manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been +made. As it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying +the draft, and he did not do so. He came to Paris at the risk of his +life in 1791, and stayed there for four months, with the object, +according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the +Empress Catherine, or, according to Mrs. Macdonald's account, of having +the rough draft of the <i>Mémoires</i> copied out by his +secretary. Whatever +his object, it is certain that the copy—that from which ultimately the +<i>Mémoires</i> were printed—was made either at that time, or +earlier; and +that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months +of his stay in Paris, from destroying the draft. Mrs. Macdonald's +explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. Grimm, she says, +must +have wished to get away from Paris 'without arousing suspicion by +destroying papers.' This is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would +have delighted that good knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Grimm had four +months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should +he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? There +can +be only one reply: Why <i>should</i> he?</p> +<p>If it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which +might +conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the +case +of Diderot presents difficulties <a name="Page_174"></a>which are +quite insurmountable. Mrs. +Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he +was tired of hearing Rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. +Surely Mrs. Macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such +an argument is a little too 'psychological.' The truth is that Diderot +had nothing to gain by attacking Rousseau. He was not, like Grimm, in +love with Madame d'Epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win +for himself a position in the Parisian world. His acquaintance with +Madame d'Epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were +from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. +In fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing Rousseau +was +that he believed Rousseau deserved abuse. Whether he was right in +believing so is a very different question. Most readers, at the present +day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet +place +in the perspective of Time, would, I think, agree that Diderot and the +rest of the Encyclopaedists were mistaken. As we see him now, in that +long vista, Rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a +distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, +above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his +contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was +modern. Among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth +century, he belonged to another world—to the new world of +self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy +and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of +Nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. Who +can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? Who +can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he +seemed, to the pupils of Voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? +'Cet homme est un forcené!' Diderot exclaims. 'Je tâche en +vain de faire +de la poésie, mais cet homme me revient tout à travers +mon travail; il +me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais à côté de +moi un damné: il est +damné, cela est sûr. <a name="Page_175"></a>... J'avoue +que je n'ai jamais éprouvé un trouble +d'âme si terrible que celui que j'ai ... Que je ne revoie plus +cet +homme-là, il me ferait croire au diable et à l'enfer. Si +je suis jamais +forcé de retourner chez lui, je suis sûr que je +frémirai tout le long du +chemin: j'avais la fièvre en revenant ... On entendait ses cris +jusqu'au +bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... Les poètes ont bien fait de +mettre +un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En +vérité, la main me +tremble.' Every word of that is stamped with sincerity; Diderot was +writing from his heart. But he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' +across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of +what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and +hell, but between the old world and the new.</p> +<p>1907.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Jean Jacques Rousseau: a New Criticism</i>, by Frederika +Macdonald. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall. 1906.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_POETRY_OF_BLAKE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_179"></a>THE +POETRY OF BLAKE<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>The new edition of Blake's poetical works, published by the +Clarendon +Press, will be welcomed by every lover of English poetry. The volume is +worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been +produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to +perpetuate. Blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his +editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the +present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the +case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh +inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result +of +accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's +text +has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so +habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming +permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since +the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent +admiration of the poet. 'It is not a little bewildering,' says Mr. +Sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic +extolling Blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of +lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the <i>Songs of Experience</i>, +while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than +seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and +important changes of meaning.' This is Procrustes admiring the +exquisite +<a name="Page_180"></a>proportions of his victim. As one observes the +countless instances +accumulated in Mr. Sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to +which the free and spontaneous expression of Blake's genius has been +subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where +he +speaks of the beautiful garden in which—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Priests in black gowns were walking their +rounds,<br> +</span><span>And binding with briers my joys and desires;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that Blake's prophetic +vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' +most of his future editors. Perhaps, though, if Blake's prescience had +extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; +and +we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial +efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. The present +edition, however, amply compensates for the past. Mr. Sampson gives us, +in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so +printed +as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and +nothing more. At the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he +has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the +variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; +and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through +the +labyrinth of Blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those +passages in the <i>Prophetic Books</i>, which throw light upon the +obscurities of the poems. The most important Blake document—the +Rossetti MS.—has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the +owner, Mr. W.A. White, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no +common measure; and the long-lost Pickering MS.—the sole authority for +some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems—was, with deserved +good fortune, discovered by Mr. Sampson in time for collation in the +present edition. Thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has +not +been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the +hand +of Blake. Mr. Sampson's minute and <a name="Page_181"></a>ungrudging +care, his high critical +acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of +the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make +his edition a noble and splendid monument of English scholarship. It +will be long indeed before the poems of Blake cease to afford matter +for +fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe +to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will +henceforward remain unchanged. There will be no room for further +editing. The work has been done by Mr. Sampson, once and for all.</p> +<p>In the case of Blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly +important, for more than one reason. Many of his effects depend upon +subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily +lost in reproduction. 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary +version of one of his most celebrated lines. But in Blake's original +engraving the words appear thus—'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'; and who +can fail to perceive the difference? Even more remarkable is the change +which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of +one +of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And what shoulder, and what art,<br> +</span><span>Could twist the sinews of thy heart?<br> +</span><span>And when thy heart began to beat,<br> +</span><span>What dread hand? and what dread feet?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>So Blake engraved the verse; and, as Mr. Sampson points out,'the +terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in +the +'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:—'What dread hand and what +dread feet?' It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery +of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present +edition.</p> +<p>But these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of +Blake's +poetry are not—important as they are—the only justification for a +scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was +not guided by the <a name="Page_182"></a>ordinarily accepted rules of +writing; he allowed +himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, +with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of +his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. +Thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own +making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. They are the +rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries +of an Unknown God; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox +incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate +afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with +advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven +in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor +is +this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has +been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop +there. The emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably +from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from +corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a +penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be +adduced as one instance—out of the enormous number which fill Mr. +Sampson's notes—of the dangers of editorial laxity.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I told my love, I told my love,<br> +</span><span class="i2">I told her all my heart;<br> +</span><span>Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,<br> +</span><span class="i2">Ah! she doth depart.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented +with +an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' But their +work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their +version +of the last four lines of the poem is as follows:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Soon after she was gone from me,<br> +</span><span class="i2">A traveller came by,<br> +</span><span>Silently, invisibly:<br> +</span><span class="i2">He took her with a sigh.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_183"></a>Reference to the MS., however, shows that the +last line had been struck +out by Blake, and another substituted in its place—a line which is now +printed for the first time by Mr. Sampson. So that the true reading of +the verse is:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Soon as she was gone from me,<br> +</span><span class="i2">A traveller came by,<br> +</span><span>Silently, invisibly—<br> +</span><span class="i2">O! was no deny.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>After these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to +Rossetti +and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the +poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their +concoction—'Love's Secret'—a title which there is no reason to suppose +had ever entered the poet's mind.</p> +<p>Besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little +poem +is an admirable instance of Blake's most persistent quality—his +triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. His most +characteristic +passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, +that +the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of +'inspiration.' Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, in his interesting +Introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such +attributions of peculiar powers to Blake, or indeed to any other poet. +'No man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' But +even +if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there +are degrees of inspiration; if Mr. F's Aunt was a woman of genius, what +are we to say of Hamlet? And Blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, +stands very high indeed. If one could strike an average among poets, it +would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, +Blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the +street. All poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making +one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'What made him think of +that?' With Blake, one is asking the question all the time.</p> +<p><a name="Page_184"></a>Blake's originality of manner was not, as has +sometimes been the case, +a cloak for platitude. What he has to say belongs no less distinctly to +a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. In +English literature, as Sir Walter Raleigh observes, he 'stands outside +the regular line of succession.' All that he had in common with the +great leaders of the Romantic Movement was an abhorrence of the +conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the +eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that +exaltation of Nature—the 'Vegetable Universe,' as he called it—from +which sprang the pantheism of Wordsworth and the paganism of Keats. +'Nature is the work of the Devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the Devil is +in us as far as we are Nature.' There was no part of the sensible world +which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. Even the +'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and +strong'; they were 'writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,' and destined +to +vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the Everlasting Gospel.</p> +<p>There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming +and +splendid lyrist, as the author of <i>Infant Joy</i>, and <i>The Tyger</i>, +and the +rest of the <i>Songs of Innocence and Experience</i>. These poems show +but +faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the +Rossetti and Pickering MSS., the presence of a hidden and symbolic +meaning in Blake's words becomes obvious enough—a meaning which +receives its fullest expression in the <i>Prophetic Books</i>. It was +only +natural that the extraordinary nature of Blake's utterance in these +latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an +inspired idiot—a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. +That belief, made finally impossible by Mr. Swinburne's elaborate +Essay, +is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and +indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of Time, which left +Blake for so long in the Paradise of Fools, is now about to place him +among the Prophets. Anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and +Blake's writings, according <a name="Page_185"></a>to Sir Walter +Raleigh, contain a complete +exposition of its doctrines. The same critic asserts that Blake was +'one +of the most consistent of English poets and thinkers.' This is high +praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. It is one +thing to give Blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in +the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large +mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could +never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. It is quite +another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a +consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be +ordinarily +attributed to a system of philosophy. Does Sir Walter mean to assert +that Blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? It is a little +difficult +to discover. Referring, in his Introduction, to Blake's abusive notes +on +Bacon's <i>Essays</i>, he speaks of—</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>The sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men +indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position when +his gods fall out among themselves. His case [Sir Walter wittily adds] +is not much unlike that of Terah, the father of Abraham, who (if the +legend be true) was a dealer in idols among the Chaldees, and, coming +home to his shop one day, after a brief absence, found that the idols +had quarrelled, and the biggest of them had smashed the rest to atoms. +Blake is a dangerous idol for any man to keep in his shop.</p> +</div> +<p>We wonder very much whether he is kept in Sir Walter Raleigh's.</p> +<p>It seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which +would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for +Blake. His treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very +far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are +liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'Plato,' said +Blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. +There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' And +this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'Satan's empire is the +empire of nothing'; there is no such <a name="Page_186"></a>thing as +evil—it is a mere +'negation.' And the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate +between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely +'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' Such was one of +the most fundamental of Blake's doctrines; but it requires only a +superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their +whole +tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. Every page he +wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings +raised +in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists +never surpassed. His epigrams on Reynolds are masterpieces of virulent +abuse; the punishment which he devised for Klopstock—his impersonation +of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'—is unprintable; as for those +who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they +'crucify Christ with the head downwards.' The contradiction is indeed +glaring. 'There is no such thing as wickedness,' Blake says in effect, +'and you are wicked if you think there is.' If it is true that evil +does +not exist, all Blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on +the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if +everything, in fact, is <i>not</i> good in God's eyes—then why not say +so? +Really Blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.'</p> +<p>But of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. To judge him +according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal +whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. In +fact, to Blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible +phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the +business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. +Reason is the 'Spectre' of Blake's mythology, that Spectre, which, he +says,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Around me night and day<br> +</span><span>Like a wild beast guards my way.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'Emanation,' +or +imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the +universe. Ever since the day when, in <a name="Page_187"></a>his +childhood, Blake had seen +God's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the +only reality and the only good. He beheld the things of this world 'not +with, but through, the eye':</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey,<br> +</span><span>With my outward, a Thistle across my way.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that Blake +yielded +the allegiance of his spirit. His attitude towards reason was the +attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. He never +could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'Spectre'; struggle as +he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the +ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if +argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued +to +what he worked in. As in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been +locked into a crystal cabinet—the world of the senses and of reason—a +gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had +danced so merrily before.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I strove to seize the inmost Form<br> +</span><span>With ardour fierce and hands of flame,<br> +</span><span>But burst the Crystal Cabinet,<br> +</span><span>And like a Weeping Babe became—<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>A weeping Babe upon the wild....<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>To be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the +impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the +same time. But Blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. +He would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying Christ +with the head downwards.</p> +<p>Besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious +objection to +Blake's mysticism—and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. +The mystic's creed—even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic +beauty of Blake's verse—comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of +its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and +<a name="Page_188"></a>almost cruel. The sacrifices which it demands +are too vast, in spite of +the divinity of what it has to offer. What shall it profit a man, one +is +tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? +The mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. The +following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of +inspiration which he never surpassed, Blake's conception of that ideal:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And throughout all Eternity<br> +</span><span>I forgive you, you forgive me.<br> +</span><span>As our dear Redeemer said:<br> +</span><span>'This the Wine, & this the Bread.'<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for +instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would +have subjected such lines as these. His criticism would have been +irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter +at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of +Blake's +words. But that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it +is difficult to doubt. Charles Lamb, perhaps, might have made it; +incidentally, indeed, he has. 'Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary +walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the +delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful +glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent +vanities, and jests, and <i>irony itself</i>'—do these things form no +part +of your Eternity?</p> +<p>The truth is plain: Blake was an intellectual drunkard. His words +come +down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated +heights. His spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, +it stumbled in the gutter of Felpham. His lips brought forth, in the +same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the <i>Auguries of +Innocence</i> +and the epigrams on Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was in no condition to chop +logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. In the +imaginary +portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can +see +him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the +abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head <a + name="Page_189"></a>thrown +back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his +rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we +gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are +almost tempted to go and do likewise.</p> +<p>But it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that Blake deserves +the +highest honours and the most enduring fame. In spite of his hatred of +the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and +spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of +Heaven than the works of man. They have, besides, the two most obvious +characteristics of Nature—loveliness and power. In some of his lyrics +there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a +child, +to be unconscious of itself. In his poem of <i>The Birds</i>—to +mention, out +of many, perhaps a less known instance—it is not the poet that one +hears, it is the birds themselves.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>O thou summer's harmony,<br> +</span><span>I have lived and mourned for thee;<br> +</span><span>Each day I mourn along the wood,<br> +</span><span>And night hath heard my sorrows loud.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In his other mood—the mood of elemental force—Blake produces effects +which are unique in literature. His mastery of the mysterious +suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He who torments the Chafer's Sprite<br> +</span><span>Weaves a Bower in endless Night.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! And, with the +aid +of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to +produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, +and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his +words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The Guests are scattered thro' the land,<br> +</span><span>For the Eye altering alters all;<br> +</span><span>The Senses roll themselves in fear,<br> +</span><span>And the flat Earth becomes a Ball;<br> +</span><a name="Page_190"></a><span>The Stars, Sun, Moon, all shrink +away,<br> +</span><span>A desart vast without a bound,<br> +</span><span>And nothing left to eat or drink,<br> +</span><span>And a dark desart all around.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And sometimes Blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and +infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin +mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to +predict +the annihilation of worlds:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>On the shadows of the Moon,<br> +</span><span>Climbing through Night's highest noon:<br> +</span><span>In Time's Ocean falling, drowned:<br> +</span><span>In Aged Ignorance profound,<br> +</span><span>Holy and cold, I clipp'd the Wings<br> +</span><span>Of all Sublunary Things:<br> +</span><span>But when once I did descry<br> +</span><span>The Immortal Man that cannot Die,<br> +</span><span>Thro' evening shades I haste away<br> +</span><span>To close the Labours of my Day.<br> +</span><span>The Door of Death I open found,<br> +</span><span>And the Worm Weaving in the Ground;<br> +</span><span>Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb;<br> +</span><span>Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb:<br> +</span><span>Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife,<br> +</span><span>And weeping over the Web of Life.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our +weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of +ordinary +converse, are enough. For Blake's words will always be strangers on +this +earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own +Gods:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">above Time's troubled fountains,<br> +</span><span>On the great Atlantic Mountains,<br> +</span><span>In my Golden House on high.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>They belong to the language of Los and Rahab and Enitharmon; and +their +mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the Sunflower's desire.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim +text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with +variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces.</i> By John +Sampson, Librarian in the University of Liverpool. Oxford: At the +Clarendon Press, 1905. +</p> +<p><i>The Lyrical Poems of William Blake.</i> Text by John Sampson, +with an +Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_LAST_ELIZABETHAN"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_193"></a>THE +LAST ELIZABETHAN</h2> +<p>The shrine of Poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this +should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. The cult is too +mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no +turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be +fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of +worshippers, and to pass on. Yet, if Apollo were to come down (after +the +manner of deities) and put questions—must we suppose to the +Laureate?—as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of +escaping wrath and destruction? Let us hope for the best; and perhaps, +if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be +to +watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which +Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many +among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, +indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this +extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is +his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition +whatever. If his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one +or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current +anthologies. But Beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest +upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it +rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank +verse. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the +sixteenth. His proper place was among that noble band of Elizabethans, +whose strong and splendid spirit gave to England, in one miraculous +generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has +known. <a name="Page_194"></a>If Charles Lamb had discovered his +tragedies among the folios of +the British Museum, and had given extracts from them in the <i>Specimens +of Dramatic Poets</i>, Beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to +us +now as those of Marlowe and Webster, Fletcher and Ford. As it happened, +however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had +wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. It is +to very little purpose that Mr. Ramsay Colles, his latest editor, +assures us that 'Beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from +Shelley to Browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to +us a passage in <i>Death's Jest Book</i> which anticipates the +doctrines of +<i>The Descent of Man.</i> For Beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with +his +contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such +after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. We must +take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover +and +appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">He hath skill in language;<br> +</span><span>And knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit,<br> +</span><span>A palm with winged imagination in it,<br> +</span><span>Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave;<br> +</span><span>And on them hangs a lamp of magic science<br> +</span><span>In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts<br> +</span><span>Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If the neglect suffered by Beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in +more +ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has +never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. For one reader who +cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing +there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the +history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the +character of Beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, +mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers +to circulating libraries. Yet only one account of his career has ever +been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect +as +it is, has long <a name="Page_195"></a>been out of print. It was +supplemented some years ago +by Mr. Gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important +circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of Beddoes' +letters. The main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have +been put together by Mr. Ramsay Colles, in his introduction to the new +edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost +complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of +Beddoes' existence—full as those years certainly were of interest and +even excitement. Nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that +strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all.</p> +<p>Readers of Miss Edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger +sister +Anne, married a distinguished Clifton physician, Dr. Thomas Beddoes. +Their eldest son, born in 1803, was named Thomas Lovell, after his +father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of <i>The Brides' +Tragedy</i> and <i>Death's Jest Book</i>. Dr. Beddoes was a remarkable +man, +endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare +independence of character. His scientific attainments were recognised +by +the University of Oxford, where he held the post of Lecturer in +Chemistry, until the time of the French Revolution, when he was obliged +to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity +of his liberal opinions. He then settled at Clifton as a physician, +established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics +and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose +merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents +which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, +if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously +suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a +striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. +Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's +inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less +remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. In both cases, +this +quality was coupled <a name="Page_196"></a>with a corresponding +eccentricity of conduct, which +occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something +very near insanity. Many stories are related of the queer behaviour of +Dr. Beddoes. One day he astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing +at +a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it +was +East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual +kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves. More +extraordinary +were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering +cows +to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that +they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' It is easy to imagine the +delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an +invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of <i>Harpagus</i> +and +<i>The Oviparous Tailor</i>. But 'little Tom,' as Miss Edgeworth calls +him, +was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for +Dr. Beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six +years old.</p> +<p>The genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a +rule, +one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous +world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid +than +the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a +distinguished +martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On +the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been +a +dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining +account +of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school +reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though +his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests were devoted not +so +much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. +Cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had +understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years +before he went to Charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading +which he chiefly delighted in was the Elizabethan drama. 'He liked +acting,' says Mr. Bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, <a + name="Page_197"></a>and used to give +apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly +Kean +and Macready. Though his voice was harsh and his enunciation +offensively +conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, +that +I was always glad to listen: even when I was pressed into the service +as +his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of +curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. +One play in particular, Marlowe's <i>Tragedy of Dr. Faustus</i>, +excited my +admiration in this way; and a liking for the old English drama, which I +still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' But +Beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; +when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material +himself. A locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock +on his bookcase; Beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man +appeared +he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, +his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which +was +interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal +torments. Such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the +locksmith, according to Mr. Bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and +execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his +work.'</p> +<p>Besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, Beddoes' school +compositions included a novel in the style of Fielding (which has +unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an Elizabethan tragedy, +and much miscellaneous verse. In 1820 he left Charterhouse, and went to +Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in the following year, while still a +freshman, he published his first volume, <i>The Improvisatore</i>, a +series +of short narratives in verse. The book had been written in part while +he +was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. It contains no trace of +the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the +sentiment, to use his own expression, 'Moorish.' Indeed, the only +interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that +the singular pre-occupa<a name="Page_198"></a>tion which eventually +dominated Beddoes' mind +had, even in these early days, made its appearance. The book is full of +death. The poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old +men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning +into mouldering heaps of corruption. The boy, with his elaborate +exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' +flesh creep. But the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, +when +Beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very +much +ashamed of his first publication. So eager was he to destroy every +trace +of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of +his friends. The story goes that he amused himself by visiting their +libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the +precious +volume, they found the pages gone.</p> +<p>Beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next +publication, +<i>The Brides' Tragedy</i>, which appeared in 1822. In a single bound, +he had +reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. The line +which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry +itself—that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no +one can explain—Beddoes had not yet crossed. But he had gone as far as +it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, +and he was still in his twentieth year. Many passages in <i>The +Brides' +Tragedy</i> seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which +will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has +come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, +whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered +such words as these:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye,<br> +</span><span>When first it darkened with immortal life<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or a line of such intense imaginative force as this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I've huddled her into the wormy earth;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_199"></a><span>The day is in its +shroud while yet an infant;<br> +</span><span>And Night with giant strides stalks o'er the world,<br> +</span><span>Like a swart Cyclops, on its hideous front<br> +</span><span>One round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The play was written on the Elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is +disfigured by Beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is +weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the +motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part +curiously remote from the realities of life. Yet, though the merit of +the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in +it that, while Beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless +possessed one important dramatic faculty—the power of creating detached +scenes of interest and beauty. The scene in which the half-crazed +Leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead +daughter +lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the +highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of +pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and +absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel,<br> +</span><span>Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye';<br> +</span><span>Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure<br> +</span><span>She has the welcome news of some good fortune,<br> +</span><span>And hoards the telling till her father comes;<br> +</span><span>... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then;<br> +</span><span>Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me,<br> +</span><span>I must be very angry till you speak.<br> +</span><span>Now this is silly; some of these young boys<br> +</span><span>Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport.<br> +</span><span>'Tis very like her. I could make this image<br> +</span><span>Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head:<br> +</span><span>'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face<br> +</span><span>Falls on my neck.—Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed!<br> +</span><span>I know it all—don't tell me.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, +such +as Webster himself might have been proud to write.</p> +<p><a name="Page_200"></a><i>The Brides' Tragedy</i> was well received +by critics; and a laudatory +notice of Beddoes in the <i>Edinburgh</i>, written by Bryan Waller +Procter—better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry +Cornwall—led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The +connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that +Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his +friends—Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In +the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months, +and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of +his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It +was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, +even to the most fortunate, once and once only—when youth, and hope, +and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and +opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of <i>The +Brides' +Tragedy</i> had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the +harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall +wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' +poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. +'His +poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: +more +than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished +act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, +and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, +but +filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination +had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right +or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these +very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each +started into form,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Like the red outline of beginning Adam,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply +cut +into their one observer's mind. The fine verse just quoted is the sole +remnant, indelibly stamped on the <a name="Page_201"></a>editor's +memory, of one of these +extinct creations.' Fragments survive of at least four dramas, +projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this +time. Beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing +forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">Creep not nor climb,<br> +</span><span>As they who place their topmost of sublime<br> +</span><span>On some peak of this planet, pitifully.<br> +</span><span>Dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly<br> +</span><span>Until you meet the gods!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Eighteen months after his Southampton visit, Beddoes took his degree +at +Oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action +which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. He determined to +take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established +himself, in 1825, at the University at Göttingen. It is very +clear, +however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. He +took with him to Germany the beginnings of a new play—'a very +Gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which I have a jewel of a +name—DEATH'S JEST-BOOK; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read +it'; and, during his four years at Göttingen, he devoted most of +his +leisure to the completion of this work. He was young; he was rich; he +was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that +he +could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he +settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious +occupation +of his life. But, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in +the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not +only +a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might +not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. +Engulfed among the students of Göttingen, England and English ways +of +life, and even English poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem Anbeter der +seligen Gottheiten der Musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to Kelsall, 'was +Unterhaltendes kann der Liebhaber <a name="Page_202"></a>von Knochen, +der fleissige Botaniker +und Phisiolog mittheilen?' In 1830 he was still hesitating between the +two alternatives. 'I sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to +devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in +science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with +him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, +directed towards widely different ends. While he was still in this +state +of mind, a new interest took possession of him—an interest which worked +havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: +he +became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time +beginning to agitate Europe. The details of his adventures are +unhappily +lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a +few scanty references in his rare letters to English friends; but it is +certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous +one. +He was turned out of Würzburg by 'that ingenious Jackanapes,' the +King +of Bavaria; he was an intimate friend of Hegetschweiler, one of the +leaders of liberalism in Switzerland; and he was present in Zurich when +a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half +armed +with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the +liberal government.' In the tumult Hegetschweiler was killed, and +Beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. During the +following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over +Germany and Switzerland, at Berlin, at Baden, at Giessen, a strange +solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling +lampoons upon the King of Prussia, translating Grainger's <i>Spinal +Cord</i> +into German, and Schoenlein's <i>Diseases of Europeans</i> into +English, +exploring Pilatus and the Titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly +lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his +'Gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, +and +giving it—as had been his wont for the last twenty years—just one more +touch before he sent it to the press. He appeared in England once or +twice, and in <a name="Page_203"></a>1846 made a stay of several +months, visiting the Procters +in London, and going down to Southampton to be with Kelsall once again. +Eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his +bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep +depression. He shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their +country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the Procters by starting +out one evening to set fire to Drury Lane Theatre with a lighted +five-pound note. After this last visit to England, his history becomes +even more obscure than before. It is known that in 1847 he was in +Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a +young baker called Degen—'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of +age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and +of +a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following +year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the +theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in +the +part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the +friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest +gloom. +'Il a été misérable,' said the waiter at the +Cigogne Hotel, where he was +staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted a deep wound +in +his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. He +was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, +until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. The +operation was successful, Beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, +Degen came back to Basel. It seemed as if all were going well; for the +poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his +bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian +journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can +tell? Was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove +him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to +obtain there a phial of deadly poison? On the evening of that day—the +26th of January, 1849—Dr. Ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, +to find Beddoes lying insensible upon <a name="Page_204"></a>the bed. +He never recovered +consciousness, and died that night. Upon his breast was found a pencil +note, addressed to one of his English friends. 'My dear Philips,' it +began, 'I am food for what I am good for—worms.' A few testamentary +wishes followed. Kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and—'W. Beddoes +must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet, 1847 growth, to drink +my death in ... I ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome +document concluded, 'a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg, +and that a bad one. Buy for Dr. Ecklin one of Reade's best +stomach-pumps.' It was the last of his additions to Death's Jest Book, +and the most <i>macabre</i> of all.</p> +<p>Kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary +care. +The manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. There were three +distinct +drafts of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>, each with variations of its own; +and from +these Kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared +in +1850. In the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical +works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope +and power of Beddoes' genius. They contain reprints of <i>The Brides' +Tragedy</i> and <i>Death's Jest Book</i>, together with two unfinished +tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the +poems are preceded by Kelsall's memoir of his friend. Of these rare and +valuable volumes the Muses' Library edition is almost an exact reprint, +except that it omits the memoir and revives <i>The Improvisatore</i>. +Only +one other edition of Beddoes exists—the limited one brought out by Mr. +Gosse in 1890, and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. +Mr. Gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those +already published by Kelsall; he made public for the first time the +true +story of Beddoes' suicide, which Kelsall had concealed; and, in 1893, +he +followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of Beddoes' letters. +It +is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of +Beddoes owe so much as to Mr. Gosse. <a name="Page_205"></a>He has +supplied most important +materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the +lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of +the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos—<i>The +Old Ghost</i>—and one of the most singular examples of his vein of +grotesque and ominous humour—<i>The Oviparous Tailor</i>. Yet it may be +doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are +traces in Beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still +come to light. What has happened, one would like to know, to <i>The +Ivory +Gate</i>, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which +Beddoes +talked of publishing in 1837? Only a few fine stanzas from it have ever +appeared. And, as Mr. Gosse himself tells us, the variations in <i>Death's +Jest Book</i> alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition +of +that work—'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of +the matter—'if the interest in Beddoes should continue to grow.'</p> +<p>'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the +drama +must be a bold, trampling fellow—no creeper into worm-holes—no reviver +even—however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words +occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by +critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an +instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they +preach. But the truth is that Beddoes was not a 'creeper into +worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. +Everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and +elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his +spirit. We have Kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his +composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in +his +letters and in the history of his life—records of a 'bold, trampling +fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry +itself. For the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped +unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. His mature blank verse +is perfect. <a name="Page_206"></a>It is not an artificial concoction +galvanized into the +semblance of life; it simply lives. And, with Beddoes, maturity was +precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult +and +dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. Blank verse is like the +Djin in the Arabian Nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, +or the most powerful of slaves. If you have not the magic secret, it +will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change +them +into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a +flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. +Beddoes had mastered the 'Open, Sesame' at an age when most poets are +still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. In his twenty-second +year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as +easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. He wishes to compare, for +instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single +eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison +is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast +multiplicity of objects. There could be no better exercise for a young +verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then +to examine these lines by Beddoes—lines where simplicity and splendour +have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>How glorious to live! Even in one thought<br> +</span><span>The wisdom of past times to fit together,<br> +</span><span>And from the luminous minds of many men<br> +</span><span>Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye,<br> +</span><span>Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets<br> +</span><span>Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered<br> +</span><span>Into one ray.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the +diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—that art +by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to +combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, +impossible to do more than touch upon this side—the technical side—of +Beddoes' <a name="Page_207"></a>genius. But it may be noticed that in +his mastery of +phrasing—as in so much besides—he was a true Elizabethan. The great +artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a +dead +thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an +eighteenth-century dramatist—Addison, for instance—to understand how +right they were.</p> +<p>Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which +had +already begun to show itself in <i>The Brides' Tragedy</i>, reached +its full +development in his subsequent work. The opening act of <i>The Second +Brother</i>—the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies—is a +striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way +that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not +one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next +brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after +years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar—to find his younger +brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay +debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the +duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and +extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While +Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, +Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended +by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. +'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught<br> +</span><span>Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute +his +brother.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. Insolent beggar!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Marcello</i>. Prince! But we must shake +hands.<br> +</span><span>Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent,<br> +</span><span>Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown<br> +</span><span>Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks<br> +</span><span>Of two close planets, catching in the air:<br> +</span><span>You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer,<br> +</span><a name="Page_208"></a><span>Wearing a crown of gods; I, the +vast top<br> +</span><span>Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark,<br> +</span><span>With nothing reigning on my desolate head<br> +</span><span>But an old spirit of a murdered god,<br> +</span><span>Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Aye, Prince, you have a brother—<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. The Duke—he'll scourge you.<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Marcello</i>. Nay, <i>the second</i>, sir,<br> +</span><span>Who, like an envious river, flows between<br> +</span><span>Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne....<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. Stood he before me there,<br> +</span><span>By you, in you, as like as you're unlike,<br> +</span><span>Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old,<br> +</span><span>And many years nearer than him to Death,<br> +</span><span>The falling brilliancy of whose white sword<br> +</span><span>Your ancient locks so silverly reflect,<br> +</span><span>I would deny, outswear, and overreach,<br> +</span><span>And pass him with contempt, as I do you.<br> +</span><span>Jove! How we waste the stars: set on, my friends.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish +down the darkened street:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Strike, you myrtle-crownèd boys,<br> +</span><span>Ivied maidens, strike together!...<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and Marcello is left alone:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">I went forth<br> +</span><span>Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes<br> +</span><span>His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer,<br> +</span><span>And like its horrible return was mine,<br> +</span><span>To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat,<br> +</span><span>Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love,<br> +</span><span>And take a heart of venom: let me make<br> +</span><span>A staircase of the frightened breasts of men,<br> +</span><span>And climb into a lonely happiness!<br> +</span><span>And thou, who only art alone as I,<br> +</span><span>Great solitary god of that one sun,<br> +</span><span>I charge thee, by the likeness of our state,<br> +</span><a name="Page_209"></a><span>Undo these human veins that tie me +close<br> +</span><span>To other men, and let your servant griefs<br> +</span><span>Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in<br> +</span><span>Salt scorn and steaming hate!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that +the +dukedom is his. The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes' +inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed +end. The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with +vivid +situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes +away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a +thousand streams. It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was +embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too +easily, +and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his +imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. His conception of +Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he +appears in the opening scene. But Beddoes could not leave him there; he +must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once +brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. The +interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio's +character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with +his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and +interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn +becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. But, by +this time, what has happened to the second brother? It is easy to +believe that Beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than +finish an old one. But it is not so certain that his method was quite +as +inexcusable as his critics assert. To the reader, doubtless, his faulty +construction is glaring enough; but Beddoes wrote his plays to be +acted, +as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I +think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess +that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be +very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of +impertinence, as long as one chooses to write <a name="Page_210"></a>in +the form of a play, +and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything +striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely upon the stage +that such faults of construction as those which disfigure Beddoes' +tragedies matter least. An audience, whose attention is held and +delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid +speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a +whole, is worthy of the separate parts. It would be foolish, in the +present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to +wish +for the public performance of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>; but it is +impossible +not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of +that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility +more thin than air.' Then, and then only, shall we be able to take the +true measure of Beddoes' genius.</p> +<p>Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of +construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the +common +realities of existence. Not only is the subject-matter of the greater +part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves +seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the +strange, and the unreal. They have no healthy activity; or, if they +have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are +all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting +the attributes of Death. The central idea of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>—the +resurrection of a ghost—fails to be truly effective, because it is +difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest +of the characters. The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of +Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to +ponder, +and agonise, and dream:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And yet how palely, with what faded lips<br> +</span><span>Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune!<br> +</span><span>Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter<br> +</span><span>Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost,<br> +</span><span>Arisen out of hoary centuries<br> +</span><span>Where none can speak his language.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_211"></a>Orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome +with the same feelings:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Methinks, these fellows, with their ready +jests,<br> +</span><span>Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike<br> +</span><span>Marriage or death.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole +atmosphere of Beddoes' tragedies:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Voices were heard, most loud, which no man +owned:<br> +</span><span>There were more shadows too than there were men;<br> +</span><span>And all the air more dark and thick than night<br> +</span><span>Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more<br> +</span><span>Than living breaths.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, +for +guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and +things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be +called a 'criticism of life.' If a poet must be a critic of life, +Beddoes was certainly no poet. He belongs to the class of writers of +which, in English literature, Spenser, Keats, and Milton are the +dominant figures—the writers who are great merely because of their art. +Sir James Stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that +Milton might have put all that he had to say in <i>Paradise Lost</i> +into a +prose pamphlet of two or three pages. But who cares about what Milton +had to say? It is his way of saying it that matters; it is his +expression. Take away the expression from the <i>Satires</i> of Pope, +or from +<i>The Excursion</i>, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will +leave +behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from +<i>Hyperion</i>, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the +better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than +a +rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the +other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression +that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many +modulations, +of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. +Playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as +this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_212"></a><span>Just now a beam of joy +hung on his eyelash;<br> +</span><span>But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye,<br> +</span><span>Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings<br> +</span><span>Into a darkening hole.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as +this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">I begin to hear<br> +</span><span>Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing<br> +</span><span>Of waves, where time into Eternity<br> +</span><span>Falls over ruined worlds.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>So fair a creature! of such charms compact<br> +</span><span>As nature stints elsewhere: which you may find<br> +</span><span>Under the tender eyelid of a serpent,<br> +</span><span>Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose,<br> +</span><span>By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see,<br> +</span><span>Like water from a crystal overfilled,<br> +</span><span>Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave<br> +</span><span>Her fair sides to the ground.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">My love was much;<br> +</span><span>My life but an inhabitant of his.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">I should not say<br> +</span><span>How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow,<br> +</span><span>On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm<br> +</span><span>And soft at evening: so the little flower<br> +</span><span>Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water<br> +</span><span>Close to the golden welcome of its breast,<br> +</span><span>Delighting in the touch of that which led<br> +</span><span>The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops<br> +</span><span>Tritons and lions of the sea were warring,<br> +</span><span>And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood,<br> +</span><span>Of their own inmates; others were of ice,<br> +</span><a name="Page_213"></a><span>And some had islands rooted in +their waves,<br> +</span><span>Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds,<br> +</span><span>And showers tumbling on their tumbling self,<br> +</span><span>And every sea of every ruined star<br> +</span><span>Was but a drop in the world-melting flood.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the +hectic, +dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>... What shall I do? I speak all wrong,<br> +</span><span>And lose a soul-full of delicious thought<br> +</span><span>By talking. Hush! Let's drink each other up<br> +</span><span>By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I,<br> +</span><span>My heavenly wife?...<br> +</span><span>I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second<br> +</span><span>By thy cheek's change.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can +almost +hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'Never!' exclaims the duke to his son +Torrismond:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>There lies no grain of sand between<br> +</span><span>My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence,<br> +</span><span>Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb<br> +</span><span>Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron,<br> +</span><span>Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire!<br> +</span><span>And may this intervening earth be snow,<br> +</span><span>And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna,<br> +</span><span>Plunging me, through it all, into the core,<br> +</span><span>Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds,<br> +</span><span>If I do not—O, but he is my son!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is not that tremendous? But, to find Beddoes in his most +characteristic +mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the +woof of mortality. One must wander with him through the pages of +<i>Death's Jest Book</i>, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution +of +reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn +that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask—'Are the ghosts +eaves-dropping?'—one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' Among +the ruins of his Gothic <a name="Page_214"></a>cathedral, on whose +cloister walls the Dance of +Death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of +existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">Whose tumultuous waves<br> +</span><span>Are heaped, contending ghosts,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>one may understand how it is that</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful<br> +</span><span>To man than Life.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Lingering there, one may watch the Deaths come down from their +cloister, +and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque +contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may +sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of Death.</p> +<p>In private intercourse Beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. +His +mind was like one of those Gothic cathedrals of which he was so +fond—mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less +real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and +immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with +grinning gargoyles. His conversation, Kelsall tells us, was full of +humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or +affectation. He loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and +carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. His +letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his +verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had +produced his school-boy novel in the style of Fielding. He was a man +whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so +eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, +and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: +not +the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, +Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who +forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a +grave, +and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. <a name="Page_215"></a>His +tragedy, like +Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will—a will so strong as +to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak +man to be decided—there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, +who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately +Beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so +rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality +beyond price. 'I might have been, among other things, a good poet,' +were +his last words. 'Among other things'! Aye, there's the rub. But, in +spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. Perhaps for +him, +after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high +nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of +death? There is a thought constantly recurring throughout his +writings—in his childish as in his most mature work—the thought of the +beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. He had +visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' +of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over +the soul. 'Let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his +earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' And, in <i>Death's +Jest Book</i>, Sibylla has the same thoughts:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">O Death! I am thy friend,<br> +</span><span>I struggle not with thee, I love thy state:<br> +</span><span>Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now;<br> +</span><span>And let me pass praying away into thee,<br> +</span><span>As twilight still does into starry night.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at +last +for the one thing stranger than all these—the experience of it? It is +easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at +the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual +dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had +recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, +perhaps, came crowding back upon him—thoughts of the futility of life, +and the supremacy of death and the <a name="Page_216"></a>mystical +whirlpool of the unknown, +and the long quietude of the grave. In the end, Death had grown to be +something more than Death to him—it was, mysteriously and +transcendentally, Love as well.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature +tells,<br> +</span><span>When laughing waters close o'er drowning men;<br> +</span><span>When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells;<br> +</span><span>When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken<br> +</span><span>Of those who seek a cure for long despair<br> +</span><span>Will learn ...<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What learning was it that rewarded him? What ghostly knowledge of +eternal love?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>If there are ghosts to raise,<br> +</span><span class="i2">What shall I call,<br> +</span><span>Out of hell's murky haze,<br> +</span><span class="i2">Heaven's blue pall?<br> +</span><span>—Raise my loved long-lost boy<br> +</span><span>To lead me to his joy.—<br> +</span><span class="i2">There are no ghosts to raise;<br> +</span><span class="i2">Out of death lead no ways;<br> +</span><span class="i4">Vain is the call.<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>—Know'st thou not ghosts to sue?<br> +</span><span class="i2">No love thou hast.<br> +</span><span>Else lie, as I will do,<br> +</span><span class="i2">And breathe thy last.<br> +</span><span>So out of Life's fresh crown<br> +</span><span>Fall like a rose-leaf down.<br> +</span><span class="i2">Thus are the ghosts to woo;<br> +</span><span class="i2">Thus are all dreams made true,<br> +</span><span class="i4">Ever to last!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>1907.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="HENRI_BEYLE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_219"></a>HENRI +BEYLE</h2> +<br> +<p>In the whole of French literature it would be difficult to point to +a +figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to +English readers as Henri Beyle. Most of us are, no doubt, fairly +familiar with his pseudonym of 'Stendhal'; some of us have read <i>Le +Rouge et Le Noir</i> and <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i>; but how many +of us have +any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment +appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete +edition, +every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with +enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary +periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and +appreciation? The eminent critic, M. André Gide, when asked +lately to +name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of +France, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one +or other of the novels of Stendhal, his only difficulty was in making +his choice among these; and he finally decided upon <i>La Chartreuse +de +Parme</i>. According to this high authority, Henri Beyle was +indisputably +the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the French language, yet +on this side of the Channel we have hardly more than heard of him! Nor +is it merely as a writer that Beyle is admired in France. As a man, he +seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a +singular devotion. There are 'Beylistes,' or 'Stendhaliens,' who dwell +with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend +with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who +discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal +friendship, and register his opinions with <a name="Page_220"></a>a +zeal which is hardly less +than sectarian. But indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his +French devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own +indifference. Beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, +most +of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the French character. This +does not mean that he was a typical Frenchman; far from it. He did not, +like Voltaire or Hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius +vibrated in response. He has never been, it is unlikely that he ever +will be, a popular writer. His literary reputation in France has been +confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. +'On me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers 1880'; and the 'Beylistes' +point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost +divine +prescience of the great man. But in truth Beyle was always read by the +<i>élite</i> of French critics and writers—'the happy few,' as +he used to +call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic +admirers. During his lifetime Balzac, in an enormous eulogy of <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i>, paid him one of the most magnificent +compliments +ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. In the next +generation Taine declared himself his disciple; a little later—'vers +1880,' in fact—we find Zola describing him as 'notre père +à tous,' and +M. Bourget followed with elaborate incense. To-day we have writers of +such different tendencies as M. Barrès and M. Gide acclaiming +him as a +supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'Beylistes.' Yet, +at +the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to +trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. It is the opinion +of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of French life. Thus +Sainte-Beuve, in two characteristic 'Lundis,' poured a great deal of +very tepid water upon Balzac's flaming panegyric. Then Flaubert—'vers +1880,' too—confessed that he could see very little in Stendhal. And, +only a few years ago, M. Chuquet, of the Institute, took the trouble to +compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail +all the known facts concerning the life and <a name="Page_221"></a>writings +of a man whom he +forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. +These discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd +differences of taste? How are we to reconcile the admiration of Balzac +with the dislike of Flaubert, the raptures of M. Bourget and M. +Barrès +with the sniffs of Sainte-Beuve and M. Chuquet of the Institute? The +explanation seems to be that Beyle occupies a position in France +analogous to that of Shelley in England. Shelley is not a national +hero, +not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an Englishman, but +for the opposite reason—because he possessed so many of them in an +extreme degree. The idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the +unconventionality which give Shakespeare, Nelson, and Dr. Johnson their +place in our pantheon—all these were Shelley's, but they were his in +too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will +never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be +Englishmen +unable to appreciate him at all. Such, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>—and in +this +case the proviso is a very large one—is the position of Beyle in +France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French +bean +he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French +French writer—too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and +so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet +this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some +attention. +An understanding of this very Gallic individual might give us a new +insight into the whole strange race. And besides, the curious creature +is worth looking at for his own sake too.</p> +<p>But, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the +dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. Even his +most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true +nature of his achievements. Balzac thought of him as an artist, Taine +was captivated by his conception of history, M. Bourget adores him as a +psychologist, M. Barrès lays stress upon his 'sentiment +d'honneur,' <a name="Page_222"></a>and +the 'Beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. Certainly very +few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly +and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as Henri Beyle. The +circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity +of +his genius. He was born in 1783, when the <i>ancien régime</i> +was still in +full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the +Napoleonic +wars; he lived to see the Bourbon reaction, the Romantic revival, the +revolution of 1830, and the establishment of Louis Philippe; and when +he +died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way +through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world +and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, +preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His +grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner +of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile +'mélangé de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror +came, two +representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the +result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty +others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the Republic, and +confined to his house. At the age of sixteen Beyle arrived in Paris, +just after the <i>coup d'état</i> of the 18th Brumaire had made +Bonaparte +First Consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin +Daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the +organisation of Napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure +moments—for apparently he had leisure moments—were devoted to the +composition of idylls in the style of Tibullus and to an enormous +correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. It +was +as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that Beyle spent nearly +the whole of the next fifteen years of his life—in Paris, in Italy, in +Germany, in Russia—wherever the whirling tempest of the Napoleonic +policy might happen to carry him. His actual military experience was +considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his +friends to understand it <a name="Page_223"></a>had been. For hardly +more than a year, during +the Italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: +the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat +department. +The descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his +adventures +at Marengo, at Jéna, at Wagram, or at the crossing of the +Niémen have +been shown by M. Chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. +Beyle was present at only one great battle—Bautzen. 'Nous voyons fort +bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi à +trois +heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est à dire +rien.' He +was, however, at Moscow in 1812, and he accompanied the army through +the +horrors of the retreat. When the conflagration had broken out in the +city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound +copy of the <i>Facéties</i> of Voltaire; the book helped to +divert his mind +as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that +followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who +could smile over Akakia and Pompignan in such a situation, one day he +left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow.</p> +<p>The fall of Napoleon threw Beyle out of employment, and the period +of +his literary activity began. His books were not successful; his fortune +gradually dwindled; and he drifted in Paris and Italy, and even in +England, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide +sometimes in his head. But in 1830 the tide of his fortunes turned. The +revolution of July, by putting his friends into power, brought him a +competence in the shape of an Italian consulate; and in the same year +he +gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of <i>Le +Rouge +et Le Noir</i>. The rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of +his +official duties at Civita Vecchia, alternating with periods of +leave—one of them lasted for three years—spent in Paris among his +friends, of whom the most distinguished was Prosper +Mérimée. In 1839 +appeared his last published work—<i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i>; and +three +years later he died suddenly in Paris. <a name="Page_224"></a>His +epitaph, composed by himself +with the utmost care, was as follows:</p> +<div style="font-weight: bold;" class="blkquot"> +<p style="text-align: center;">QUI GIACE<br> +ARRIGO BEYLE MILANESE<br> +VISSE, SCRISSE, AMO.</p> +</div> +<p>The words, read rightly, indicate many things—his adoration of Italy +and Milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society +and +the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to +literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of +his +experience—in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated +manhood, in his calm old age—there had never been a moment when he was +not in love.</p> +<p>Beyle's work falls into two distinct groups—the first consisting of +his +novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include +several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism +and +travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of +the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; +and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is +promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition +which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of +Beyle's +writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly +artistic. It was as a novelist that Beyle first gained his celebrity, +and it is still as a novelist—or rather as the author of <i>Le Rouge +et +Le Noir</i> and <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i> (for an earlier work, <i>Armance</i>, +some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out +of account)—that he is most widely known to-day. These two remarkable +works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which +they were composed. It was in the full flood of the Romantic revival, +that marvellous hour in the history of French literature when the +tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth +of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of +suddenly +burst upon the view. It was <a name="Page_225"></a>the hour of Hugo, +Vigny, Musset, Gautier, +Balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric +passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse +towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity +and the manifold comprehension of life. But, if we turn to the +contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a +succession +of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact +narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the +eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the +perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his +grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It +is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment with +a +<i>brochure</i> attacking Racine at the expense of Shakespeare; but +this was +merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent +in his nature; and in reality the whole Romantic movement meant nothing +to him. There is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend +between him and Hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a +couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. No +wonder! But Beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was +hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. As +for Chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like +poison. He used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point +of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a +phrase in <i>Atala</i>—'la cime indéterminée des +forêts'—was not +intolerable. Probably he was romancing (M. Chuquet says so); but at any +rate the story sums up symbolically Beyle's attitude towards his art. +To +him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'—the emphatic phrase, the +picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm—was anathema. The charm that +such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose +thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth +century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an +artificial neatness about <a name="Page_226"></a>the form which +imposed itself upon the +substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the +perfect style, and that was the <i>Code Napoléon</i>; for there +alone +everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of +what +was to be said. A statement of law can have no place for irrelevant +beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it +must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be +seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. Beyle declared that +he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the Code every +morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' This again was for long +supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers +among the MSS. at Grenoble have discovered page after page copied out +from the Code in Beyle's handwriting. No doubt, for that wayward lover +of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what <i>he</i> +took quite seriously.</p> +<p>This attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an +official +document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole +tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and +intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of +mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between +his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of +materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, +the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps Balzac's +greatest discovery, Beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. Such +matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no +small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. +In the earlier chapters of <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i>, for instance, +he is +concerned with almost the same subject as Balzac in the opening of <i>Les +Illusions Perdues</i>—the position of a young man in a provincial town, +brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the +leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a +woman +of refinement. But while in Balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete +<a name="Page_227"></a>vision of provincial life down to the last +pimple on the nose of the +lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal +problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his +genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of +a +surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. In fact, +Beyle's method is the classical method—the method of selection, of +omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central +impression of supreme reality. Zola criticises him for disregarding 'le +milieu.'</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il y a [he says] un épisode célèbre dans 'Le +Rouge et Le Noir,' la scène où Julien, assis un soir +à côté de Mme. de Rénal, sous les branches +noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la main, pendant +qu'elle cause avec Mme. Derville. C'est un petit drame muet d'une +grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analysé merveilleusement les +états d'âme de ses deux personnages. Or, le milieu +n'apparaît pas une seule fois. Nous pourrions être +n'importe où dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scène +resterait la même pourvu qu'il fit noir ... Donnez +l'épisode à un écrivain pour qui les milieux +existent, et dans la défaite de cette femme, il fera entrer la +nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptés molles. +Et cet écrivain sera dans la vérité, son tableau +sera plus complet.</p> +</div> +<p>More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? Zola, with +his +statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell +a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. +He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol +'nuit,' +to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. Everybody +knows all about the night's accessories—'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses +voluptés molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once +in a +way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! And Beyle is perpetually +evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'Comme il insiste +peu!' as M. Gide exclaims. Perhaps the best test of a man's +intelligence +is his capacity for making a summary. Beyle knew this, and his novels +are <a name="Page_228"></a>full of passages which read like nothing so +much as extraordinarily +able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost.</p> +<p>It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye +for +detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was +of +the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling +vividness, when he wished. But he very rarely did wish: it was apt to +involve a tiresome insistence. In his narratives he is like a brilliant +talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, +taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here +and +there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too +obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and +taking care above all things never to force the note. His famous +description of the Battle of Waterloo in <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i> +is +certainly the finest example of this side of his art. Here he produces +an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with +unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the +loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its +insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses +and +indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his +own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero—a young Italian +impelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a +volunteer +on the eve of the battle—go through the great day in such a state of +vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that +he +really <i>was</i> at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial +and +unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by +two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot +from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he +crosses +and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks +brandy with a <i>vivandière</i>, gallops over a field covered +with dying men, +has an indefinite skirmish in a wood—and it is over. At one moment, +having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his +horse to splash into a <a name="Page_229"></a>stream, thereby covering +one of the generals +with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good +specimen of Beyle's narrative style:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouvé les +généraux tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla +redoubler; ce fut à peine s'il entendit le +général, par lui si bien mouillé, qui criait +à son oreille:</p> +<p> Où as-tu pris ce cheval?</p> +<p> Fabrice était tellement troublé, qu'il +répondit en Italien: <i>l'ho comprato poco fa</i>. (Je viens de +l'acheter à l'instant.)</p> +<p> Que dis-tu? lui cria le général.</p> +<p> Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne +put lui répondre. Nous avouerons que notre héros +était fort peu héros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne +venait chez lui qu'en seconde ligne; il était surtout +scandalisé de ce bruit qui lui faisait mal aux oreilles. +L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait une grande pièce de terre +labourée, située au delà du canal, et ce champ +était jonché de cadavres.</p> +</div> +<p>How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a +reticence in +explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial +expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed +that +'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in +conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, +of +hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness +has +produced?</p> +<p>It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and +intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is +describing, for instance, the development of Julien Sorel's mind in <i>Le +Rouge et Le Noir</i>, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant +with +its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the +whirling vortex of life—then we seem to be witnessing not so much the +presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. The +procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the +inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the +demonstration is complete. Here the influence <a name="Page_230"></a>of +the eighteenth century +is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of +syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of +Helvétius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its +austerest form—'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables +in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative +style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of the <i>Code Civil</i>.</p> +<p>If this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and +brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the +French genius in an extreme degree, Beyle's position in literature +would +present very little difficulty. He would take his place at once as a +late—an abnormally late—product of the eighteenth century. But he was +not that. In his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the +veins of Voltaire. It was the virus of modern life—that new +sensibility, that new passionateness, which Rousseau had first made +known to the world, and which had won its way over Europe behind the +thunder of Napoleon's artillery. Beyle had passed his youth within +earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the +echo of it. It was in vain that he studied Condillac and modelled his +style on the Code; in vain that he sang the praises of <i>la lo-gique</i>, +shrugged his shoulders at the Romantics, and turned the cold eye of a +scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained +essentially a man of feeling. His unending series of <i>grandes +passions</i> +was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to +the Fine Arts. Though his taste in music and painting was the taste of +his time—the literary and sentimental taste of the age of Rossini and +Canova—he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a +kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. +The +'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into Italy he +heard at Novara the <i>Matrimonio Segreto</i> of Cimarosa, marked an +epoch in +his life. He adored Mozart: 'I can imagine nothing more distasteful to +me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile <a name="Page_231"></a>walk through +the mud; but I would +take one at this moment if I knew that I should hear a good performance +of <i>Don Giovanni</i> at the end of it.' The Virgins of Guido Reni +sent him +into ecstasies and the Goddesses of Correggio into raptures. In short, +as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le Beau' in whatever +form +he found it. <i>Le Beau!</i> The phrase is characteristic of the +peculiar +species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical +man of the world. His whole vision of life was coloured by it. His +sense +of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'—his +immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act +or character—an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics +and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic +reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is +surprising, +because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and +enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of +a +schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? Beyle, +for +instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of +himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'Il +respecta un seul homme: Napoléon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he +must +have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his +unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, +and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double +nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, +as +it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint.</p> +<p>In his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for +what is best and what is worst. When the two forces work in unison the +result is sometimes of extraordinary value—a product of a kind which it +would be difficult to parallel in any other author. An eye of icy gaze +is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love +are recorded in the language of Euclid. The image of the surgeon +inevitably suggests itself—the hand with the <a name="Page_232"></a>iron +nerve and the swift +knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. It is the intensity +of +Beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that +makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of +adventure or all the marvels of high romance. The passage in <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i> describing Count Mosca's jealousy has this +quality, +which appears even more clearly in the chapters of <i>Le Rouge et Le +Noir</i> +concerning Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. Here Beyle has a +subject after his own heart. The loves of the peasant youth and the +aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, +and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each +other—these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' +which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. The +climax +is reached when Mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws +herself into the arms of Julien, who forces himself to make no response:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort imposé par la politique +était pénible. Je ne dois pas même me permettre de +presser contre mon coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me +méprise, ou elle me maltraite. Quel affreux caractère!</p> +<p> Et en maudissant le caractère de Mathilde, il l'en aimait +cent fois plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine.</p> +<p> L'impassible froideur de Julien redoubla le malheur de Mademoiselle +de la Mole. Elle était loin d'avoir le sang-froid +nécessaire pour chercher à deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il +sentait pour elle en cet instant. Elle ne put se résoudre +à le regarder; elle tremblait de rencontrer l'expression du +mépris.</p> +<p> Assise sur le divan de la bibliothèque, immobile et la +tête tournée du côté opposé à +Julien, elle était en proie aux plus vives douleurs que +l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire éprouver à une +âme humaine. Dans quelle atroce démarche elle venait de +tomber!</p> +<p> Il m'était réservé, malheureuse que je suis! +de voir repoussées les avances les plus indécentes! Et +repoussées par qui? ajoutait l'orgueil fou de douleur, +repoussées par un domestique de mon père.</p> +<p> C'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle à haute voix.</p> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_233"></a>At that moment she suddenly sees some +unopened letters addressed to +Julien by another woman.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>—Ainsi, s'écria-t-elle hors d'elle-même, non seulement +vous êtes bien avec elle, mais encore vous la méprisez. +Vous, un homme de rien, mépriser Madame la Maréchale de +Fervaques!</p> +<p> —Ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant à ses +genoux, méprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus +vivre privée de ton amour. Et elle tomba tout à fait +évanouie.</p> +<p> —La voilà donc, cette orgueilleuse, à mes pieds! se +dit Julien.</p> +</div> +<p>Such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the +concentrated essence of Beyle's genius, and which, in its combination +of +high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim +comparison with the great dialogues of Corneille.</p> +<p>'Je fais tous les efforts possibles pour être <i>sec</i>,' he +says of +himself. 'Je veux imposer silence à mon coeur, qui croit avoir +beaucoup +à dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir écrit qu'un +soupir, quand je +crois avoir noté une vérité.' Often he succeeds, +but not always. At +times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages +with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his +sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in +an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot +keep +up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his +imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the +end +they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. When, in <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i>, Fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first +action is +to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured +by +a cut in the face; and Beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by +it. In the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the +brilliant, worldly, sceptical Duchesse de Sanseverina, and then, not +quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the +reigning Prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. This +really makes her perfect. But the most striking example of Beyle's +<a name="Page_234"></a>inability to resist the temptation of +sacrificing his head to his heart +is in the conclusion of <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i>, where Julien, to +be +revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down +into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. Not +only +is Beyle entranced by the <i>bravura</i> of this senseless piece of +brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial +observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero +the +blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of Julien's execution, +even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic +style: 'Jamais cette tête n'avait été aussi +poétique qu'au moment où +elle allait tomber.' Just as Beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an +extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he +expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally +characteristic quality of his compatriots—their instinctive +responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in +particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily +unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by +the +'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades +of +Napoleon, which animated the armies of France to victory, pieces of +nauseous clap-trap. And just now it is this side—to us the obviously +weak side—of Beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with French +critics. To judge from M. Barrès, writing dithyrambically of +Beyle's +'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. The +sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this +side of the Channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too!</p> +<p>The view of Beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen +with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. It is to these +that his most modern admirers devote their main attention—particularly +to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly +characteristic of their author, and—whatever the subject may be, from a +guide to Rome to a life of Napoleon—one gathers in them, scattered up +and down through their pages, a curious, <a name="Page_235"></a>dimly +adumbrated +philosophy—an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view—<i>le +Beylisme</i>. It is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality +that +their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. An +apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his +reflections upon Love. The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of +analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of +being a parody of <i>L'Esprit des Lois</i>, is yet full of +originality, of +lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have +written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so +stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But +here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is +interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of +La Bruyère's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred +pages of +disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as +one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless +and +problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any +exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in +spite of his <i>lo-gique</i>, ever to have framed a coherent +philosophy; it +is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, +and +quick visions of flying thoughts. M. Barrès says that what lies +at the +bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles +énergies.' But +there are many kinds of 'belles énergies,' and some of them +certainly do +not fit into the framework of 'le Beylisme.' 'Quand je suis +arrêté par +des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande +colère contre le gouvernement et le curé de l'endroit. +Quand au voleur, +il me plaît, s'il est énergique, car il m'amuse.' It was +the energy of +self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not +interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at +times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an +egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. +The +'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was no +respectable +epicureanism; it had about it a touch of <a name="Page_236"></a>the +fanatical. There was +anarchy in it—a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above +all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. Writing +his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on +the +joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at +Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI. His father +announced it:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>—C'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont +assassiné.</p> +<p> Je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai +éprouvé en ma vie. Le lecteur pensera peut-être que +je suis cruel, mais tel j'étais à 5 X 2, tel je suis +à 10 X 5 + 2 ... Je puis dire que l'approbation des êtres, +que je regarde comme faibles, m'est absolument indifférente.</p> +</div> +<p>These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are +constantly +recurring in his books. He is always discharging his shafts against +some +established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred +for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities—the Roman +Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly +hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, +and whose account of the seminary in <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i> is one +of the +most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of +the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a +prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern +thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of +Nietzsche. His love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, +his scorn of the Christian virtues, his admiration of the Italians of +the Renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the +herd—these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on +Rossini and the Coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past +and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a +surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of Zarathustra. The creator of +the Duchesse de Sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the +transvaluation of all values. <a name="Page_237"></a>Characteristically +enough, the appearance +of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces +in +European society—Goethe and the Austrian police. It is clear that +Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was +something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance +in +his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal,' he observed to +Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so. He is extremely free and +extremely impertinent, and ... I recommend you to buy all his books.' +As +for the Austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. Beyle's +book of travel, <i>Rome, Naples et Florence</i>, was, they decided, +pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was +hunted out of Milan in consequence.</p> +<p>It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private +life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices +were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have +committed an 'espagnolisme.' Perhaps his worst sin was that of +plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely +'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied +several choice extracts culled from the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. On +this +occasion he was particularly delighted, since the <i>Edinburgh</i>, in +reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the +very +passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer +should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not +inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his +love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, +so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be +found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, +capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, +covering +his papers with false names and anagrams—for the police, he said, were +on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and +less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was +he registered the fact—upon his braces. <a name="Page_238"></a>He +dreamed and drifted a great +deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, +wrote +the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up +his +mind whether Napoleon after all <i>was</i> the only being he +respected; +no—there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at +Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime +parfaite, +me fait songer à ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes +rêveries et me +fait venir des idées excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me +dissimuler que j'ai le malheur <i>of being too great an admirer of +Lady +L....</i>' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui +souvent encore remplissent ma tête à l'âge de <i>fifty-two</i>.' +He wondered +whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat +scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the +fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until +at +last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M. +Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing +to +perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough +to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the +satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen +by +the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or +the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since +the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more +cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was +never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late +at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be +very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he +said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, où la +conversation est +gaie, anecdotique, et où l'on prend du punch léger +à minuit et demie, +est l'endroit du monde où je me trouve le mieux.'</p> +<p>And in such a Paradise of Frenchmen we may leave Henri Beyle.</p> +<p>1914</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="LADY_HESTER_STANHOPE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_241"></a>LADY +HESTER STANHOPE</h2> +<br> +<p>The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its +transmigrations +through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under +whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak +upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger—the rigid symbol of an +indomitable <i>hauteur</i>. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final +stage. +The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; +the +hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady +Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a +nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some +eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the +air.</p> +<p>Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the +child +of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, +which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate +results. +There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing +families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly +ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century +earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this +tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished +suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit +was +still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate.</p> +<p>She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl +Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the +first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the +House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings—'damned aristocratical +nonsense'—from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, <a + name="Page_242"></a>Chatham's +daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years +old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her +stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen +Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of +a +tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped +from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her +grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later, +Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his +death in 1806.</p> +<p>Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid +power, +were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the +movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her +uncle's +household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not +beautiful, she was fascinating—very tall, with a very fair and clear +complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful +expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those +days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you +saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was +devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was +devoted, too—but in a more dangerous fashion—to the intoxicating +Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which +she +carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something +overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. +Lord +Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could +never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her +distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to +Russia; +she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling +everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there +were +rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to +<i>afficher</i>, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the +slightest +provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a +terrible and unexpected catastrophe. <a name="Page_243"></a>Pitt died. +And Lady Hester +suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in +Montague Square on a pension of £1200 a year.</p> +<p>She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip +continued +to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was +announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was +whispered that Canning was 'le régnant'—that he was with her +'not only +all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became +attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry +him—as she seems to have asserted many years later—is doubtful; his +letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly +warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on +his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it +was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from +London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set +sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his +regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England.</p> +<p>There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought +of a +lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she +moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in +England—at last even in Europe—grew distasteful to her; as late as +1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or +three +English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private +physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly +and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She +was +conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. +After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered +that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted +accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by +Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to +visit +Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the +winter <a name="Page_244"></a>of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a +violent storm sprang up; the +whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a +bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty +hours. +Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in +safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's +career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping +raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman—a dress which she never +afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization.</p> +<p>She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her +appearance in +Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by +the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she +wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, +and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in +gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the +inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, +rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she +turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her +travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on +horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled +burnous. +Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she +absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through +various and dreadful sufferings—shipwreck and starvation, rats and +black-beetles unspeakable—but she retained her equanimity. Whatever +her Ladyship might think fit to be, <i>she</i> was an Englishwoman to +the +last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr.</p> +<p>Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most +fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in +man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was +begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. +'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the +<a name="Page_245"></a>city unveiled at midday. The population were +thunderstruck; but at last +their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was +hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out +before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not +satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious +and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins +of +Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever +seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she +preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs, +who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her +courage, +enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their +company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild +enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple +crowned +her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee +of +Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily +declined.</p> +<p>The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the +year +1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere +as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from +town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she +herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was +uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West—must she return to it? +The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable—but could +she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was +suddenly +struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne +in +upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the +slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and +took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she +dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began +excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden +treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having <a name="Page_246"></a>unearthed +nothing but +an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she +ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to +her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up +Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained +until her death, more than twenty years later.</p> +<p>Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her +wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her +existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was +sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great +mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying +courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a +rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with +the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one +the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, +through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was +revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over +the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence +brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar +grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature +of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely +the +tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of +£20 a +year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled +imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been +transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself +believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a +French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the +punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester +actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems +probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady +Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her +terrible neighbour, <a name="Page_247"></a>the Emir Beshyr, she +maintained an undaunted front. +She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as +physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might +have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe +admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain +is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared +and +loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, +became +at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she +awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter +Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred +horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last +triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an +Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go +there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her +own people.'</p> +<p>Her expenses were immense—not only for herself but for others, for +she +poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and +was +swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants +pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of +terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her +habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up +all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who +alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having +withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a +poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and +there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on—talk that scaled +the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an +abolished past—stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations +against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire—mingled +phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and +speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and +lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the <a + name="Page_248"></a>unaccountable +figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the +tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be +robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she +talked +on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that +the time was coming when she should talk no more?</p> +<p>Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of +her +brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends, +except Lord Hardwicke—with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose +kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the +English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and +harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled +her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable +disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, +filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of +it +all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady +regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours +together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household +before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more +and more involved—grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the +faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her +affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful, +miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten +the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from +the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the +payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious +missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of +Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return +to Europe, and he—how could he have done it?—obeyed her. Her health +was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, +absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her—we know +no more. She had vowed never again to <a name="Page_249"></a>pass +through the gate of her +house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden—that beautiful garden +which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and +its bowers—and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her +servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in +the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her +bed—inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air.</p> +<p>1919.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="MR_CREEVEY"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_253"></a>MR. CREEVEY</h2> +<br> +<p>Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone +knows, +she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt +to +be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she +is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have +provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances +she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run +round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good +lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her +drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. +They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists +of +the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose +function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events +and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is +Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio, +with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is +measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and +the little wretch did his job very well.</p> +<p>It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of +the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round +belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was +educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years +of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a +habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. +In +1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life—a member of +Parliament, a familiar figure in high <a name="Page_254"></a>society, +an insatiable gossip +with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place +he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the +greater part of his life his income was less than £200 a year. +But those +were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they +were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and +splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, +penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into +Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the +country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole +political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of +abuses, +he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and +ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was +relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but +Mrs. +Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, +and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence—without a house, +without servants, without property of any sort—wandering from country +mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at +last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with +a +pleasant little post which brought him in about £600 a year. +Apart from +these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was +static—static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always +on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; +but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by +no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round +into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he +would +gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the +wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was +before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an +observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his +tongue, and then—for so the Fates had decided—with his pen. He wrote +easily, spicily, <a name="Page_255"></a>and persistently; he had a +favourite stepdaughter, +with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have +preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of +course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's +exhilarating <i>pas de chat</i>.</p> +<p>Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There +are +no great names in his vocabulary—only nicknames: George III. is 'Old +Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell +'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is +sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old +Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog +along on £40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of +the great +Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his +scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his +own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course—Canning was all +perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual +confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious +and +hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne +was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' +'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them—they were either knaves or +imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides +passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership +of +the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man.</p> +<p>Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or +other, it +was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick +of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, +at +Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical +moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during +Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the +Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; +one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. +Blücher +and I have lost <a name="Page_256"></a>30,000 men. It has been a +damned nice thing—the +nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't +think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the +Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, +and +without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at +other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject. +'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he +speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not +ashamed to walk into the room with him.' </p> +<p>When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was +inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in +the +front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call +her Majesty, are characteristic:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown open, +and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance and +manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe she was as +much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is therefore with +much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest resemblance I can +recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy which you used to call +Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another toy of a rabbit or a cat, +whose tail you squeeze under its body, and then out it jumps in half a +minute off the ground into the air. The first of these toys you must +suppose to represent the person of the Queen; the latter the manner by +which she popped all at once into the House, made a <i>duck</i> at the +throne, another to the Peers, and a concluding jump into the chair +which was placed for her. Her dress was black figured gauze, with a +good deal of trimming, lace, &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly +episcopal; a handsome white veil, so thick as to make it very difficult +to me, who was as near to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back +for variety and inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few +straggling ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their +appearance were not her Majesty's own property.</p> +</div> +<p>Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the +presence of Royalty.</p> +<p>But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the <a + name="Page_257"></a>main stream of +his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat +pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself +extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest +during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose +hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable <i>verve</i>. 'This +house,' he +says at Raby, 'is itself <i>by far</i> the most magnificent and unique +in +several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of +anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in +one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of +the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At +Knowsley +'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height +that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are +two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles +over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about +the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground +floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow +furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which +cost £4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest +yellow +satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and +there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and +the +doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a +succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants +stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient +Ports. Wine +had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it +was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous +living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon +him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect. +Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a +little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for +a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain—except, to be sure, at King +Jog's. There, while the host was <a name="Page_258"></a>guzzling, the +guests starved. This was +too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for +breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as +could be,' fairly lost his temper.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell +me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he replied in +the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I turned to +Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the fuss and jaw of +the thing, I would leave the room and the house this instant'; and +dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He hears every word you say': +to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It was a regular scene.</p> +</div> +<p>A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding +himself +in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a +piece—excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat +butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., +wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.'</p> +<p>It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six +Acts, +of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed, +could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious +of the existence—of the possibility—of any mode of living other than +his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, +broiled +bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a +part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and +the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; +only +once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, +something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The +occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is <i>insane.</i> +He quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in +support of this infernal nuisance—the loco-motive Monster, carrying <i>eighty +tons</i> of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke and sulphur, coming +thro' every man's grounds between Manchester and Liverpool.</p> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_259"></a>His perturbation grew. He attended the +committee assiduously, but in +spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The +loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led +the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May +31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the +Monster.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Well—this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we had +a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters of the +Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us.</p> +</div> +<p>With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities +of +which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having +12 +oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.'</p> +<p>Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he +discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his +silk +ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed +to +increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr. +Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how +useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night +in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in +the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a +certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are +endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the +pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one +wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue +indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But +it could not be.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame;<br> +</span><span>Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should +catch +a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, <a name="Page_260"></a>laughing, +eating, and +showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the +piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that +was +preparing for very different characters, and with a very different +style +of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey.</p> +<p>1919.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="INDEX"></a> +<h2>INDEX</h2> +Algarotti, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a + href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +Arouet. <i>See</i> 'Voltaire'<br> +<br> +Bailey, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a + href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, +<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, +<a href="#Page_22">22</a><br> +Balzac, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a + href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a + href="#Page_227">227</a><br> +Barrès, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, +<a href="#Page_234">234</a><br> +Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Beddoes, Thos. Lovell, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_216">216</a><br> +Beethoven, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Berkeley, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Bernhardt, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br> +Bernières, Madame de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a + href="#Page_107">107</a><br> +Bernstorff, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Berry, Miss, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Beshyr, Emir, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Bessborough, Lady, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Bevan, Mr. C.D., <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Beyle, Henri, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Blake, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a + href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_190">190</a><br> +Blücher, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Boileau, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Bolingbroke, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a + href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Bonaparte, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Boswell, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br> +Boufflers, Comtesse de, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Boufflers, Marquise de, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Bourget, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Brandes, Dr., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br> +Brink, Mr. Ten, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +Broome, Major, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Brougham, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a><br> +Buffon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +Burke, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Butler, Bishop, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +<br> +Canning, George, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, +<a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Canning, Stratford, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Caraccioli, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Carlyle, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a + href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br> +Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br> +Carteret, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Castlereagh, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Cellini, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Chasot, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br> +Chateaubriand, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Châtelet, Madame du, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a + href="#Page_141">141</a>-<a href="#Page_143">143</a><br> +Chatham, Lady, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Chatham, Lord, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br> +Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Choiseul, Duc de, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br> +Choiseul, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, +<a href="#Page_86">86</a><br> +Chuquet, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, +<a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Cicero, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Cimarosa, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Claude, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br> +Coleridge, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a + href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Colles, Mr. Ramsay, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br> +Collins, Anthony, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Collins, Churton, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, +<a href="#Page_103">103</a><br> +Condillac, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Congreve, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Conti, Prince de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br> +Corneille, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br> +Correggio, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br> +Cowley, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Creevey, Mr., <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_260">260</a><br> +<br> +D'Alembert, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a + href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a + href="#Page_166">166</a><br> +Dante, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +d'Argens, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +d'Argental, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Darget, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Daru, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Davy, Sir Humphry, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br> +Deffand, Madame du, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, +<a href="#Page_97">97</a><br> +Degen, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> +d'Egmont, Madame, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Denham, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Denis, Madame, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br> +d'Epinay, Madame, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a + href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a><br> +Descartes, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br> +Desnoiresterres <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br> +Devonshire, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +d'Houdetot, Madame, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br> +Diderot, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a + href="#Page_175">175</a><br> +Diogenes, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Donne, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Dowden, Prof., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a + href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br> +Dryden, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a + href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Durham, Lord, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Ecklin, Dr., <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> +Edgeworth, Miss, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Euler, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +<br> +Falkener, Everard, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br> +Fielding, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br> +Flaubert, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Fleury, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br> +Fontenelle, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Foulet, M. Lucien, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, +<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br> +Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> +Fry, Mrs., <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a + href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Furnivall, Dr., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +<br> +Gautier, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Gay, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br> +George III, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Gibbon, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a + href="#Page_80">80</a><br> +Gide, M. André, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a + href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br> +Goethe, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Gollancz, Sir I., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br> +Goncourts, De, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +Gosse, Mr., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a + href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a + href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br> +Gramont, Madame de, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br> +Granville, Lord, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Gray, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Grey, Lord, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Grimm, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a><br> +<br> +Hardwicke, Lord, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br> +Hegetschweiler, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br> +Helvétius, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Hénault, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Herrick, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> +Higginson, Edward, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br> +Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a + href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Hill, Mr., <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Hume, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a + href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a + href="#Page_169">169</a><br> +Huskisson, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Ingres, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br> +<br> +Johnson, Dr., <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a + href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a + href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a + href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Jordan, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br> +Jourdain, Mr., <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +<br> +Keats, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Kelsall, Thomas Forbes, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a + href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_209">209</a><br> +Klopstock, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br> +Koenig, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +<br> +La Beaumelle, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, +<a href="#Page_194">194</a><br> +Lambton, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br> +La Mettrie, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a + href="#Page_158">158</a><br> +Lanson, M., <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br> +Latimer, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br> +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br> +Lee, Sir Sidney, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +Leibnitz, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +Lemaître, M., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a + href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br> +Lemaur, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, +<a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a + href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Locke, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a + href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a + href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Louis Philippe, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Louis XIV., <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br> +Lulli, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Luxembourg, Maréchale de, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a><br> +<br> +Macaulay, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> +Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, <a + href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a + href="#Page_173">173</a><br> +Maine, Duchesse du, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Malherbe, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Marlborough, Duke of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Marlowe, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br> +Massillon, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Matignon, Marquis de, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Maupertuis, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a + href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a + href="#Page_161">161</a><br> +Mehemet Ali, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br> +Mérimée, Prosper, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br> +Meryon, Dr., <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, +<a href="#Page_248">248</a><br> +Middleton, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Milton, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Mirepoix, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br> +Mirepoix, Maréchale de, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Molière, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br> +Moncrif, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br> +Montespan, Madame de, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Montesquieu, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a + href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Moore, Sir John, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Morley, Lord, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_172">172</a><br> +Moses, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Mozart, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Musset, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +<br> +Napoleon, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a + href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a + href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Necker, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Nelson, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, +<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br> +<br> +Pascal, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br> +Pater, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br> +Peterborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br> +Pitt, William, the younger, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a + href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Plato, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br> +Pöllnitz, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Pompadour, Madame de, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br> +Pont-de-Veyle, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Pope, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a + href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a + href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Prie, Madame de, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, +<a href="#Page_96">96</a><br> +Prior, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Proctor, Bryan Waller, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a + href="#Page_203">203</a><br> +Puffendorf, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +<br> +Quinault, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +<br> +Racine, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a + href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a + href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a + href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, +<a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br> +Regent, the Prince, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Reni, Guido, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br> +Reynolds, Sir Joshua, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, +<a href="#Page_188">188</a><br> +Richardson, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br> +Richelieu, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br> +Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier de, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a + href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br> +Rossetti, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Rousseau, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a + href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Rubens, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> +Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Sainte-Beuve, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a + href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a + href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br> +Saint-Lambert, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br> +Saint-Simon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a + href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Sampson, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Sanadon, Mlle., <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Shaftesbury, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br> +Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a + href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>-<a + href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a + href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a + href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Shelley, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> +Sheridan, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br> +Sophocles, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br> +Spenser, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Stanhope, Lady Hester, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a><br> +'Stendhal.' <i>See</i> Beyle, Henri<br> +Stephen, Sir James, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Sully, Duc de, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Swift, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a + href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Swinburne, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> +<br> +Taine, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Thévenart, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Thomson, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Tindal, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Toland, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Tolstoi, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br> +Toynbee, Mrs. Paget, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, +<a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Turgot, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br> +<br> +Velasquez, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> +Vigny, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Virgil, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br> +Voltaire, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a + href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a + href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-<a + href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>-<a + href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a + href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a + href="#Page_188">188</a><br> +<br> +Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, +<a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a + href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, +<a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, +<a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a + href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Webster, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br> +Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +White, W.A., <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br> +Winckelmann, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Wolf, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br> +Wollaston, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Woolston, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a + href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> +Würtemberg, Duke of, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br> +<br> +Yonge, Miss, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br> +Young, Dr., <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +<br> +Zola, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a + href="#Page_228">228</a><br> +<br> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12478 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Books and Characters + French and English + +Author: Lytton Strachey + +Release Date: May 30, 2004 [EBook #12478] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +BOOKS & CHARACTERS + +FRENCH & ENGLISH + +_By_ + +LYTTON STRACHEY + + +LONDON + +First published May 1922 + + + + +TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES + + + + +_The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the Editors +of the Independent Review, the New Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the +Edinburgh Review._ + +_The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, +apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his English +period_. + + + + +CONTENTS + +RACINE 3 +SIR THOMAS BROWNE 27 +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD 41 +THE LIVES OF THE POETS 59 +MADAME DU DEFFAND 67 +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND 93 +A DIALOGUE 115 +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES 121 +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT 137 +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR 165 +THE POETRY OF BLAKE 179 +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN 193 +HENRI BEYLE 219 +LADY HESTER STANHOPE 241 +MR. CREEVEY 253 +INDEX 261 + + + + +RACINE + + +When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, +grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient and +modern worlds, with a single exception--Shakespeare. After some +persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a _part_ +of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the Louvre can now +see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather +less than half of the author of _King Lear_ just appearing at the +extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has +changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be +advanced--though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty--to the very steps +of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a +similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged +as the most characteristic representative of the literature of France? +Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would +more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, +whisking away into the outer darkness? + +There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes +and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, I +could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, +as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the +matter. But alas! _nous avons changé tout cela_. Now we are each of us +obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, +ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on +different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either that I +am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen +that while on one side of that 'span of waters' Racine is despised and +Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and +Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and +illustrated in a singular way. Mr. John Bailey, in a volume of essays +entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of +Racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the +second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the +merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of +Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance +of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant +critic, M. Lemaître, published a series of lectures on Racine, in which +the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from +beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting +criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated +classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of +these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the +opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue +along lines so different and so remote that they never come into +collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side +the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French +critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the +romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that +England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was to +be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaître, on the +other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. +Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's +supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. Lemaître +never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of +his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness +already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaître's book, one +begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find it +difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. It is no +paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find +so eminent a critic as M. Lemaître observing that Racine 'a vraiment +"achevé" et porté à son point suprême de perfection _la tragédie_, cette +étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve +peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to +the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this +kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful +consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the +susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a +French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue, +he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether he +willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the +difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate a +writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is +least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this +essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. +Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average +English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to +the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense +value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some +important general questions of literary doctrine will have been +discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to +vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that +English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, +brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal +distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to +think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of +an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes +fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared +by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice +of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, +and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have discovered +something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious +boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be grateful? +Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may +enjoy, and render thanks? + +M. Lemaître, starting out, like a native of the mountains, from a point +which can only be reached by English explorers after a long journey and +a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series +of brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on +one side almost altogether the questions connected both with Racine's +dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very +questions by which English readers are most perplexed, and which they +are most anxious to discuss. His style in particular--using the word in +its widest sense--forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. +Bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of Mr. +Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet +can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric +of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. Before, +however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well +to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because the +English reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very outset +of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the +Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he +should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. After +the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our early +tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of life +and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of +Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of +setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their +spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give +one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious +pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, +after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'La scène est à +Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'--could +anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? Here is nothing +for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no +wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here +is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five +acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to +meet in and make their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of the +'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself quite +unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a +critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those +antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, believes +that Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great +advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the +once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of +time and place are of no importance in themselves.' So far as critics +are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that plays +can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance +with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any +rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in +effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and +justifies the unities of time and place? Surely it is not, as Mr. Bailey +would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for it +is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must +possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen--as in +_Antony and Cleopatra_, for instance--that the very essence of this +interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local +activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true +justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the +conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis--the vision, +thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final +catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the +views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only +the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it +was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the +rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great +persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in the +literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have +become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along +totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more +consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the +crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is +narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come +more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of +form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather than +that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of _Macbeth_ +have been superseded by plays of the type of _Britannicus_. +_Britannicus_, no less than _Macbeth_, is the tragedy of a criminal; but +it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the +fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the +precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is +taken, and the criminal is made. The method of _Macbeth_ has been, as it +were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of _Britannicus_ +still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more rigorously +and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his +attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of +importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the +English reader--the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the +absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action--was no more +than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and +for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. +His dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, +supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact +that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to +the ground. Approached in this light, even the 'salle du palais de +Pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. We come to realise that, if it is +nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the +invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one +little room an everywhere.' It will show us no views, no spectacles, it +will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it +will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the +closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of +human hearts. + +It is remarkable that Mr. Bailey, while seeming to approve of the +classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him +for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical +form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in +the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of +human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects which +Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the +range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction +of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; +and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into his +compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to +find fault with a Mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration of +Wagner. But it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise +nature of Mr. Bailey's criticism. When he speaks of Racine's vision not +including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that Racine cannot be +reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat +different ground and discussing a more general question. All truly great +poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of +life'--a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the +universe; and, since Racine is without this quality, his claim to true +poetic greatness must be denied. But, even upon the supposition that +this view of Racine's philosophical outlook is the true one--and, in its +most important sense, I believe that it is not--does Mr. Bailey's +conclusion really follow? Is it possible to test a poet's greatness by +the largeness of his 'view of life'? How wide, one would like to know, +was Milton's 'view of humanity'? And, though Wordsworth's sense of the +position of man in the universe was far more profound than Dante's, who +will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? The truth is that +we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only of +Mr. Bailey's criticism of Racine, but of an entire critical method--the +method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in +general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it +possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. How often this +method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously +fallacious! For, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, +amenable to the rules of scientific induction. Its component parts +cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which +defies foreknowledge. When Matthew Arnold declared that the value of a +new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in +the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this +very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself +a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto +itself? It is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle +expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a +precedent. Thus Mr. Bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from +Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Goethe, the qualities without which no poet +can be great, and his condemnation of Racine because he is without them, +is a fallacy in criticism. There is only one way to judge a poet, as +Wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, has +pointed out--and that is, by loving him. But Mr. Bailey, with regard to +Racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of Wordsworth. Let us +look a little more closely into the nature of his attack. + +'L'épithète rare,' said the De Goncourts,'voilà la marque de +l'écrivain.' Mr. Bailey quotes the sentence with approval, observing +that if, with Sainte-Beuve, we extend the phrase to 'le mot rare,' we +have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may test +the merit of poetry. And doubtless most English readers would be +inclined to agree with Mr. Bailey, for it so happens that our own +literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge of +extravagance, reigns supreme. Owing mainly, no doubt, to the double +origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between +the highly-coloured crudity of the Saxon words and the ambiguous +splendour of the Latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national +taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and +penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie--the Hebrew +Prophets--our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of +writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the +extraordinary, and the bold. No one in his senses would regret this, for +it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, of +course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the +bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example +and its final justification. But the result is that we have grown so +unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to +believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an +impossibility. The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, and +of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but coldness +and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the +bravado that we love so well. It is as if we had become so accustomed to +looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an +exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us +as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the dancers, +which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. But let +us be patient, and let us look again. + + Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessée, + Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes laissée. + +Here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to catch the mind +or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, +plainly set forth. But is there not an enchantment? Is there not a +vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the +ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is +precisely this--that he brings about, by what are apparently the +simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to +produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a proof +of his amazing art. In the following passage, for instance, what a sense +of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words! + + Enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice: + C'est faire à vos beautés un triste sacrifice + Que de vous présenter, madame, avec ma foi, + Tout l'âge et le malheur que je traîne avec moi. + Jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire mêmes + Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diadèmes. + Mais ce temps-là n'est plus: je régnais; et je fuis: + Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits. + +Is that wonderful 'trente' an 'épithète rare'? Never, surely, before or +since, was a simple numeral put to such a use--to conjure up so +triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! But these are subtleties which +pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals +of the great romantic poets. As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison +between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is +like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At +first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'éclatante vérité pittoresque du +grand maître flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste français qu'un ton assez +uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pâle et douce lumière. Mais qu'on +approche de plus près et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines +vont éclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce +tissu profond et serré; on ne peut plus en détacher ses yeux.' + +Similarly when Mr. Bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more general +questions of style, declares that there is no 'element of fine +surprise' in Racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of +Pindar and the Greek choruses--the reply is that he would find what he +wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'Who will forget,' he says, +'the comparison of the Atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty +nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human +bodies, of Helen to the lion's whelps?... Everyone knows these. Who will +match them among the formal elegances of Racine?' And it is true that +when Racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the +romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters of +the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and +anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his pages +will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the +daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out +of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus +many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration +of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in +the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind. + + C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. + +The sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might +pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after +vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. But, sometimes, +the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate and +terrific force-- + + C'est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée! + +A few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having. + +But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognise the +beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack of +extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis +and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of +his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic--its +suppression of detail. The great majority of poets--and especially of +English poets--produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of +details--details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty +or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details +Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words +which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our +minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been +accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of +significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more +marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few +expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate +reality. When Shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so +with a single stroke of detail--'not a mouse stirring'! And Virgil adds +touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae: + + Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, + Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis + Rura tenent, etc. + +Racine's way is different, but is it less masterly? + + Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune. + +What a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the Englishman's first +thought--with the conventional 'Neptune,' and the vague 'armée,' and the +commonplace 'vents.' And he forgets to notice the total impression which +these words produce--the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and +vastness and ominous hush. + +It is particularly in regard to Racine's treatment of nature that this +generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'Is he so much as aware,' +exclaims Mr. Bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, +that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear will +never have enough of the music of the sea? He might have written every +page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of his +study.' The accusation gains support from the fact that Racine rarely +describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, we +know, was not his plan. But he is constantly, with his subtle art, +suggesting them. In this line, for instance, he calls up, without a word +of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise: + + Déjà le jour plus grand nous frappe et nous éclaire. + +And how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! He can give +us the desolation of a calm: + + La rame inutile + Fatigua vainement une mer immobile; + +or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys: + + Voyez tout l'Hellespont blanchissant sous nos rames; + +or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm: + + Quoi! pour noyer les Grecs et leurs mille vaisseaux, + Mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux! + Quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recèle, + L'Aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle, + Les vents, les mêmes vents, si longtemps accusés, + Ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brisés! + +And then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a +triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves: + + Prêts à vous recevoir mes vaisseaux vous attendent; + Et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter, + Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter. + +The art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this line, +where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long +syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect. + +But it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like Mr. Bailey +are unable to find in Racine--they miss in him no less suggestions of +the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our +English habit of associating these qualities with expressions which are +complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of +fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase-- + + La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé + +we are apt not to hear that it is there. But there is another +reason--the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism +ever since the triumph of Wordsworth and Coleridge at the beginning of +the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. It would be easy to +prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of +'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that Mr. Bailey's +criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects of +this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the +unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the +key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find +in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he +is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious +when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind +of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' +in _Paradise Lost_, and that _Paradise Lost_ is one of the greatest +poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory, +however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which +may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in +its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity +and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine--that is to say, +there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the +transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the +constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere +rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking +what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will not +our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put +out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical +suggestion, the more we examine Racine, the more clearly we shall +discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually +console us for the loss of the first--the mystery of the mind of man. +This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it +adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how +much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with +the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, +wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies--Hermione and +Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phèdre--seem to emerge for +a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose +depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we shall +find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure +infinities of the heart. + + Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous taire. + +The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. That +is all affection; and this all desire-- + + J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je faisais couler. + +Or let us listen to the voice of Phèdre, when she learns that Hippolyte +and Aricie love one another: + + Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher? + Dans le fond des forêts alloient-ils se cacher? + Hélas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence; + Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence; + Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux; + Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux. + +This last line--written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious +rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window--does it not +seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty +of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul? + +It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most +remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a +critic as M. Lemaître has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume +to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's +portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality +with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending +more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the +combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, and +his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaître, in fact, goes so far as to +describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in +him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no doubt, +but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to +compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous +kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And +there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never +tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and +monotonous; while M. Lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' and +Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' The +explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the +two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When +Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and +depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a +directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the +utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon stroke, +swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her +tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son: + + Prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur? + Ne le verrai-je plus qu'à titre d'importune? + Ai-je donc élevé si haut votre fortune + Pour mettre une barrière entre mon fils et moi? + Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi? + Entre Sénèque et vous disputez-vous la gloire + A qui m'effacera plus tôt de sa mémoire? + Vous l'ai-je confié pour en faire un ingrat, + Pour être, sous son nom, les maîtres de l'état? + Certes, plus je médite, et moins je me figure + Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre créature; + Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir l'ambition + Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque légion; + Et moi, qui sur le trône ai suivi mes ancêtres, + Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mère de vos maîtres! + +When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the +hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on +other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, +artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of +high-sounding words and elaborate inversions. + + Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides + Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses frères perfides. + +That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her brothers' +conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison +ce gage trop sincère.' It is obvious that this kind of expression has +within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century +tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got +out of the difficulty by referring to--'De la fidélité le respectable +appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts +Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based +upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the +spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense--physical +objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that +go to make up the machinery of existence--these must be kept out of the +picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have ruined +the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, they +must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire +attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the +composition--the spiritual states of the characters--which, laid bare +with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly +imprint themselves upon the mind. To condemn Racine on the score of his +ambiguities and his pomposities is to complain of the hastily dashed-in +column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention +the face. Sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own +conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with +a wonderful significance. Thus when the Sultana, Roxane, discovers her +lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge and +death, and she exclaims-- + + Ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est extrême + Que le traître une fois se soit trahi lui-même. + Libre des soins cruels où j'allais m'engager, + Ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'à se venger. + Qu'il meure. Vengeons-nous. Courez. Qu'on le saisisse! + Que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice; + Qu'ils viennent préparer ces noeuds infortunés + Par qui de ses pareils les jours sont terminés. + +To have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and +Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in +such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. +She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of +virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally +orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of +speech. + +But, as a rule, Racine's characters speak out most clearly when they are +most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an +intensity of directness unknown in actual life. In such moments, the +phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed +significance of character and situation; the 'Qui te l'a dit?' of +Hermione, the 'Sortez' of Roxane, the 'Je vais à Rome' of Mithridate, +the 'Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!' of Athalie--who can forget these +things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? Very different is the +Shakespearean method. There, as passion rises, expression becomes more +and more poetical and vague. Image flows into image, thought into +thought, until at last the state of mind is revealed, inform and +molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. Such revelations, +no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of Racine. +In life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; +and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and +agglomerated rather than compact and defined. But Racine's aim was less +to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon its +inmost being and to give expression to that. One might be tempted to say +that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, +after all, reality has no degrees. Who can affirm that the wild +ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical +existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and +'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'? + +It would be nearer the truth to rank Racine among the idealists. The +world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and +rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an +ampler ether, a diviner air.' It is a world where the hesitations and +the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a +world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown +ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love +the beginning and the end of all. It is, too, the world of a poet, so +that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through the +poet's sweet articulation--through verse. Upon English ears the rhymed +couplets of Racine sound strangely; and how many besides Mr. Bailey have +dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! But to his lovers, to those who +have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are +impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. +Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep +enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu +de ma part le roi de Comagène?'--How is it that words of such slight +import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. +And, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true worshipper, the +final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet is only fit +for satire. Has he forgotten _Lamia_? And he asks, 'How is it that we +read Pope's _Satires_ and Dryden's, and Johnson's with enthusiasm still, +while we never touch _Irene_, and rarely the _Conquest of Granada_?' +Perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our _a priori_ +theories, even the fiery art of Dryden's drama may remain dead to us, +and that, if we touched _Irene_ even once, we should find it was in +blank verse. But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. +Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: +'Suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more +displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see +there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the +confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce +anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your +sight ... 'Tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the +shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, cannot +be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we +attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the +rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as +bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' In this exquisite passage +Dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the +central argument for rhyme--its power of creating a beautiful +atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the +associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For Racine, with +his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier +between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his +art. His rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which we +can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the +forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' +And truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing +them'! + + Oui, prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée ... + Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage, + Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage, + Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots, + Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos. + Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte, + Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il l'élite? + Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors + Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords? + Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète, + Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite: + Pour en développer l'embarras incertain + Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main. + Mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancée; + L'amour m'en eût d'abord inspiré la pensée; + C'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours + Vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les détours. + Que de soins m'eût coûtés cette tête charmante! + +It is difficult to 'place' Racine among the poets. He has affinities +with many; but likenesses to few. To balance him rigorously against any +other--to ask whether he is better or worse than Shelley or than +Virgil--is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is +too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets--with +Virgil's for instance--Racine wrote for the stage. Virgil's poetry is +intended to be read, Racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the +theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. In a +sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of +Mozart with silent eyes. But, when the strings begin, when the whole +volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we +understand and feel! And so, at the theatre, before one of those high +tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations +of the greatest actresses of France, we realise, with the shock of a new +emotion, what we had but half-felt before. To hear the words of Phèdre +spoken by the mouth of Bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror of +crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of despair, +all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when +the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic +urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground--that indeed is to come +close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, and +to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light. + +1908. + + + + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE + +The life of Sir Thomas Browne does not afford much scope for the +biographer. Everyone knows that Browne was a physician who lived at +Norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one must +call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient +summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty +and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir +Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he +wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so +many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those +half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the +pleasantest kind of criticism is composed. + +Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the 'English Men of +Letters' Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. He has +not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he +has simply gone 'about it and about.' The result is a book so full of +entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary tact, +that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the +obvious--though surely irrelevant--truth, that the general impression +which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite +presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow +indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. It would be rash +indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse's example; after his +luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne's life at Norwich, on the +_Vulgar Errors_, and on the self-revelations in the _Religio Medici_, +there seems to be no room for further comment. One can only admire in +silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour. + +There is, however, one side of Browne's work upon which it may be worth +while to dwell at somewhat greater length. Mr. Gosse, who has so much to +say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very +small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the +most important thing about the author of _Urn Burial_ and _The Garden of +Cyrus_--his style. Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as a +master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered. Why then +does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about his +family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his porridge, +and who fished up the _murex_? + +Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of +Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his +book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. +Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In +spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid +and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat +acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is so +ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He +ranks the _Hydriotaphia_ among the gems of English literature; and the +prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as +fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be +little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal +homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks +upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough +the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely +misleading a preconceived theory may be. + +The study of Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Gosse says, 'encouraged Johnson, and +with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth century, +to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned +but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being +dispelled.' Such is Mr. Gosse's account of the influence of Browne and +Johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. But to +dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is +surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he +brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the +pre-Johnsonian prose style--the style which Dryden first established and +Swift brought to perfection--are obvious enough. Its advantages are +those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are +unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of the +second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, or of Bishop +Butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave defects. +It is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, no +balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. Johnson, there can be no +doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the +texture of English prose; and he went back for a model to Sir Thomas +Browne. Now, as Mr. Gosse himself observes, Browne stands out in a +remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and +predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. +He was, says Mr. Gosse, 'never carried away. His effects are closely +studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; +and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who +compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ with +any page in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_. The peculiarities of Browne's +style--the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its +tendency towards sonorous antithesis--culminated in his last, though not +his best, work, the _Christian Morals_, which almost reads like an +elaborate and magnificent parody of the Book of Proverbs. With the +_Christian Morals_ to guide him, Dr. Johnson set about the +transformation of the prose of his time. He decorated, he pruned, he +balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting +the Doric order of Swift into the Corinthian order of Gibbon. Is it +quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of +rhetorical writers' was encouraged 'to avoid circumlocution' by the +invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that +gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly +all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century--that +of Johnson himself, of Hume, of Reynolds, of Horace Walpole--which can +be traced even in Burke, and which fills the pages of Gibbon? It is, +indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the +facts, that the _Decline and Fall_ could not have been precisely what it +is, had Sir Thomas Browne never written the _Christian Morals_. + +That Johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of the +writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by +Mr. Gosse, who adds that Browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and +asserted by Coleridge and Lamb.' But we have already observed that Mr. +Gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. +His view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of Dr. Johnson's; +he swallows the spirit of Browne's writing, and strains at the form. +Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the +terminology of late Latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical +extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it +is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not +studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of +Latin and Greek.' He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he +meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; +and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of +Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' Attacks +of this kind--attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's +style--are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who +holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with +the subject as to make argument all but impossible. To the true Browne +enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state +of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hanging,' and 'asperous' +for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and 'quodlibetically' +altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between those +who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. There +is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the +more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had +better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the +jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, +a spectacle of curious self-contradiction. + +If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no +attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be +valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms +without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary +part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a +mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might +never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been +a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that +classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which +interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated +man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that if +he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only +legitimate ones, the _Hydriotaphia_ would have been as free from words +of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little +reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken this +view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered +all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, +is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are +full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this +the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be +written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A +striking phrase from the _Christian Morals_ will suffice to show the +deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:--'the +areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If Browne had thought the +Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to use +it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The +truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which +would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery and +secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. He did not +choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which he +wished them to have. Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast +between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct +antithesis to classical ones. In the last sentence of _Urn Burial_, we +are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as content +with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus.' How could Browne have produced +the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if his +vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to +words of a single stock? + +There is, of course, no doubt that Browne's vocabulary is +extraordinarily classical. Why is this? The reason is not far to seek. +In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with +thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be +expressed in Latinistic language. The state of mind which he wished to +produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were to +be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense +of mystery and awe. 'Let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things +which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long +past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the +stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. Let intellectual tubes +give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a +glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts but +tenderly touch.' Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, 'uncommon +sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of +pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? Not only is the Saxon form +of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is +still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce (by +some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, +though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex or +the remote. To understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for +the highly subtle and rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only +necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of Saxon +prose. + + Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same + down at Doctor Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this + manner: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We + shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as + I trust shall never be put out.' + +Nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this +passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. But who could conceive +of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of +these sentences from the _Hydriotaphia_? + + To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, + and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our + expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to + our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting + part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; + and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, + are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and + cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which + maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. + +Here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous Latin +substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense +succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, +the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. The +entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity and +subtlety which is utterly alien to Saxon prose. It would be foolish to +claim a superiority for either of the two styles; it would be still +more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by +means of the other. + +Wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a highly +Latinised vocabulary conferred on Browne. Without it, he would never +have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic _bravura_, +which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in +his finest passages. The precise quality cannot be easily described, but +is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to be +curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork in +a Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in +English literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated +art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer +technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but +pyramidally extant'--'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful +voices'--'predicament of chimaeras'--'the irregularities of vain glory, +and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'--are examples of this +consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of +others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days of +absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long +walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the +ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to +go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the +inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that one +begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to +have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English. + +One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be mentioned, +because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of +the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain classical +words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, +possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of Saxon +derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyramidally,' gives one at +once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something +extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And +this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only +Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. +The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was +visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him simply +and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has +flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of +humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference in +the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and +general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The +Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were +altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When +they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or +embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' +they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, +like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a +multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are +discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd. + +There can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for curious +details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. For +Browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of +detail ends, and its coordination begins. He knew little or nothing of +general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. And +the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. He was +always ready to begin some strange inquiry. He cannot help wondering: +'Whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose +bellies?' 'Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace +book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how warrantable +his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything +but treacle in the day, may admit of great doubt.' To inquire thus is, +perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of +which great scientific theories are made. Browne, however, used his love +of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a +scientific theory, but into a work of art. His method was one which, to +be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a +technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. Everyone +knows Pascal's overwhelming sentence:--'Le silence éternel de ces +espaces infinis m'effraie.' It is overwhelming, obviously and +immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. Browne's ultimate object +was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down +blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, by +an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a +mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles +drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of +heaven. His success gives him a place beside Webster and Blake, on one +of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, +Browne's peak is--or so at least it seems from the plains below--more +difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road skirts +the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one is +merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He +who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star +to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, +and tossed forever in the Paradise of Fools. + +Browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing in +the _Religio Medici_ which reaches the same level of excellence as the +last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ and the last chapter of _Urn +Burial_. A long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the +background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. +His strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. His +art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could +have produced this perfect sentence in _The Garden of Cyrus_, so well +known, and yet so impossible not to quote? + + Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in + sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with + delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly + with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose. + +This is Browne in his most exquisite mood. For his most characteristic, +one must go to the concluding pages of _Urn Burial_, where, from the +astonishing sentence beginning--'Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's +hell'--to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to +be found. The subject--mortality in its most generalised aspect--has +brought out Browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his +art--elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of +suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination--are accumulated in every +paragraph. To crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a +multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of +them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions +from the unknown depths of the past. As one reads, an extraordinary +procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes--Moses, +Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and +Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the +Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a +mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar and +ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, +almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is--who can doubt?--the +only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. But it would be vain to +dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note the +extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. Browne never +states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe +actually are. He speaks of everything but that; and yet, with triumphant +art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the +vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul. + +It is interesting--or at least amusing--to consider what are the most +appropriate places in which different authors should be read. Pope is +doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, Herrick in an +orchard, and Shelley in a boat at sea. Sir Thomas Browne demands, +perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. One could read him floating down the +Euphrates, or past the shores of Arabia; and it would be pleasant to +open the _Vulgar Errors_ in Constantinople, or to get by heart a chapter +of the _Christian Morals_ between the paws of a Sphinx. In England, the +most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some +habitation consecrated to learning, some University which still smells +of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. The present writer, at +any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of Browne's syllables +amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few +happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the +_Hydriotaphia_ out to the darkness and the nightingales through the +studious cloisters of Trinity. + +But, after all, who can doubt that it is at Oxford that Browne himself +would choose to linger? May we not guess that he breathed in there, in +his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which +pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in +the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep +beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid +that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, +the circumference of the Sheldonian. + +1906. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD + + +The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been fundamentally +affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, +for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, or +at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a +coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that _The Tempest_ was +written before _Romeo and 'Juliet_; that _Henry VI._ was produced in +succession to _Henry V._; or that _Antony and Cleopatra_ followed close +upon the heels of _Julius Caesar_. Such theories were sent to limbo for +ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external +evidence revealed the fact that, as Shakespeare's life advanced, a +corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his +verse. The establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate +position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once +followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics +became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the whole +succession of the works of Shakespeare. + +Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to +build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological order, +showed something more than a mere development in the technique of +verse--a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of +characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those +characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was +easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of +Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly +drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit +assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true +index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The validity +of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for +instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually +merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact +that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, during +that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the awful +problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose of this +essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the +artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally +accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that +of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this +hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of +Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable. + +What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as +follows: + + Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness + and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, + to the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of + middle age, to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so + many men) in later life, when, though outwardly successful, the + world seemed all against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on + scenes of faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and + subjects, ingratitude of children, scorn of his kind; till at last, + in his Stratford home again, peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita + in their lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was laid by + his quiet Avon side. + +And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's + + likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet + entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace. + +Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon +Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at +last--it is the universal opinion--a state of quiet serenity in which he +died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives the +most popular expression to this view, a view which is also held by Mr. +Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr. Brandes. +Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period +with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition to the preceding +one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir Sidney Lee, too, +seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in Shakespeare's mind, the +orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of +meditative romance. + +Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of +Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually +attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy--it +is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some +reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford the +light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear in +some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly +the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, +perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it be true that +Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last attain to the +serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent effort'; +that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of +the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, +in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's level meads, Shakespeare +closed his life on earth'--we have obtained a piece of knowledge which +is both interesting and pleasant. But if it be not true, if, on the +contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually the +case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our judgment +as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole +drift and bearing of Shakespeare's 'inner life'? + +The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate +serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final +retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It consists +of three plays--_Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_--and +three fragments--the Shakespearean parts of _Pericles, Henry VIII._, +and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. All these plays and portions of plays form +a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and +they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all Shakespeare's +previous work. + +One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do resemble in +some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding +them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new +method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they +immediately succeed--that great series of tragedies which began with +_Hamlet_ in 1601 and ended in 1608 with _Antony and Cleopatra_. In the +latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an +astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied with +a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to +the highest point of excellence--the tragedy of character. Every one of +his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon +character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his +greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has +made them what they are. Yet, after _Antony and Cleopatra_ Shakespeare +deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past +career. There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year +after year, to produce _Othellos, Hamlets_, and _Macbeths_; instead, he +turned over a new leaf, and wrote _Coriolanus_. + +_Coriolanus_ is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an intolerable play: +remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the +Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible +to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick with +situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of sudden +disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles +between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge +and egotism on the other--these would have made a tragic and tremendous +setting for some character worthy to rank with Shakespeare's best. But +it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in the +play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve +merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. For +rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the +beginning and the middle and the end of _Coriolanus_. The hero is not a +human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, which +roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, +through a melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is +true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So +far and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties +of _Cleopatra_. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one wonders, +as one beholds it, what will happen next. + +At about the same time, some of the scenes in _Timon of Athens_ were in +all probability composed: scenes which resemble _Coriolanus_ in their +lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it +in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of +foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably +unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if +draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of +furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we +are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to +blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness. + + From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, + like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of + Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before + him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more + lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves + of Prince Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind + was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave + serenity in _The Tempest_, and so ended. + +This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be admitted at +once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are charming creatures, that +Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but why +is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our +attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? Modern +critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful and +good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is +another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that these +plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose wickedness +finds expression in language of extraordinary force. Coming fresh from +their pages to the pages of _Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The +Tempest_, one is astonished and perplexed. How is it possible to fit +into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow +Iachimo,' or Cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the 'crafty +devil,' his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these +figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them +comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda +dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the +presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and +vigorous as that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's +violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle +utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a +torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from +'pastoral love,' exclaiming to Leontes: + + What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? + What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling + In leads or oils? what old or newer torture + Must I receive, whose every word deserves + To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, + Together working with thy jealousies, + Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle + For girls of nine, O! think what they have done, + And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all + Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. + That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; + That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant + And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much + Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour, + To have him kill a king; poor trespasses, + More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon + The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter + To be or none or little; though a devil + Would have shed water out of fire ere done't. + Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death + Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, + Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart + That could conceive a gross and foolish sire + Blemished his gracious dam. + +Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does he +verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel coarseness. +Iachimo tells us how: + + The cloyed will, + That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub + Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb, + Longs after for the garbage. + +and talks of: + + an eye + Base and unlustrous as the smoky light + That's fed with stinking tallow. + +'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her +husband in an access of hideous rage. + +What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene self-possession,' +of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? English +critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, +have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in +_Pericles_ but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the grossnesses +of _The Winter's Tale_ and _Cymbeline_. + + Is there no way for men to be, but women + Must be half-workers? + +says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt. + + We are all bastards; + And that most venerable man, which I + Did call my father, was I know not where + When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools + Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed + The Dian of that time; so doth my wife + The nonpareil of this--O vengeance, vengeance! + Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained + And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with + A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't + Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her + As chaste as unsunned snow--O, all the devils!-- + This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,--was't not? + Or less,--at first: perchance he spoke not; but, + Like a full-acorned boar, a German one, + Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition + But what he looked for should oppose, and she + Should from encounter guard. + +And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no less +to the point. + + There have been, + Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, + And many a man there is, even at this present, + Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, + That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence + And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by + Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't, + Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened, + As mine, against their will. Should all despair + That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind + Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none; + It is a bawdy planet, that will strike + Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, + From east, west, north and south: be it concluded, + No barricade for a belly, know't; + It will let in and out the enemy + With bag and baggage: many thousand on's + Have the disease, and feel't not. + +It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to agree +with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the beautiful +pathetic light is always present.' + +But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been so +completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be +found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming, Brutus is +grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that _Hamlet_, and +_Julius Caesar_, and _King Lear_ give expression to the same mood of +high tranquillity which is betrayed by _Cymbeline, The Tempest_, and +_The Winter's Tale_? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, 'for +you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not tragedies; +they all end happily'--'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz, 'of +forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not only +virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more? + +But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of +Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty +triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of +horror and of gloom. For, in _Measure for Measure_ Isabella is no whit +less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as +complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of _Measure +for Measure_ was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What is +it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in +one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes +matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is +rewarded or not? + +The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. _Measure for Measure_ is, +like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before _Coriolanus_, essentially +realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to +them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and +women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their +wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible +enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just as +we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in the plays of the +final period, all this has changed; we are no longer in the real world, +but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of +shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which +anything may happen next. The pretences of reality are indeed usually +preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is supposed to be the king +of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is supposed to demand tribute +of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience +with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for +war: + + Remember, sir, my liege, + The Kings your ancestors, together with + The natural bravery of your isle, which stands + As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in + With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, + With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, + But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest + Caesar made here; but made not here his brag + Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame-- + The first that ever touched him--he was carried + From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-- + Poor ignorant baubles!--on our terrible seas, + Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd + As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof + The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point-- + O giglot fortune!--to master Caesar's sword, + Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright + And Britons strut with courage. + +It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of +poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other +person than the Octavius of _Antony and Cleopatra_; and the contrast is +the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation +and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between Octavius, +Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and Enobarbus on the +other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage +of Antony and Octavia. + +Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's latest period; and +it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally +unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate +princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost +princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy +land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the +prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, +or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the +goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it is clear that such +happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be +taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; +they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories +ought to end. + +Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming +heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics +to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban, are to be +left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are +forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious +fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages +never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met +Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia? In this +land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In this world of +dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is it fair to say +that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil +mood,' when he was creating the Queen in _Cymbeline_, or writing the +first two acts of _The Winter's Tale_? + +Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other characteristic +of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and +Dr. Brandes--the singular carelessness with which great parts of them +were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the +_dénouement_ of _Cymbeline_? And with what perversity is the great +pastoral scene in _The Winter's Tale_ interspersed with long-winded +intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! For these blemishes are unlike +the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier +plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in themselves; +they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are +sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it cannot be denied, often bored, +and occasionally irritated, by Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and +Gonzalo and Belarius; these personages have not even the life of ghosts; +they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance to +involution upon involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of +Shakespeare's earlier works! + +It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored +himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, +bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He is +no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says +what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, +unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this mood +he must have written his share in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, leaving the +plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and +reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this +mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of +_Henry VIII_.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all the +resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of _Pericles_. + +Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years of +his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half +bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the +singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust +to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent speech? +If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is +surely this. + +And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a +consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of +Shakespeare's later work, and the one which critics most consistently +point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity--_The +Tempest_. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics which +distinguish _Cymbeline_ and _The Winter's Tale_ from the dramas of +Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In _The +Tempest_, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the principal +characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action +passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which can +only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, +peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of +persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, +and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did +Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights than +in some of the speeches of Prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty +than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions +that the triumph of his language asserts itself. It finds as splendid a +vent in the curses of Caliban: + + All the infection that the sun sucks up + From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him + By inch-meal a disease! + +and in the similes of Trinculo: + + Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul + bombard that would shed his liquor. + +The _dénouement_ itself, brought about by a preposterous piece of +machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg +for fine writing. + + O, it is monstrous, monstrous! + Methought the billows spoke and told me of it; + The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, + That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced + The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass. + Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and + I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, + And with him there lie mudded. + +And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance from the mouth of the pale +phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play. + +A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the +last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first +gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points of +resemblance between _The Tempest_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, their +common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of +their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the +delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the +_verve_ of their vulgar comedy--these, of course, are obvious enough; +but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison +striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near +Athens--it is full of life. The persons that haunt it--though most of +them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and +all of them are too agreeable to be true--are nevertheless substantial +creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough +sympathy; and the air they breathe--the lords and the ladies, no less +than the mechanics and the elves--is instinct with an exquisite +good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from +Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out +of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions have +vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too +delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the gaiety +of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. +Prospero is the central figure of _The Tempest_; and it has often been +wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author--an embodiment of +that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo +over Shakespeare's later life. But, on closer inspection, the portrait +seems to be as imaginary as the original. To an irreverent eye, the +ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty +personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had +developed an inordinate propensity for talking. These may have been the +sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to +risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is +sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also +self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for +pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, +during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his +Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. +'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of +Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she +would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of +Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and +Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. At all events, there can be +little doubt that they would not have had the entrée at Athens. + +The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured +by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his +companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are +interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the +hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and +deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. +Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, +Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies +between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the +'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, +eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of +disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The physical vigour of +the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'I left them,' +says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew: + + I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, + There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake + O'erstunk their feet. + +But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the +'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast. + + You taught me language, and my profit on't + Is, I know how to curse. + +Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may be +either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the +Heights.' + +1906. + + + + +THE LIVES OF THE POETS[1] + + +No one needs an excuse for re-opening the _Lives of the Poets_; the book +is too delightful. It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but +who re-opens Boswell? Boswell is in another category; because, as every +one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. But, on +its different level, the _Lives_ will always hold a firm and comfortable +place in our affections. After Boswell, it is the book which brings us +nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson. That is its primary +import. We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that +our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go +to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, we +are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these +benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a +mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; +but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is Samuel +Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and admired, +that further description would be superfluous. It is sufficient for us +to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that is +due. In one of Emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to +discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant +conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can +crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. The parallel is +close enough between this impudence and the attitude--implied, if not +expressed--of too much modern criticism towards the sort of +qualities--the easy, indolent power, the searching sense of actuality, +the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence +of thought--which went to the making of the _Lives of the Poets_. There +is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular +instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than +any squirrel that ever lived. + +That the _Lives_ continue to be read, admired, and edited, is in itself +a high proof of the eminence of Johnson's intellect; because, as serious +criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far +removed from the futile. Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost +invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality +to recommend them--except one: they are never right. That is an +unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up +for it, and that his wit has saved all. He has managed to be wrong so +cleverly, that nobody minds. When Gray, for instance, points the moral +to his poem on Walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that +glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to +the purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have +gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.' +Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously +true? But then, to use Johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less +'relation to the purpose'? It is his wit--and we are speaking, of +course, of wit in its widest sense--that has sanctified Johnson's +peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has +put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the reach +of time. + +For it is not only in particular details that Johnson's criticism fails +to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. Our +judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, +but because our whole method of judging has changed. Thus, to the +historian of letters, the _Lives_ have a special interest, for they +afford a standing example of a great dead tradition--a tradition whose +characteristics throw more than one curious light upon the literary +feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the +most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth +century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. The +most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged +authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every +infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, +which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson +never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at +discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of +poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one +condition--that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry +were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of +arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets +themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to bow +to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that his +first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his +criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of +Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater +width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its +drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set of +errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this +was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, and +how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and +tastes--that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in +question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the +Johnsonian black cap. + +But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the _Lives of the +Poets_. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson might +have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the +masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. +Whatever critical method he might have adopted, he still would have +been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our +minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion +of _Lycidas_ is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and +therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in _Comus_ he remarks: 'they are +harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He could +see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering +accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of +Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a +writer could be so absurd. Such preposterous judgments can only be +accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; Johnson had no ear, and +he had no imagination. These are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a +critic. What could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is +sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry? + +The answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change which +has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when +Johnson wrote. It has often been stated that the essential +characteristic of that great Romantic Movement which began at the end of +the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of Nature into the +domain of poetry. Incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly +every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return +to Nature. No less than the school of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the +school of Denham, of Dryden, and of Pope, proclaimed itself as the +champion of Nature; and there can be little doubt that Donne +himself--the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the +seventeenth century--wrote under the impulse of a Naturalistic reaction +against the conventional classicism of the Renaissance. Precisely the +same contradictions took place in France. Nature was the watchword of +Malherbe and of Boileau; and it was equally the watchword of Victor +Hugo. To judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the development +of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the +more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more and more natural as it +grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at +least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be called +Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the operations +of the external world--'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it--as +subject-matter for poetry. But it would have done very little, if it had +done nothing more than this. Thomson, in the full meridian of the +eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it would +be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a +fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more +than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation +of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of _The +Ancient Mariner_ is a landmark in the history of letters, not because of +its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the +poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it +was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of _The +Ancient Mariner_; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which +suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and +imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because +they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be invoked. +But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord +Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was +nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was +disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have +expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, +be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough. + +The new edition of the _Lives_, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for +publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon +Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished +Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and +appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to +shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific +conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr. +Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their +voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a +little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the +weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the +compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the +margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. +The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like +edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, +where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one +another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the +paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and, +as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the +Past, with the friendliness of a conversation. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 1: _Lives of the English Poets_. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. +Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, +1905.] + + + + +MADAME DU DEFFAND[2] + + +When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia, he ordered the +proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some +disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his +carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it might +be necessary to make. 'Je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et +j'écrirai de Mayence ce qu'il y aura à faire.' The volumes thus chosen +to beguile the imperial leisure between Paris and Mayence contained the +famous correspondence of Madame du Deffand with Horace Walpole. By the +Emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book--reprinted +from Miss Berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier +in England--was published almost at once. The sensation in Paris was +immense; the excitement of the Russian campaign itself was half +forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the Convent of +Saint Joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning +of Moscow and the passage of the Berezina. We cannot wonder that this +was so. In the Parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of Madame +du Deffand must have exercised a double fascination--on the one hand as +a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to +many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant +record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and +become historical. The letters were hardly more than thirty years old; +but the world which they depicted in all its intensity and all its +singularity--the world of the old régime--had vanished for ever into +limbo. Between it and the eager readers of the First Empire a gulf was +fixed--a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the +volcanic fires of the Revolution. Since then a century has passed; the +gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us +to-day seems hardly less remote--from some points of view, indeed, even +more--than that which is revealed to us in the Memoirs of Cellini or the +correspondence of Cicero. Yet the vision is not simply one of a strange +and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the letters +which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to +ourselves. The soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and +these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the +eighteenth century, can never be out of date. + +A fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate +them in their completeness. The late Mrs. Paget Toynbee, while preparing +her edition of Horace Walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the +original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a +country house in Staffordshire. The publication of these manuscripts in +full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which Mrs. Toynbee's +well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is +an event of no small importance to lovers of French literature. A great +mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. The +original edition produced by Miss Berry in 1810, from which all the +subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, +turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small +fraction of the whole correspondence; of the 838 letters published by +Mrs. Toynbee, 485 are entirely new, and of the rest only 52 were printed +by Miss Berry in their entirety. Miss Berry's edition was, in fact, +simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. +It skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves +the main outline of the story which the letters reveal. No doubt that +was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the more +exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in +the closely packed 2000 pages of Mrs. Toynbee's volumes. Enthusiasm +alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be +rewarded. In place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we +have now the truth itself--the truth in all its subtle gradations, all +its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable +obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in +black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. Probably Miss Berry's +edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to +become acquainted with a celebrated figure in French literature; but +Mrs. Toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, +and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste +for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the +heart. + +The Marquise du Deffand was perhaps the most typical representative of +that phase of civilisation which came into existence in Western Europe +during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most +concentrated and characteristic form about the year 1750 in the +drawing-rooms of Paris. She was supremely a woman of her age; but it is +important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, half +of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the Regent Orleans, +Fontenelle, and the young Voltaire; not that of Rousseau, the +'Encyclopaedia,' and the Patriarch of Ferney. It is true that her +letters to Walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written +between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and +they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the +whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new +forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, in +sentiment, in action--which for us form its peculiar interest and its +peculiar glory--were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her letters to +Walpole, whenever she compares the present with the past her bitterness +becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs +indicibles aux opéras de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de Thévenart et +de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me paraît détestable: acteurs, +auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais +goût, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards +intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the +'Encyclopaedia' and the _Philosophes_ was the object of her particular +detestation. She saw Diderot once--and that was enough for both of them. +She could never understand why it was that M. de Voltaire would persist +in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as +religion. Turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a +'sot animal.' His dismissal from office--that fatal act, which made the +French Revolution inevitable--delighted her: she concealed her feelings +from Walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the +Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Le renvoi du Turgot me plaît extrêmement,' she +wrote; 'tout me paraît en bon train.' And then she added, more +prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurément, nous n'en resterons pas +là.' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their works was +in part a matter of personal pique--the result of her famous quarrel +with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert +and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly +ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a +deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for +influence between two rival _salonnières_. There are indications that, +even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'Alembert +was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and +her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'Il y a de certains +articles,' she complained to Voltaire in 1763--a year before the final +estrangement--'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur +lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' The truth is that +d'Alembert and his friends were moving, and Madame du Deffand was +standing still. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse simply precipitated and +intensified an inevitable rupture. She was the younger generation +knocking at the door. + +Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common with +that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met +together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de +Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come +into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and +licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and +bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a +fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's +mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. Then +she became the intimate friend of Madame de Prie--the singular woman +who, for a moment, on the Regent's death, during the government of M. le +Duc, controlled the destinies of France, and who committed suicide when +that amusement was denied her. During her early middle age Madame du +Deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of Sceaux, where +the Duchesse du Maine, the grand-daughter of the great Condé and the +daughter-in-law of Louis XIV., kept up for many years an almost royal +state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. It was at +Sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and +conversations--supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked +balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of +the park--that Madame du Deffand came to her maturity and established +her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. +The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters and +the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast +representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no +longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the +glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern +life had not yet begun. It was an intermediate period, and the +comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and +intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity +and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since, +have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and +for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle years +of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those +days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found +all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however +fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of +the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a +society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that +there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms of +personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of the +eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was +expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, +those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run +smoothly--the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of +delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation--with the result that +a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and +obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those +persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it +in an unequivocal way--by the tenacity with which they clung to the +scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they almost +refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have +been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the +furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire, +d'Argental, Moncrif, Hénault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand +herself--all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived +to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities +unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young--at the age of +seventy-seven. Another contemporary, Richelieu, who was famous for his +adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within a +year of the opening of the States-General. More typical still of this +singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in +his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in +existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so. + +Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring +smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of +trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was no +light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being +blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, +realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a +peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le +commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly +true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were +those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, +over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so +charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the +rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that +lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in +their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious +orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of +personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be +left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow +sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised +as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself +should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and +absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be +tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious +and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for +literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for +recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat +such trifles as if they had a value of their own? Only one thing; and +that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the +inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation +was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not +even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of +perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the +solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared to +the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a +convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to +instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered +serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a +preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful +heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the +generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still +believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange +indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. The +Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a +threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the case +was hopeless. + +An innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm that +wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving +devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse--such +were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who had +spent their youth at the Court of the Regent, and dallied out their +middle age down the long avenues of Sceaux. About the middle of the +century the Duchesse du Maine died, and Madame du Deffand established +herself in Paris at the Convent of Saint Joseph in a set of rooms which +still showed traces--in the emblazoned arms over the great +mantelpiece--of the occupation of Madame de Montespan. A few years later +a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she became +totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a +transition, among the ranks of the old. For the rest of her life she +hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most +celebrated in Europe. The thirty years of her reign there fall into two +distinct and almost equal parts. The first, during which d'Alembert was +pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse. During the second, which lasted for the rest of her life, +her salon, purged of the Encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly +worldly tone; and the influence of Horace Walpole was supreme. + +It is this final period of Madame du Deffand's life that is reflected so +minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of Mrs. Toynbee +have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. Her letters +to Walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of +fifteen years (1766-1780). They allow us, on the one hand, to trace +through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, +and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps +the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed +society. For the circle which came together in her drawing-room during +those years had the hand of death upon it. The future lay elsewhere; it +was simply the past that survived there--in the rich trappings of +fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety--but still irrevocably the past. +The radiant creatures of Sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. We see +them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to +amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. Pont-de-Veyle, the +youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what +a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go the +rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard +no more. Hénault--once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for having +written an historical treatise--which, it is true, was worthless, but he +had written it--Hénault was beginning to dodder, and Voltaire, grinning +in Ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre délabré Président.' Various +dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. The Marquise de Boufflers +was gambling herself to ruin; the Comtesse de Boufflers was wringing +out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; +the Maréchale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the Maréchale +de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous +attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: +'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a +shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage que le Saint +Esprit eût aussi peu de goût!' Then there was the floating company of +foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at Madame du +Deffand's: Caraccioli, for instance, the Neapolitan Ambassador--'je +perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en +dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and Bernstorff, the Danish +envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and +fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'à travers tous ces +éloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler Puffendorf,' and Puffendorf the poor +man remained for evermore. Besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign +traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned _salon_; +Englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar +figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to Walpole +are Burke, Fox, and Gibbon. Sometimes influential parents in England +obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of +Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced by +his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle +of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and +orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the +fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the +leading word or smile or nod of an ancient Sibyl, who seemed to survey +the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. It is +easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. Madame du +Deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not +know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the same +difficulty. To an English youth, unfamiliar with the language and shy +as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old +lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the +stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, +from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the +pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. +As a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony--or rather, not the days, +but the nights. For Madame du Deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in +the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past +the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived--the moment of +supper. Upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. Supper, she +used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three +were she could never remember. She lived up to her dictum. She had an +income of £1400 a year, and of this she spent more than half--£720--on +food. These figures should be largely increased to give them their +modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could +only just manage to rub along. Her parties varied considerably in size; +sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper--sometimes twenty +or thirty. No doubt they were elaborate meals. In a moment of economy we +find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer +give 'des repas'--only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at +which there should be served nothing more than two entrées, one roast, +two sweets, and--mysterious addition--'la pièce du milieu.' This was +certainly moderate for those days (Monsieur de Jonsac rarely provided +fewer than fourteen entrées), but such resolutions did not last long. A +week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, +day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty +guests. But she did not always have supper at home. From time to time +she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of +Paris to one of her still extant dowagers--a Maréchale, or a +Duchesse--or the more and more 'délabré Président.' There the same +company awaited her as that which met in her own house; it was simply a +change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper +every night with the same half-dozen persons. The entertainment, apart +from the supper itself, hardly varied. Occasionally there was a little +music, more often there were cards and gambling. Madame du Deffand +disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a +choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of +seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing +vingt-et-un with Charles Fox. But distractions of that kind were merely +incidental to the grand business of the night--the conversation. In the +circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two +or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk +continually flowed. For those strange creatures it seemed to form the +very substance of life itself. It was the underlying essence, the +circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had +their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men +might go, but talk went on for ever. It is difficult, especially for +those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to +realise the nature of such conversation. Brilliant, charming, +easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never +intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, +never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most +vigorous flow of language. 'Écoutez! Écoutez!' Walpole used constantly +to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling +cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part--to +drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, +exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the +pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a +breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at +moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant +jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to +us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book--'C'est de l'esprit sur les +lois'--is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so +dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A +garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint +Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and +carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what +was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his +head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint +Denis--a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du +Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui +coûte.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to +go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened +to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred +going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a +chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and +stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to +hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it +was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was +ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home. + +It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed, +for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part +of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she +devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that +she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound +alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only +read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually +complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In +nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours +than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How the +eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our +biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge +and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! In those days, +even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to +read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from +catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that +Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in +_Athalie_. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the whole he +was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de +Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was +enraptured by the style--but only by the style--of _Gil Blas_. And that +was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or +insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it, +but she soon gave it up--it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon, +but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une +monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne s'occupe +que des bêtes; il faut l'être un peu soi-même pour se dévouer à une +telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in +manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted by +the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she +embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was +unexpected; she was positively pleased. _Coriolanus_, it is true, 'me +semble, sauf votre respect, épouvantable, et n'a pas le sens commun'; +and 'pour _La Tempête_, je ne suis pas touchée de ce genre.' But she was +impressed by _Othello_; she was interested by _Macbeth_; and she admired +_Julius Caesar_, in spite of its bad taste. At _King Lear_, indeed, she +had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle pièce! Réellement la +trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'âme à un point que je ne puis +exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader +was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning +early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the +cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous +company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and +Lady Macbeth? + +Often, even before the arrival of the old pensioner, she was at work +dictating a letter, usually to Horace Walpole, occasionally to Madame de +Choiseul or Voltaire. Her letters to Voltaire are enchanting; his +replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole +correspondence has never been collected together in chronological order, +and published as a separate book. The slim volume would be, of its kind, +quite perfect. There was no love lost between the two old friends; they +could not understand each other; Voltaire, alone of his generation, had +thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to Madame du Deffand +progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an +unpleasant necessity. She distrusted him profoundly, and he returned the +compliment. Yet neither could do without the other: through her, he kept +in touch with one of the most influential circles in Paris; and even she +could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. +Besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other +genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long +familiarity. The result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. If +they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to +write so well. They were on their best behaviour--exquisitely courteous +and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. His cajoleries +are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, +have almost the quality of a caress. She replies in the tone of a +worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her +'Monsieur de Voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. +He rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he +alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. Sometimes one just +catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the +smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one +is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat. + +Madame du Deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely than +that of Voltaire himself, the common-sense of the eighteenth century. +Its precision is absolute. It is like a line drawn in one stroke by a +master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. There is no +breadth in it--no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. One +cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her +blindness. What did she lose by it? Certainly not + + The sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose; + +for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at their +clearest? Her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating +glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere +irrelevance. The kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may +seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of +the Romantic school. Yet it will repay attention. The vocabulary is very +small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, +who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote--and spelt--by the +light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary +accomplishments--'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' +The object of all art is to make suggestions. The romantic artist +attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling +up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the +reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the +classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring +everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact +propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame du +Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never +strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such +is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on +their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the +dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to Walpole is +characteristic: + + Nous eûmes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la harpe à + merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du regret que vous + ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. Nous eûmes + aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fût touché avec une grande + perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison de la harpe. Je fus fort + triste toute la soirée; j'avais appris en partant que Mme. de + Luxembourg, qui était allée samedi à Montmorency pour y passer + quinze jours, s'était trouvée si mal qu'on avait fait venir + Tronchin, et qu'on l'avait ramenée le dimanche à huit heures du + soir, qu'on lui croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. L'ancienneté de + la connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitié; voir + disparaître ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-même; sentir + que l'on ne tient à rien, que tout fuit, que tout échappe, qu'on + reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgré cela on craint de le + quitter; voilà ce qui m'occupa pendant la musique. + +Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and +ordinary expressions--'un instrument admirable'--'une grande +perfection'--'fort triste.' Nothing is described; and yet how much is +suggested! The whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one's +imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, by +a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless +rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old +harp seems to be lingering still. + +While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant exterior +of Madame du Deffand's mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of +her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, +pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair--these are the feelings +that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's +lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed +the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the +rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was +surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? The +harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little +appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a feast; +the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her +distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act +of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from +her for ever. Yet--and this intensified her wretchedness--though the +banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself +away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts +of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was +out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and +there she must remain. 'Je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de +me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' She was extremely +lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her +life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'Je ne +vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which +were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in +analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she +lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, +Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her--'elle fait +des définitions,' she wails--to that of the lady who hoped to prove her +friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears--'comme je n'y tâte +pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de goût que j'ai pour elle.' Then +there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. +'Tous les Matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the Regent, +'excepté le Marquis de Matignon.' 'Cela est vrai,' the Regent replied, +'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' Madame +du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, there +was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet--what was +it? Something was the matter--yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool +yourself--'l'on est plus bête avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout seul.' As +she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentée d'arracher les masques +qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out +unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked +behind the gravest or the most fascinating exterior; then her fingers +began to itch, and she could resist no longer--she gave way to her +besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with Rousseau's +remark about her--'J'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fléau de sa haine +qu'à celui de son amitié.' There, sitting in her great Diogenes-tub of +an armchair--her 'tonneau' as she called it--talking, smiling, +scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the +remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces +that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed +itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and +meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism: + + J'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui était chez moi; + hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines à ressorts, qui + allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans + réfléchir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son rôle par habitude: Madame + la Duchesse d'Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de Forcalquier + dédaignait tout, Mme. de la Vallière jabotait sur tout. Les hommes + ne jouaient pas de meilleurs rôles, et moi j'étais abîmée dans les + réflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j'avais passé ma vie dans + les illusions; que je m'étais creusée tous les abîmes dans lesquels + j'étais tombée. + +At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual +hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours: + + Je ramenai la Maréchale de Mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, je + causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mécontente. Elle hait + la petite Idole, elle hait la Maréchale de Luxembourg; enfin, sa + haine pour tous les gens qui me déplaisent me fit lui pardonner + l'indifférence et peut-être la haine qu'elle a pour moi. Convenez + que voilà une jolie société, un charmant commerce. + +Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found +in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But +there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she _was_ +perfect!--'Elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand défaut qu'on ne +pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' At last one day the inevitable +happened--she went to see Madame de Choiseul, and she was bored. 'Je +rentrai chez moi à une heure, pénétrée, persuadée qu'on ne peut être +content de personne.' + +One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final +irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop +that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had +come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within +a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such +a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die +quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and +she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was +embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she +experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. +Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an +ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways of +worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, +and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. +Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a +holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, +hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blasé bachelor of fifty, should +have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have +treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him +which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in +a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest +fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our +knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; +nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and +painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an +inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that +letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived in +terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind +old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his +friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the +laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less +terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the +object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his +London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France +with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by +turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by +the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand--so far as he could like +anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her +letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably +the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute +rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most +ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to +continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du +Deffand. She accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she +wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. +Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her +side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. +Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked +by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the +same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the +charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a +miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he +had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a +good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was +the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had +been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight +of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole +too would have felt 'le fléau de son amitié'? His mask, too, would have +been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved +him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his +brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of +about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks--just long enough to +rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that +she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of +which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once +or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in +plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most violent +and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and +for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and +pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some +satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a +peculiarly painful attack of the gout. + +About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, +after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After +seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was +broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully +accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she +resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, +her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete. +She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations +on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'âme,' she +says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est le +ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est l'avant-goût du +néant, mais le néant lui est préférable.' Her existence had become a +hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been +uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le répète sans +cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'être né.' The grasshopper had +become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. +'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie +aussi triste?' When Death did come at last, he came very gently. She +felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in +her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: +'Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez +point de mon état, nous étions presque perdus l'un pour l'autre; nous ne +nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien +aise de se savoir aimé.' That was her last word to him. Walpole might +have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he +realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would have +been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived--her +room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her +ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one +attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it +is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. +Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such an +unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an +uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing +that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was +she perhaps right after all? + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 2: _Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole_ +(1766-80). Première Edition complète, augmentée d'environ 500 Lettres +inédites, publiées, d'après les originaux, avec une introduction, des +notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, +1912.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND[3] + +The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the history of +civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of +interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the French and +English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance +and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire planted +a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile +influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on +good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native +country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so +that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his was +the hand which did the work. + +It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in +Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a +hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could find +nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's day +the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long +Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate +the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the +publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the +_Lettres Philosophiques_, the work in which Voltaire gave to the world +the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien +Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the +period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which he +has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and +disputed points. M. Lanson's great attainments are well known, and to +say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to +the edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is +a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and +perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of +European culture. + +Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure for +England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The story, +as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official +documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the early +days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied +a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly +have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising +poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of +Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been +rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, +his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of +the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his +middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his +middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his +ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank +and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he +expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was +his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night +at the Opéra the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful +family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, +whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to +taunt the poet upon his birth--'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire--what +_is_ your name?' To which the retort came quickly--'Whatever my name may +be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered +something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had let +his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to +pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty +with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those _grands seigneurs_ +to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at +dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons._' It was +dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such +privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! A few days later +Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in Adrienne +Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and +'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan +lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and +the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the +arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's, +where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, +received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went +out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of +Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he +shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, +according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which +had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to +everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into +Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of +words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up +to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the +signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted +itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if +they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then +the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the +convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came +into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, +perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at +him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with +icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de +Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed +the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and +_Phèdre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups +de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' 'Nous serions bien +malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of +snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' Such friends as +remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing. +'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le fond il a +raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, and +she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, +lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two +months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised +swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was +cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally +rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long +term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did +not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those +days to a man of honour in such circumstances--to avenge the insult by a +challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, began +to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so +soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One +day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for +Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police +reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making +no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec éclat M. +le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly on +the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the _Police Gazette_, +'le sieur Arrouët de Voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, and +conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille. + +A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de Bernières while he +was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced +upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected +correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit. +The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting +smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are +informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, +for the first time in his life, is serious. + + J'ai été à l'extrémité; je n'attends que ma convalescence pour + abandonner à jamais ce pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre + que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par + un mot de votre main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je + vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance. + Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand; dites à Thieriot que je + veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je + serai heureux; jusque-là, je lui pardonne son indifférence. Dites à + M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité + de ses procédés pour moi. Comptez que tout détrompé que je suis de + la vanité des amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais + précieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir à Paris que pour vous voir, + vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance + dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs. + +'Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand!' Strange indeed are the +whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernières was then living in none other +than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai +des Théatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century later, +the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an +enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; +where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with +the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to +the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, +which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow +old.[4] + +Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. For some time he had +entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged for +permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was +to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to substitute exile +for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux +poète' was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and +remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty +leagues from Versailles. + +It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and +confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is +generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. His +subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at +Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the +interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object--in which +he did not succeed--of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel. +Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not +in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in +doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned +secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length +of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, +however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over +all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters +during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary +English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend +upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We +know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard +Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in +English--an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of +another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned Jew +was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a +Jewish broker.) + + I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, + alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to + nobody; my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could + not make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I + had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all + the misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among + all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind + refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who + forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London + citisen that I had seen but once at Paris, carried me to his own + country house, wherein I lead an obscure and charming life since + that time, without going to London, and quite given over to the + pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and generous + affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings + me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp + indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady + Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even + increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, + their money, their house; but I have refused all, because they are + lords, and I have accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a + single gentleman. + +We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as +to who or what Everard Falkener was--besides the fact that he was a +'single gentleman'--we have only just information enough to make us wish +for more. + +'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, +neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect +health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, +without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all +this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' +This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame +his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first +Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General--has anyone, +before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and +to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of +sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.' + +We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious document +brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at +a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to +argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' +until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed +conclusive. + + Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in + Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on + the subject of water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a + quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of Paul. They + questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on + which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of £500: and + Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl's horses, + and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney.... When I came he + desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, _he + was not sent to baptize_; which I presently did. Then courteously + taking his leave, he mounted and rode back-- + +and, we must suppose, won his wager. + + He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out + the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be + very exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it + might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his + companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every + respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal + value: telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were + most of the noblemen in France and in England; deriding the account + given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and + his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist: for I + could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against. + Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some + reluctance. + +In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating +figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square--'Belitery +Square' he calls it--or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane, +Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in +Westminster Abbey, or to pay a call on Congreve, or to attend a +Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he +found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the +'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and +delivering a harangue beginning--'Brave Englishmen! Am I not +sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are +one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb +Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the +episode of Sin and Death in _Paradise Lost_ with such vigour that at +last Young burst out with the couplet: + + You are so witty, profligate, and thin, + At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin; + +and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure him +into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had +scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I +thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom either +a fool or a philosopher.' + +It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its +scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, +and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have +been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, +and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His +correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose +presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to +England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has +completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which +passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there +any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark raises +our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years +later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to +Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary: + + Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very + old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots + on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke + all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but + genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall + and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly + vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with + whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who + first showed him the _Beggar's Opera_ before it was acted. He says + he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a + great deal of the ridiculum acre. + +And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at +Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision has +he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from +our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months +at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than one +or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk +which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream, +swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of +forgetfulness and the long night of Time! + +So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated +information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of +Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a +very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to +suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a +purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire +himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the +great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he +was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not +that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _réclame_, +with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of +those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even +less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire's own +story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire +was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is +only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at +him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in +England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody +else--'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'M. de +Voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en Angleterre: qu'il s'y est +fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui n'accordaient pas avec les +principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England +'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated +publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of +money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, +who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more +circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, +it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of +betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale +first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it +from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton +Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the +'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in +Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom +'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. +There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no +law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' +Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy +premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth +century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has +examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with +conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without +foundation. + +It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not limited +to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which centred about the +disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London +with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English Ambassador +at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, a +poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the favour +and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to +support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.," +which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the +priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and +Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London +edition of the _Henriade_, there was hardly a great name in England +which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the +poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of £240. Now it is +also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were +suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act +in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' +who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But to +conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was +known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the +inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, +owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers +to the _Henriade_--Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and +that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of +Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition +of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have +had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can +conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very summit +of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew +to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself +and his friends? + +Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in +England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition +of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of +the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its +pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon +the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his +tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his +History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged +with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_ +met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition +was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as +many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. +M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly +successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some +town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the +completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may, +he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he +applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th +of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more +than three years before came to a close. + +It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_ +appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire +gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a +focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation +into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had +scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the +culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the +Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to +England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration +which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the +hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like +most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar +attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular +sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The +agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign +of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual +activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed +to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime +the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of +the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State. +Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English; +never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of +judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and +complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of +Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the +whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those +elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of +the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both +appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of +the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were +visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the +Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into +English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy +Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of +English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny +fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable +silence, over their English beef and English beer. + +It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful +stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with +the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the +narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the +result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for +what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire +makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, +the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not +to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment +which was not published until after his death, describing his first +impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a +fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of +Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would +have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be +painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the +master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in +reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher and +more important, something more original and more profound. He determined +to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an +ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of +faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's +dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note +to Madame de Bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of England, +into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and +follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he +was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter +in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was +now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great +blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu +in his _Lettres Persanes_; the second was struck by Voltaire in the +_Lettres Philosophiques_. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous +precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work +appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as +its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections +upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common +point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England +is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of +which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy is brought into operation. The +book is an extremely short one--it fills less than two hundred small +octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy +gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it--a set of private letters +to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an +extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a +hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance--from the +theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the effects +of inoculation to the immortality of the soul--and every touch tells. It +is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential +point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality +of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The matters +treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed +so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder +whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been +expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been +expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an +exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial +trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough. +Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop +of some strange liquor--is it a poison or is it an elixir of +life?--whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the +remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French +readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were +looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had begun +among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid +frame-work of society--of life itself--the hard, dark, narrow, +antiquated structure of their existence--had suddenly, in the twinkling +of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing. + +It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a work +would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to +those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been +crowned with triumph, and all that was best in English life was founded +upon the political institutions which had been then established. The +moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a +free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and +incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by +Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; he +gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly +mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the +responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even +the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, +whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the +importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the +constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to +the reader than the famous lines in the _Henriade_: + + Aux murs de Westminster on voit paraître ensemble + Trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les rassemble. + +Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the English +edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be +inserted in the preface: + + Some of his _English_ Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at his + not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which + most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is + an effect of _M. de Voltaire's_ Judgment. He contented himself with + giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which + is entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the + _British_ Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible + for a Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy + Labyrinth, in which such of the _English_ themselves as are best + acquainted with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and + lost? + +Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of +Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later +eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They turned +away in disgust from the 'gloomy labyrinth' of practical fact to take +refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts, +'the Cast of which was entirely new'--and the conclusion of which was +also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution. + +It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the _Lettres +Philosophiques_ should have been condemned by the authorities, not for +any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in +question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the _ancien +régime_ was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its immediate +effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was +increased. And the _ancien régime_ itself was not slow to realise the +danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the +unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful. + + Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La + seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle + de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop de conséquence pour + la traiter sérieusement. Il a fallu l'égorger pour ne pas heurter + de front nos seigneurs les théologiens, gens qui voient si + clairement la spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils + pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent. + +Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so +gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then +beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly +perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names +of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In this +connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the +writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord Morley +says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of +the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian +theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is certain +both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that +his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England. +There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous letter, preserved +among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the +police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment. + + Vous venez de mettre à la Bastille [says the writer, who, it is + supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il + y a plus de 15 années. + +The writer goes on to speak of the + + métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le déisme tout à + découvert aux toilettes de nos jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien + Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu de contes et de fables, les + apôtres étaient de bonnes gens idiots, simples, et crédules, et les + pères de l'Eglise, Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le + plus, n'étaient que des charlatans et des suborneurs. + +'Je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un jour seulement, +afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa vie.' That +Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such pious +ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn +from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of +England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and +Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate +and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was +only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and +fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused +rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may each +and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and +suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. +Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal +relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and +superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in +his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions +and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; +but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and +far-reaching speculations of Hume belong, of course, to a totally +different class. + +Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which +the _Lettres Philosophiques_ did pioneer work of a highly important +kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. +The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best--succinct, lucid, +persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other +hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention +his existence--a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely +afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's +nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high +Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such +aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition for +matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he had +never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see +before him. All was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, d'ordre, de +vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and +elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the true +significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind. + +Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to +reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by +slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, +quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon +some of the _Pensées_ of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that these +reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious +venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his +subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and +intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged +Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice +extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his +book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt +that it would be safer to skip the best parts--'the poor man!' he said +afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'--but the permission +never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit +publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The +_Lettres Philosophiques_ were officially condemned; the book was +declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux bonnes +moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to be +publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might +have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from +putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps +and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. Loke +and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de +Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered +message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was +carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete. + +He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of +the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's country +house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and +a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of +the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, and +condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of +Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of +orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard. +But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton _was_ heard. The men of +science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much +to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which +took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century +were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire. + +With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English +influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never +lost his interest in England; he was never tired of reading English +books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in +the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that +deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so +foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But it +is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's +nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central +standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in +England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has ever +trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found +its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially +conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of +Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising +passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the +nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the +careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and explicit, +and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez l'infâme!' +was enough for him. + + +1914. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 3: _Correspondance de Voltaire_ (1726-1729). By Lucien Foulet. +Paris: Hachette, 1913.] + +[Footnote 4: 'Il est aussi animé qu'il ait jamais été. Il a +quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en vérité je le crois immortel; il jouit de +tous ses sens, aucun même n'est affaibli; c'est un être bien singulier, +et en vérité fort supérieur.' Madame du Deffand to Horace Walpole, 12 +Avril 1778.] + + + + +A DIALOGUE + +BETWEEN + +MOSES, DIOGENES, AND MR. LOKE + + +DIOGENES + +Confess, oh _Moses_! Your Miracles were but conjuring-tricks, your +Prophecies lucky Hazards, and your Laws a _Gallimaufry_ of Commonplaces +and Absurdities. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the Vulgar than in +ascertaining the Truth, and that your Reputation in the World would +never have been so high, had your Lot fallen among a Nation of +Philosophers. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that when you taught the _Jews_ to spoil the _Egyptians_ you +were a sad rogue. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that it was a Fable to give Horses to Pharaoh and an uncloven +hoof to the Hare. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that you did never see the _Back Parts_ of the Lord. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that your style had too much Singularity and too little Taste to +be that of the Holy Ghost. + + +MOSES + +All this may be true, my good Friends; but what are the Conclusions you +would draw from your Raillery? Do you suppose that I am ignorant of all +that a Wise Man might urge against my Conduct, my Tales, and my +Language? But alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by Choice but by +Necessity. I had not the Happiness of living in _England_ or a _Tub_. I +was the Leader of an ignorant and superstitious People, who would never +have heeded the sober Counsels of Good Sense and Toleration, and who +would have laughed at the Refinements of a nice Philosophy. It was +necessary to flatter their Vanity by telling them that they were the +favour'd Children of God, to satisfy their Passions by allowing them to +be treacherous and cruel to their Enemies, and to tickle their Ears by +Stories and Farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a +Nursery or _Bedlam_. By such Contrivances I was able to attain my Ends +and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is +not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must +fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from +Expediency. It is his Duty to _sacrifice_ the Best, which is impossible, +to a _little Good_, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay down a +Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in a +few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and +Superstitious, the _Jews_ would never have escaped from the Bondage of +the _Egyptians_. + + +DIOGENES. + +Perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming Disaster. But, in +truth, you are right. There is no viler Profession than the Government +of Nations. He who dreams that he can lead a great Crowd of Fools +without a great Store of Knavery is a Fool himself. + + +MR. LOKE + +Are not you too hasty? Does not History show that there have been great +Rulers who were good Men? Solon, Henry of _Navarre_, and Milord Somers +were certainly not Fools, and yet I am unwilling to believe that they +were Knaves either. + + +MOSES + +No, not Knaves; but Dissemblers. In their different degrees, they all +juggled; but 'twas not because Jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because Men +cannot be governed without it. + + +MR. LOKE + +I would be happy to try the Experiment. If Men were told the Truth, +might they not believe it? If the Opportunity of Virtue and Wisdom is +never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be +willing to take it? Let Rulers be _bold_ and _honest_, and it is +possible that the Folly of their Peoples will disappear. + + +DIOGENES + +A pretty phantastick Vision! But History is against you. + + +MOSES + +And Prophecy. + + +DIOGENES + +And Common Observation. Look at the World at this moment, and what do we +see? It is as it has always been, and always will be. So long as it +endures, the World will continue to be rul'd by Cajolery, by Injustice, +and by Imposture. + + +MR. LOKE + +If that be so, I must take leave to lament the _Destiny_ of the Human +Race. + + + + +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES + +The historian of Literature is little more than a historian of exploded +reputations. What has he to do with Shakespeare, with Dante, with +Sophocles? Has he entered into the springs of the sea? Or has he walked +in the search of the depth? The great fixed luminaries of the firmament +of Letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more +than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes of +an ordinary mortal. His business is with the succeeding ages of men, not +with all time; but _Hyperion_ might have been written on the morrow of +Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The +literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the +geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of +forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great +men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer +great--mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the +siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is +for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the +platitudes of Cicero. It is for him to sit up all night with the +spectral heroes of Byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable +alexandrines with the faded heroines of Voltaire. + +The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly +indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of +him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, and +not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of _Candide_, of +_Akakia_, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his +productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons now +living have travelled through _La Henriade_ or _La Pucelle_? How many +have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of _L'Esprit des +Moeurs_? _Zadig_ and _Zaïre, Mérope_ and _Charles XII_. still linger, +perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of _Oreste_, and of +_Mahomet_, and of _Alzire_? _Où sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Though Voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as a +precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a +poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not +only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, +every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the +censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded +houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and +Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got +by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf +which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a +comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our feelings +and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing--a tragedy by +Voltaire. For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, +as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort +to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets our +eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to +its forgotten corner--to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the +scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same +words must have conjured up. The splendid gaiety, the refined +excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion--all these things have +vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, +the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had +their being. It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to examine +one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may do +so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the +footsteps of Voltaire himself. His examination of _Hamlet_ affords a +precedent which is particularly applicable, owing to the fact that the +same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which divides +ourselves from him. One point of difference, indeed, does exist between +the relative positions of the two authors. Voltaire, in his study of +Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our +interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. At +the present moment,[5] a literal translation of _King Lear_ is drawing +full houses at the Théâtre Antoine. As a rule it is rash to prophesy; +but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of +them--hundred years hence a literal translation of _Zaïre_ will not be +holding the English boards. + +It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of +Voltaire's tragedies. Our object is to review some specimen of what +would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of +the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in +_Alzire, ou Les Américains_, first produced with great success in 1736, +when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist +already well established. + +_Act I_.--The scene is laid in Lima, the capital of Peru, some years +after the Spanish conquest of America. When the play opens, Don Gusman, +a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the +Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and +just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of his +countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the +work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's +temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, +harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. + + L'Américain farouche est un monstre sauvage + Qui mord en frémissant le frein de l'esclavage ... + Tout pouvoir, en un mot, périt par l'indulgence, + Et la sévérité produit l'obéissance. + +Such were the cruel maxims of his government--maxims which he was only +too ready to put into practice. It was in vain that Don Alvarez reminded +his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and that, as he +epigrammatically put it, 'Le vrai Dieu, mon fils, est un Dieu qui +pardonne.' To enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of +how his own life had been spared by a virtuous American, who, as he +said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' But Don Gusman +remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was +one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. He +was in love with Alzire, Alzire the young and beautiful daughter of +Montèze, who had ruled in Lima before the coming of the Spaniards. 'Je +l'aime, je l'avoue,' said Gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne +veux.' With these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes +plain to the spectator. The wicked Spanish Governor is in love with the +virtuous American princess. From such a state of affairs, what +interesting and romantic developments may not follow? Alzire, we are not +surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a Peruvian +prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the +tyranny of Don Gusman. Yet, for the sake of Montèze, her ambitious and +scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the Governor. She +consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to Zamore. +'Sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to Don Gusman, 'il eut pour moi +des charmes.' + + Il m'aima: son trépas me coûte encore des larmes: + Vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur, + Jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur. + +The ruthless Don did not allow these pathetic considerations to stand in +the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should +be immediately performed. But, at the very moment of his apparent +triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes. + +_Act II_.--It was only natural to expect that a heroine affianced to a +villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. The hero adored by +Alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural +than his resurrection? The noble Zamore was not dead; he had escaped +with his life from the torture-chamber of Don Gusman, had returned to +avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying +imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved +princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe. + +In this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable Alvarez, +who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's +release. In the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to +distinguish the features of Zamore; but the old man at last discovered +that he was addressing the very American who, so many years ago, instead +of hitting him, had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this +extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, +behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let +us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to +state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, +hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the +Governor. + +Act III.--Meanwhile, Alzire had been married. But she still could not +forget her Peruvian lover. While she was lamenting her fate, and +imploring the forgiveness of the shade of Zamore, she was informed that +a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'Admit him.' He was +admitted. 'Heaven! Such were his features, his gait, his voice: Zamore!' +She falls into the arms of her confidante. 'Je succombe; à peine je +respire.' + + ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant. + ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire! + Est-ce une illusion? + +It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to confess +to her lover that she was already married to Don Gusman. Zamore was at +first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still +struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and +Don Gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room. + +A double recognition followed. Zamore was no less horrified to behold in +Don Gusman the son of the venerable Alvarez, than Don Gusman was +infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had +consented was no other than Zamore. When the first shock of surprise was +over, the Peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him +with the tortures he had inflicted. The Governor replied by ordering the +instant execution of the prince. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded his son of Zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that Alzire +herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. Zamore was +dragged from the apartment; and Alzire and Don Alvarez were left alone +to bewail the fate of the Peruvian hero. Yet some faint hopes still +lingered in the old man's breast. 'Gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, +'je le sais, j'en frémis; + + Mais il est ton époux, il t'aime, il est mon fils: + Son âme à la pitié se peut ouvrir encore.' + +'Hélas!' (replied Alzire), 'que n'êtes-vous le père de Zamore!' + +_Act IV_.--Even Don Gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel itself +entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and +he consented to allow a brief respite to Zamore's execution. Alzire was +not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for +she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of +bribing the warder of the dungeon. Zamore was free. But alas! Alzire was +not; was she not wedded to the wicked Gusman? Her lover's expostulations +fell on unheeding ears. What mattered it that her marriage vow had been +sworn before an alien God? 'J'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe à quel +dieu!' + + ZAMORE: Ta promesse est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu. + Périssent tes serments et ton Dieu que j'abhorre! + + ALZIRE: Arrête; quels adieux! arrête, cher Zamore! + +But the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his lips +than an oath to be revenged upon the Governor. Alzire, perplexed, +deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned +for comfort to that God, who, she could not but believe, was, in some +mysterious way, the Father of All. + + Great God, lead Zamore in safety through the desert places. ... Ah! + can it be true that thou art but the Deity of another universe? + Have the Europeans alone the right to please thee? Art thou after + all the tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... No! The + conquerors and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all + are equally the work of thy hands.... + +Her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. She heard shrieks; +she heard a cry of 'Zamore!' And her confidante, rushing in, confusedly +informed her that her lover was in peril of his life. + + Ah, chère Emire [she exclaimed], allons le secourir! + + EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel! + + ALZIRE: Je puis mourir. + +Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an +emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself +under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately +removed to the lowest dungeon. + +_Act V_.--It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt the +reason of her arrest. Zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight from +her apartment into the presence of Don Gusman, and had plunged a dagger +into his enemy's breast. The hero had then turned to Don Alvarez and, +with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard. + + J'ai fait ce que j'ai dû, j'ai vengé mon injure; + Fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature. + +Before Don Alvarez could reply to this appeal, Zamore had been haled off +by the enraged soldiery before the Council of Grandees. Don Gusman had +been mortally wounded; and the Council proceeded at once to condemn to +death, not only Zamore, but also Alzire, who, they found, had been +guilty of complicity in the murder. It was the unpleasant duty of Don +Alvarez to announce to the prisoners the Council's sentence. He did so +in the following manner: + + Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! My own liberator + is the assassin of my son. Zamore!... Yes, it is to thee that I owe + this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal + gift.... I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy + fury, in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance + from my agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy + benefactions. And thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our + misery I yet call by a name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how + far is it from thy father's wishes to add to the agony which he + already feels the horrible pleasure of vengeance. I must lose, by + an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my liberator, my daughter, and + my son. The Council has sentenced you to death. + +Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the +culprits were to be spared--that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. +What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for +a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while Alzire +added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by +hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was +just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor +of death upon his features, was carried into the room. The implacable +Governor was about to utter his last words. Alzire was resigned; Alvarez +was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last. But lo! when +the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change had +come over his mind. He was no longer proud, he was no longer cruel, he +was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, he +had repented. Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the truth +of Christianity. And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don +Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in the +arms of Don Alvarez. For thus were the guilty punished, and the virtuous +rewarded. The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, +and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her lover +to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. That they +were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don +Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave. + +Such is the tragedy of _Alzire_, which, it may be well to repeat, was in +its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. It was +upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries +recognised Voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic +triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and +Racine. With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and it +is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of _Alzire_ was +a worthy successor of the author of _Athalie_. At first sight, indeed, +the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a +closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be spanned +by any superficial likeness. + +A careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere +_tours de force_; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. For, +as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly +unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere +_tour de force_' carries with it something more than the idea of +technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is +technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and nothing +more. The problem before a writer of a Chant Royal is to overcome +certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his +_tour de force_, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is +accomplished. But Racine's problem was very different. The technical +restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary was +cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic +movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every +conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the +alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he +was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a _mot bas_. But his +triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it +was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of +them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and +enchanting work of art. To have brought about this amazing combination, +to have erected, upon a structure of Alexandrines, of Unities, of Noble +Personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia +of the Classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite +poetry, of overwhelming passion--that is a _tour de force_ whose +achievement entitles Jean Racine to a place among the very few +consummate artists of the world. + +Voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, +when he took up the mantle of Racine, he put it, not upon a human being, +but upon a tailor's block. To change the metaphor, Racine's work +resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted +our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming +tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire was +able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and +the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut into +curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one +instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same +pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of +similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. It is amusing to +note the exclamations which rise to the lips of Voltaire's characters in +moments of extreme excitement--_Qu'entends-je? Que vois-je? Où suis-je? +Grands Dieux! Ah, c'en est trop, Seigneur! Juste Ciel! Sauve-toi de ces +lieux! Madame, quelle horreur_ ... &c. And it is amazing to discover +that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to express +all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his +best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing +hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly falls +within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, +of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet-- + + C'est ce même guerrier dont la main tutélaire, + De Gusman, votre époux, sauva, dit-on, le père, + +or as + + Qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en eux-mêmes, + +or + + Vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends pas. + +Voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his +predecessors. Alzire's 'Je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious +reminiscence of the 'Qu'il mourût!' of le vieil Horace; and the cloven +hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'O ciel!' with which Alzire's +confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. Many of these +blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for +Voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'This +tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'Alembert, enclosing +_Olympie_. 'You should not have rested on the seventh,' was d'Alembert's +reply. But, on the whole, Voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a +high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever +man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most +palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a +real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can +only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains and +his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a +moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and +they are all put back into their box. The glance which the reader has +taken into the little case labelled _Alzire_ has perhaps given him a +sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes. + +Voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate +incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It is +only possible to write good plays without the power of +character-drawing, upon one condition--that of possessing the power of +creating dramatic situations. The _Oedipus Tyrannus_ of Sophocles, for +instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of +horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. +One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the +manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire +himself. The guilt of Oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience +very early in the play; and, when the _dénouement_ at last arrives, it +comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the King. There can be no +doubt that Voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those +underlying causes which make the _Oedipus_ perhaps the most awful of +tragedies. To know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon one +after another of the characters, to see Oedipus at last alone in +ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his +struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable +moment, the appalling revelation--few things can be more terrible than +this. But Voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an +effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own sense +of the dramatic. 'Nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que Sophocle n'avait +pas perfectionné son art.' + +More detailed evidence of Voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight is +to be found, of course, in his criticisms of Shakespeare. Throughout +these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which Voltaire +seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great predecessor, +and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as Shakespeare himself +was by Voltaire. It is unnecessary to dwell further upon so hackneyed a +subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this +dramatic insensibility of Voltaire's was able to go--his adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage. A comparison of the two pieces +should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the +degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. Particular +attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral +oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of +the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent +sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:-- + + ANTOINE: Brutus ... où suis-je? O ciel! O crime! O barbarie!' + Chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits ... + Brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre était son fils! + ROMAINS: Ah dieux! + +If Voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits were +equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not +perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. The weight of +a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere--it is so +universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came +to a performance of _Alzire_ unconscious of the burden of the Classical +rules. They found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes +just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of startling +incidents, of happy _mots_. They were dazzled by an easy display of +cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it +was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a +distance, and under artificial light. When, in _Mérope_, one saw La +Dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote Voltaire himself, 'les yeux égarés, la +voix entrecoupée, levant une main tremblante, elle allait immoler son +propre fils; quand Narbas l'arrêta; quand, laissant tomber son poignard, +on la vit s'évanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle sortit de +cet état de mort avec les transports d'une mère; lorsque, ensuite, +s'élançant aux yeux de Polyphonte, traversant en un clin d'oeil tout le +théâtre, les larmes dans les yeux, la pâleur sur le front, les sanglots +à la bouche, les bras étendus, elle s'écria: "Barbare, il est mon +fils!"'--how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one +question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? +Alas! to us, who know not La Dumesnil, to us whose _Mérope_ is nothing +more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our +forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. Its glittering +was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the +manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, Voltaire was able to make up +for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a +great deal of 'go.' + +And to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. His vivacity, +indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. +He introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to write +tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he +was so bold as to rhyme 'père' with 'terre.' The wild diversity of his +incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under +happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose +path which ended in the bonfire of 1830. + +But it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of +decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as +would be--let us say--that of a shilling shocker written by Miss Yonge. +His heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in +inversions. Amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his +cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able +to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. The Classical +tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous +achievement was that it prevented Molière from being a great tragedian. +But there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have +taken--if only for some scattered moments--the sense of the ridiculous +from Voltaire. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 5: April, 1905.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT + + +At the present time,[6] when it is so difficult to think of anything but +of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast +occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least +prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be +instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that +Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless +to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely +active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would +be as well for him _not_ to live in France. For, just as modern Germany +dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so +modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of +the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms +one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in +history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few +brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's +masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of +_The History of Friedrich II_. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty years +have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of new +material--including the valuable edition of the correspondence between +Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the +Archives at Berlin--has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite +of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another rapid +review of it will not be out of place. + +Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and already one of the most famous +men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the +Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence +which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over +forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose +personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed to +lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary +European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his +nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was +moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering +of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted +with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his +admiration for the author of the _Henriade_ and _Zaïre_ was unbounded. + + La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour + tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font espérer + que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous trouvez + dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de + lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être pensant. J'ose + même avancer, sans déroger au mérite d'autrui, que dans l'univers + entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception à faire de ceux dont vous ne + pourriez être le maître. + +The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that +graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his +correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' +and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion +of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had +commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' For the next +four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It +was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his +passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured out +with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and _la raison +suffisante_, odes _sur la Flatterie_, and epistles _sur l'Humanité_, +while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no less enormous +philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal +Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, though +the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young +Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but +extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it +possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs +of feeling or of character. Voltaire's _empressement_ seems to take on, +once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one +notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with +'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly into +'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his +'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a +little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events. + + Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que vous + ne vous y mépreniez plus ... J'ai peu de mérite et peu de savoir; + mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds inépuisable + d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une vertu distinguée, et + avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitié + exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que + vous méritez; mais je n'en ai pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de + mauvais vers. + +But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place +of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of comparing +Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of +proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus +d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est Frédéric +que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of +protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez +pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... Je crois, +par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je +crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un Voltaire pour +le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments were too +emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said +afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; yet neither was +without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered +upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope +that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a +crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love +of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening. + +In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the +relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both +sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered +that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes +heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His _prince philosophe_ +started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and +turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was +at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than +Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the +King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed a +good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, remarkably +rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in +Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his +accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no +more, and its place is taken--at once and for ever--by the +self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In +this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of +Voltaire should lose some of its glitter--especially since Frederick now +began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh +with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is +noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the +part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse +Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only been +sent him on the condition of _un secret inviolable_. He writes to Jordan +complaining of Voltaire's avarice in very stringent terms. 'Ton avare +boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... Son apparition de +six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante écus. C'est bien +payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' +He declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi légère que le style de +ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man +_extraordinaire en tout_. + +Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing more +and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. +For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, +Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised +in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for +years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would +_posséder_--for so he put it--the author of the _Henriade_, would keep +him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, +would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own +verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish would +be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was +dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his +surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the +Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was +Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Châtelet. He had lived with her +for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of +friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would never +leave her--no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is +true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a +solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of +ladies--even of ladies like Madame du Châtelet--learned enough to +translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the +Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to _posséder_ Voltaire +either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated +temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first time, poor +Madame du Châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters from +Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew +nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her +distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she +dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But suddenly +Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at +her feet once more. + +What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of the +King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found +the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an +insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial +way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he +should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France +for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the +Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick +had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, he +had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that +of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an +opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give +verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded the +Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly +sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix +would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever +to return to France; and in that case--well, Voltaire would have no +other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and Madame +du Châtelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, Frederick's +plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had +happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to +stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had +been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to +stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he +forgave Frederick. But the King was most anxious to patch up the +quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing +Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more +immediate desire--to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous +work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet +and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates--_La +Pucelle_. + +Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more flattering +than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point +injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de badiner +sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La +Pucelle!_ et encore _La Pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour de Dieu, +ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' And at last +Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his +_Pucelle_--just enough to whet Frederick's appetite--and he declared +himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in March +1749; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous ai pardonné, et actuellement +je vous aime à la folie.' Within a year of this date his situation had +undergone a complete change. Madame du Châtelet was dead; and his +position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de +Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to +have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this +time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good +bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at Berlin +in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin and +Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of +Merit, together with a pension of £800 a year. These arrangements caused +considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying +prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien! +Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the +Quays. + +The curious drama that followed, with its farcical [Greek: peripeteia] +and its tragi-comic _dénouement_, can hardly be understood without a +brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief +actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had +now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem +which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He +frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year +before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most +urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter +to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He had +been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's +letters). + + Il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au Parnasse. C'est bien dommage + qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie. Il a les + gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que + c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de + rien, car j'en ai besoin pour l'étude de l'élocution française. On + peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. Je veux savoir son + français; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouvé le moyen de + réunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en même temps + qu'on méprise son caractère. + +There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he was a +scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of +_l'élocution française_; therefore it was necessary that he should come +and live in Berlin. But as for anything more--as for any real +interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of +respect, or even of regard--all that was utterly out of the question. +The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, +and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. In +the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude +which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle--that he was the victim of +an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, and +that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly +disappointed--becomes obviously untenable. If any man ever acted with +his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin. + +Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in more +than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to +_l'élocution française_ is easy enough to understand; but Frederick's +devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense +that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or +by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and +constant proximity of--what?--of a man whom he himself described as a +'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. +And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it +quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but +delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery, +so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less +undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange; +but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue--a vogue, +indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern reader +to realise it--enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and +literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick +was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of +any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady +and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the +social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid +to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole +standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast majority +of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was concentrated +in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French poetry +meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French +poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this +curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The _Grand Siècle_ +was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of +Boileau. + +Frederick's library, still preserved at Potsdam, shows us what +literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed +entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the +masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. But +Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; +he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after +the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred +sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. +It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of +the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his +own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept +him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled +volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most +complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb--_Poeta +nascitur, non fit_. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her +feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible +conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and +now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or +pathetic--one hardly knows which--were it not so certainly neither the +one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, +from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. +Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong--something, but +not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; +and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it--Voltaire, the one true +heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of +Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over +_Mahomet_ as over _Britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed Homer +and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read +the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the +lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed +(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. +Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he +would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German +Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of +rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of +correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the +blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes choses +d'un scélérat.' + +And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite +convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the +master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage +of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon +enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession +of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an +ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the +ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to +Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion +as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great +writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner +of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche +soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' _C'est bien dommage_!--as if there was +nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty +woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little +tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau +génie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was wrong: it +was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing. + +A devil--or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the +complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so +mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements +of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold +within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the +more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at +least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it +was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to +realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to +Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of +publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood +the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. +He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still +before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to +take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his consciousness, +aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at +this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth +into the unknown? + +What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it +is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with +Paris--he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless +literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his +countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not +appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he +admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. +'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de plus, il +était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, attendu la +faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal +intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased +consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his +order--to say nothing of the addition of £800 to his income. Yet, on the +other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for +servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would +make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in +his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however +successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to +Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he +had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by +the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he +always was--a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without +remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes--however dubious +those purposes may have been. + +And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece, +Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris +establishment and in whom he confided--in so far as he can be said to +have confided in anyone--he repeatedly states that there is nothing +permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is +only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on to +Italy to visit 'sa Sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville souterraine,' that +he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads +are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will +be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will +certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of +finishing his _Siècle de Louis XIV_.; he really must wait just a few +weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris +until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying +and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers +on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. +Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried +official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other +friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could +see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true +intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret +corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a +premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems +to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room +through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when +all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window +which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery +fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going +after all. + +In any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire's +visit could only have ended as it did--in an explosion. The elements of +the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two +confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house +together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of +mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or +later human nature will assert itself, and the _ménage_ will break up. +And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such +cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them +was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very +thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he +might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and +perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the +incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist +of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the +skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked how +much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on +his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses +were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man +expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well +enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and +uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very few +weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible +on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take +place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and +one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling +each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he +opens all our letters in the post'--Voltaire, whose light-handedness +with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The monkey,' +mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his +friends'--Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's +letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. 'How happy I should be here,' +exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing--his Majesty is +utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a +farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was +busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire. + +It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the first +really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the +temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of +illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a +series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with +the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and +countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost +his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the +court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it +is almost certain--the evidence is not quite conclusive--that he +committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was +furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from +Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not part +with his _beau génie_ so soon. He cracked his whip, and, setting the +monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the +shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu +tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once +more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, +came out and basked again in those refulgent beams. + +And the beams were decidedly refulgent--so much so, in fact, that they +almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite. +For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's +admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses--there is a +letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein +the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, +she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'--though he had ample +leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the +brilliant conversation of the King, though he could often forget for +weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot--yet, in +spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, and +he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's +court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of +persons--foreigners for the most part--whose business it was to instruct +him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out +of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one +of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant +dabbler in scientific matters--he had written a book to explain Newton +to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull +free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many +debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love +affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for +atheism and bad manners; and Pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, under +stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his +religion six times. + +These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his +leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange +rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with +d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of _La +Pucelle_. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove +the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout +with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, +and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place +where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times +Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of +Pöllnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and +serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a +Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough, +Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little +menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and Chasot +both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to +visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow their +example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to +return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch +was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his +escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a +surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jésus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains +of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous +voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' La Mettrie, with an oath, +expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, +remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.' + +Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure +whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from +the rest--that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of +the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate +fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then +recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very +anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing +measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to Lapland, +and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the +Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He +possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was +energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories +of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to +come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply +justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his +earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once +overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited +Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an _homme d'esprit_, +and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal +supper-parties. It was the happy--the too happy--President who was the +rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other +slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration +for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a +severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces +deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer +ensemble dans la même chambre.' And indeed to the vain and sensitive +poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies, +intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at +supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to +the shady mediocrities who sat around--that sight was gall and wormwood; +and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes +began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its +work. + +Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to +conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was +very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five +years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he was +deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who +could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?--Voltaire, who as +obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and +Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the +length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, +La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and +war was not long in coming. + +Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an +important mathematical law--the 'principle of least action.' The law +was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the +development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a +recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without realising +its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it +was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, however, was very +proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the +principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was +therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in +Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir +attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support +of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law +was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the +case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, and +that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When +Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He +summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig +was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should solemnly +pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious and +false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions +depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler +was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful +condemnation. + +Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had put +himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in +attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was +wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he +was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper subject +for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck now, +he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to +give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon this +matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick +certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive of +the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would +certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who himself +drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. +But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two +years in Berlin, and the atmosphere of a Court was beginning to weigh +upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for a +fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick +combined--he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered +himself that he would settle the hash of the President. + +As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from Berlin, +and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement +ordre à mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September 18, +1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled 'Réponse +d'un Académicien de Berlin à un Académicien de Paris.' It was a +statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its +concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President +must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The +terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, +and that man was receiving a royal pension of £800 a year and carrying +about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his +writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be +published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble +work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy +invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely +compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Réponse d'un Académicien +de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans génie,' an +'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the 'Réponse' itself +was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an 'action malicieuse, +lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the royal +insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le +sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien +étonnés de se trouver là.' But one thing was now certain: the King had +joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind +of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear--he +would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever. +And it so happened that just then an unexpected opportunity occurred +for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that +weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,' +he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.' + +Meanwhile the life of the Court--which passed for the most part at +Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built +for himself--proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life, +half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the +ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do +here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb +_s'ennuyer_,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a verb +unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still +preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the +formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly +coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable +old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his _Pucelle_, and +his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill--very ill; he was +probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed +to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. +He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he +was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But +he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found +him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,' +remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up from +the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques +meurent l'oeil enflammé?' When the evening came it was time to dress, +and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to the +little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, was +preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered +together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the +sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little space, +to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the +royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, +and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of +Rossbach drew tears from the author of _Candide_. But a moment later it +was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid +laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of +Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations +of Voltaire. + +Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the +rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but +nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but +still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's +enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours, +the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number +of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly +speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very +unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and +Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The +famous _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_ is still fresh with a fiendish +gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the +skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have +glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted +with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' +_rêveries_ have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and +nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The _Diatribe_, however, +is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For +instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that +Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B +divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well +founded. 'Lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la géometrie,' Voltaire +wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui +entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des ténèbres'; and +Maupertuis had in fact vitiated his treatment of the 'principle of +least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through +Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific +principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the +experimental method, a consistent attack upon _a priori_ reasoning, +loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all +this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of +effervescent raillery--cruel, personal, insatiable--the raillery of a +demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed +till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade +Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. +Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, +under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book +appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within +bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them +privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he +flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business. + + Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the + President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est + finie. J'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai lavé si bien la tête + que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, et je connais son âme lache, + incapable de sentiments d'honneur. Je l'ai intimidé du côté de la + boursse, ce qui a fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai + déclaré enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et + non une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent des + poissons. + +Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had come +a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and +by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick +wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe +qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait fouetté.' But now the monkey +_had_ been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems strange +that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close +observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He +might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in +spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose +obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a +threat 'du côté de la boursse.' Before the month was out all Germany was +swarming with _Akakias_; thousands of copies were being printed in +Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is +difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who +thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the enraged +master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'étonne,' fulminated +Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all Europe +was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the +President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly +espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. +'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper, +'dans l'état où je suis!' (He was, of course, once more dying.) 'Quoi! +vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.' +Frederick replied by having copies of _Akakia_ burnt by the common +hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his Order, +his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the +final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed +before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and +to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's +suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of Voltaire +to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly +controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's +accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually +went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. +But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at +Potsdam--'soupers de Damoclès' Voltaire called them; and then, on March +26, 1753, the two men parted for ever. + +The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in the +wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters of Plombières, stopped at +Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises to +the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of +_Akakia_. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to +Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued +yet another edition of _Akakia_, appended a somewhat unauthorised +version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and +cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a +vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which +figure so freely in the comedies of Molière. This stroke was the _coup +de grâce_ of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he dragged himself +from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple +of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In +the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had suddenly +remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few +privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had spent +so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several +passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that +those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious +Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which he +now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by +feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered +uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have +been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident in +Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet in +arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange +blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much controversial +and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German +biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little comedy +of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame--that +Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian +Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was careless in his +orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need any +Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government +in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the rule +of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd. + +After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free--free in +every sense of the word--free from the service of Kings and the clutches +of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He +hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of +Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the +profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering +and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to +and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time +even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were +almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was +submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose +compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. +But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier +and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even +Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of Ferney +something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He +actually came to respect the author of _Akakia_, and to cherish his +memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told d'Alembert, +when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin +Voltaire, _ora pro nobis_.' + +1915. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 6: October 1915.] + + + + +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR + + +No one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and +fascinating country, Eighteenth-Century France, can have come away from +it without at least _one_ impression strong upon him--that in no other +place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. France in +the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been--however splendid +in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour--was +certainly not a quiet place to live in. One could never have been +certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was +out, one would not be in the Bastille for something one had said at +dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one had +never said at all. + +Of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more +remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, +which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly +affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the +most potent of the precursors of the Revolution. The affair is +constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a +prominent place in the later books of the _Confessions_; and there is an +account of its earlier phases--an account written from the anti-Rousseau +point of view--in the _Mémoires_ of Madame d'Epinay. The whole story is +an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been +satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers +has been decidedly hostile to Rousseau, though it has not subscribed to +all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of the +quarrel. This, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an unprejudiced +reader of the _Confessions_ would naturally come to. Rousseau's story, +even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. He would have us +believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of +which Grimm and Diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in +alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included +all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does +such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but +the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally +insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the +unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by +rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded +mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by +contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own +writings subsequent to the _Confessions_, where his endless +recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear +all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years; +and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for +reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a +recently-published work[7], has produced some new and important +evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts +of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For +it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely +overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot, +and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told +in the _Confessions_ is simply the truth. + +If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's +newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value +of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a +revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the +eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a +cheat, that d'Alembert was a dupe, and Hume a liar--that, surely, were +no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from +Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the +data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may +be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' as +she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all +students of that remarkable age. + +Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the _Mémoires_ of +Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the concluding +quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most +detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It +has, however, always been doubtful how far the _Mémoires_ were to be +trusted as accurate records of historical fact. The manuscript +disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed +book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in +the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted +known events. Had Madame d'Epinay merely intended to write a _roman à +clef_? What seemed, so far as concerned the Rousseau narrative, to put +this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel +as it appears in the _Mémoires_ is, in its main outlines, substantiated +both by Grimm's references to Rousseau in his _Correspondance +Littéraire_, and by a brief memorandum of Rousseau's misconduct, drawn +up by Diderot for his private use, and not published until many years +after Madame d'Epinay's death. Accordingly most writers on the subject +have taken the accuracy of the _Mémoires_ for granted; Sainte-Beuve, for +instance, prefers the word of Madame d'Epinay to that of Rousseau, when +there is a direct conflict of testimony; and Lord Morley, in his +well-known biography, uses the _Mémoires_ as an authority for many of +the incidents which he relates. Mrs. Macdonald's researches, however, +have put an entirely different complexion on the case. She has +discovered the manuscript from which the _Mémoires_ were printed, and +she has examined the original draft of this manuscript, which had been +unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably +neglected by previous scholars. From these researches, two facts have +come to light. In the first place, the manuscript differs in many +respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a +conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; +the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies +of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a +fiction. And in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript +turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in +those portions which concern Rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and +notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the +corrections were made by Madame d'Epinay herself; but in nearly every +case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the +notes themselves are in the handwriting of Diderot and Grimm. Mrs. +Macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, which +amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before +long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the +_Mémoires_, with all the manuscript alterations clearly indicated; for +until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the +text. However, it is now beyond dispute both that Madame d'Epinay's +narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its +agreement with the statements of Grimm and Diderot is by no means an +independent confirmation of its truth, for Grimm and Diderot themselves +had a hand in its compilation. + +Thus far we are on firm ground. But what are the conclusions which Mrs. +Macdonald builds up from these foundations? The account, she says, of +Rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, +is hostile to him, but it was not the account which Madame d'Epinay +herself originally wrote. The hostile narrative was, in effect, composed +by Grimm and Diderot, who induced Madame d'Epinay to substitute it for +her own story; and thus her own story could not have agreed with +theirs. Madame d'Epinay knew the truth; she knew that Rousseau's conduct +had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; +until, falling completely under the influence of Grimm and Diderot, she +had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the +reputation of her old friend. Mrs. Macdonald paints a lurid picture of +the conspirators at work--of Diderot penning his false and malignant +instructions, of Madame d'Epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last +touches to the fraud, of Grimm, rushing back to Paris at the time of the +Revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that the +result of all these efforts should reach posterity. Well! it would be +difficult--perhaps it would be impossible--to prove conclusively that +none of these things ever took place. The facts upon which Mrs. +Macdonald lays so much stress--the mutilations, the additions, the +instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts +tell--these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald's +theories; but there are other facts--no less important, and no less +certain--which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald's view, and +over which she passes as lightly as she can. Putting aside the question +of the _Mémoires_, we know nothing of Diderot which would lead us to +entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and +badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a +singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted +his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. We know less +of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of +Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. Is all +this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? Are we to dismiss +it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? Surely +Diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in +the draft of the _Mémoires_. It is quite true that his reputation _may_ +have been ill-founded, that d'Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume _may_ have +been deluded, or _may_ have been bribed, into admitting him to their +friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such +hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of +Diderot's guilt that we _must_ believe them? Mrs. Macdonald declares +that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her +garbled and concocted manuscripts. If there is indeed no explanation of +these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald +puts forward--that they were the outcome of a false and malicious +conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau--then we must admit that +she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations as +to Diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. But, before we +come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other +possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we +sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every +loophole of escape! + +It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay +manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. +Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, +owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the +events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which +will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least +interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the +_Mémoires_, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality +full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely +imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, almost +without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself +actually did describe them in his _Correspondance Littéraire_, as +'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon +this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the +most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. +But she has proved too much. The _Mémoires_, she says, are a fiction; +therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why +should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but +simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as +well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a +narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own +experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of +events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, +fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the +actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had +finished her work--a work full of subtle observation and delightful +writing--she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism +to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been +moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chère Madame, is a very +poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to +have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he +behaved at that time. _C'était un homme à faire peur_. You have missed a +great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' +Whereupon they gave her their own impressions of Rousseau's conduct, +they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they +jotted down some notes for her guidance. She rewrote the story in +accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the +incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought +fit--for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' +If we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, +shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to +common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised integrity +the meanest of frauds? + +To follow Mrs. Macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of her +argument would be a difficult and tedious task. The circumstances with +which she is principally concerned--the suspicions, the accusations, the +anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether +Madame d'Epinay was jealous of Madame d'Houdetot, whether Thérèse told +fibs, whether, on the 14th of the month, Grimm was grossly impertinent, +and whether, on the 15th, Rousseau was outrageously rude, whether +Rousseau revealed a secret to Diderot, which Diderot revealed to +Saint-Lambert, and whether, if Diderot revealed it, he believed that +Rousseau had revealed it before--these circumstances form, as Lord +Morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and Mrs. Macdonald has +done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths or +the horror of the dreams. Her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is +enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus of +appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant +matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an +instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. +Without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns +for us in Mrs. Macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon +one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) +only very slightly--the question of the motives which could have induced +Grimm and Diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies. + +It is, doubtless, conceivable that Grimm, who was Madame d'Epinay's +lover, was jealous of Rousseau, who was Madame d'Epinay's friend. We +know very little of Grimm's character, but what we do know seems to show +that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a +close alliance with Madame d'Epinay may have seemed to him a necessary +step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined +not to rest until his most serious rival in Madame d'Epinay's affections +was utterly cast out. He was probably prejudiced against Rousseau from +the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his view +of Rousseau's character and acts. The violence of the abuse which Grimm +and the rest of the Encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable +Jean-Jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of +the case. Whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something +about _traître_ and _mensonge_ and _scélératesse_. He is referred to as +often as not as if he were some dangerous kind of wild beast. This was +Grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of +his character which Madame d'Epinay finally expressed in her book. The +important question is--did Grimm know that Rousseau was in reality an +honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in +order to drive him out of Madame d'Epinay's affections? The answer, I +think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. If Grimm had +known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which +he had supplied Madame d'Epinay, and which led to the alteration of her +_Mémoires_, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of the +manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been +made. As it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying +the draft, and he did not do so. He came to Paris at the risk of his +life in 1791, and stayed there for four months, with the object, +according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the +Empress Catherine, or, according to Mrs. Macdonald's account, of having +the rough draft of the _Mémoires_ copied out by his secretary. Whatever +his object, it is certain that the copy--that from which ultimately the +_Mémoires_ were printed--was made either at that time, or earlier; and +that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months +of his stay in Paris, from destroying the draft. Mrs. Macdonald's +explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. Grimm, she says, must +have wished to get away from Paris 'without arousing suspicion by +destroying papers.' This is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would +have delighted that good knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Grimm had four +months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should +he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? There can +be only one reply: Why _should_ he? + +If it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which might +conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the case +of Diderot presents difficulties which are quite insurmountable. Mrs. +Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he +was tired of hearing Rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. +Surely Mrs. Macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such +an argument is a little too 'psychological.' The truth is that Diderot +had nothing to gain by attacking Rousseau. He was not, like Grimm, in +love with Madame d'Epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win +for himself a position in the Parisian world. His acquaintance with +Madame d'Epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were +from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. +In fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing Rousseau was +that he believed Rousseau deserved abuse. Whether he was right in +believing so is a very different question. Most readers, at the present +day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet place +in the perspective of Time, would, I think, agree that Diderot and the +rest of the Encyclopaedists were mistaken. As we see him now, in that +long vista, Rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a +distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, +above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his +contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was +modern. Among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth +century, he belonged to another world--to the new world of +self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy +and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of +Nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. Who +can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? Who +can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he +seemed, to the pupils of Voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? +'Cet homme est un forcené!' Diderot exclaims. 'Je tâche en vain de faire +de la poésie, mais cet homme me revient tout à travers mon travail; il +me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais à côté de moi un damné: il est +damné, cela est sûr. ... J'avoue que je n'ai jamais éprouvé un trouble +d'âme si terrible que celui que j'ai ... Que je ne revoie plus cet +homme-là, il me ferait croire au diable et à l'enfer. Si je suis jamais +forcé de retourner chez lui, je suis sûr que je frémirai tout le long du +chemin: j'avais la fièvre en revenant ... On entendait ses cris jusqu'au +bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... Les poètes ont bien fait de mettre +un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En vérité, la main me +tremble.' Every word of that is stamped with sincerity; Diderot was +writing from his heart. But he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' +across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of +what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and +hell, but between the old world and the new. + +1907. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 7: _Jean Jacques Rousseau: a New Criticism_, by Frederika +Macdonald. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall. 1906.] + + + + +THE POETRY OF BLAKE[8] + + +The new edition of Blake's poetical works, published by the Clarendon +Press, will be welcomed by every lover of English poetry. The volume is +worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been +produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to +perpetuate. Blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his +editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the +present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the +case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh +inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result of +accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's text +has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so +habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming +permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since +the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent +admiration of the poet. 'It is not a little bewildering,' says Mr. +Sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic +extolling Blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of +lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the _Songs of Experience_, +while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than +seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and +important changes of meaning.' This is Procrustes admiring the exquisite +proportions of his victim. As one observes the countless instances +accumulated in Mr. Sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to +which the free and spontaneous expression of Blake's genius has been +subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where he +speaks of the beautiful garden in which-- + + Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, + And binding with briers my joys and desires; + +and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that Blake's prophetic +vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' +most of his future editors. Perhaps, though, if Blake's prescience had +extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; and +we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial +efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. The present +edition, however, amply compensates for the past. Mr. Sampson gives us, +in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so printed +as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and +nothing more. At the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he +has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the +variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; +and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through the +labyrinth of Blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those +passages in the _Prophetic Books_, which throw light upon the +obscurities of the poems. The most important Blake document--the +Rossetti MS.--has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the +owner, Mr. W.A. White, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no +common measure; and the long-lost Pickering MS.--the sole authority for +some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems--was, with deserved +good fortune, discovered by Mr. Sampson in time for collation in the +present edition. Thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has not +been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the hand +of Blake. Mr. Sampson's minute and ungrudging care, his high critical +acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of +the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make +his edition a noble and splendid monument of English scholarship. It +will be long indeed before the poems of Blake cease to afford matter for +fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe +to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will +henceforward remain unchanged. There will be no room for further +editing. The work has been done by Mr. Sampson, once and for all. + +In the case of Blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly +important, for more than one reason. Many of his effects depend upon +subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily +lost in reproduction. 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary +version of one of his most celebrated lines. But in Blake's original +engraving the words appear thus--'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'; and who +can fail to perceive the difference? Even more remarkable is the change +which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of one +of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem. + + And what shoulder, and what art, + Could twist the sinews of thy heart? + And when thy heart began to beat, + What dread hand? and what dread feet? + +So Blake engraved the verse; and, as Mr. Sampson points out,'the +terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in the +'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:--'What dread hand and what +dread feet?' It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery +of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present +edition. + +But these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of Blake's +poetry are not--important as they are--the only justification for a +scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was +not guided by the ordinarily accepted rules of writing; he allowed +himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, +with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of +his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. +Thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own +making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. They are the +rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries +of an Unknown God; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox +incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate +afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with +advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven +in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor is +this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has +been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop +there. The emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably +from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from +corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a +penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be +adduced as one instance--out of the enormous number which fill Mr. +Sampson's notes--of the dangers of editorial laxity. + + I told my love, I told my love, + I told her all my heart; + Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, + Ah! she doth depart. + +This is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented with +an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' But their +work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their version +of the last four lines of the poem is as follows: + + Soon after she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly: + He took her with a sigh. + +Reference to the MS., however, shows that the last line had been struck +out by Blake, and another substituted in its place--a line which is now +printed for the first time by Mr. Sampson. So that the true reading of +the verse is: + + Soon as she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly-- + O! was no deny. + +After these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to Rossetti +and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the +poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their +concoction--'Love's Secret'--a title which there is no reason to suppose +had ever entered the poet's mind. + +Besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little poem +is an admirable instance of Blake's most persistent quality--his +triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. His most characteristic +passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, that +the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of +'inspiration.' Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, in his interesting +Introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such +attributions of peculiar powers to Blake, or indeed to any other poet. +'No man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' But even +if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there +are degrees of inspiration; if Mr. F's Aunt was a woman of genius, what +are we to say of Hamlet? And Blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, +stands very high indeed. If one could strike an average among poets, it +would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, +Blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the +street. All poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making +one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'What made him think of +that?' With Blake, one is asking the question all the time. + +Blake's originality of manner was not, as has sometimes been the case, +a cloak for platitude. What he has to say belongs no less distinctly to +a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. In +English literature, as Sir Walter Raleigh observes, he 'stands outside +the regular line of succession.' All that he had in common with the +great leaders of the Romantic Movement was an abhorrence of the +conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the +eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that +exaltation of Nature--the 'Vegetable Universe,' as he called it--from +which sprang the pantheism of Wordsworth and the paganism of Keats. +'Nature is the work of the Devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the Devil is +in us as far as we are Nature.' There was no part of the sensible world +which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. Even the +'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and +strong'; they were 'writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,' and destined to +vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the Everlasting Gospel. + +There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming and +splendid lyrist, as the author of _Infant Joy_, and _The Tyger_, and the +rest of the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_. These poems show but +faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the +Rossetti and Pickering MSS., the presence of a hidden and symbolic +meaning in Blake's words becomes obvious enough--a meaning which +receives its fullest expression in the _Prophetic Books_. It was only +natural that the extraordinary nature of Blake's utterance in these +latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an +inspired idiot--a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. +That belief, made finally impossible by Mr. Swinburne's elaborate Essay, +is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and +indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of Time, which left +Blake for so long in the Paradise of Fools, is now about to place him +among the Prophets. Anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and +Blake's writings, according to Sir Walter Raleigh, contain a complete +exposition of its doctrines. The same critic asserts that Blake was 'one +of the most consistent of English poets and thinkers.' This is high +praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. It is one +thing to give Blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in +the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large +mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could +never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. It is quite +another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a +consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be ordinarily +attributed to a system of philosophy. Does Sir Walter mean to assert +that Blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? It is a little difficult +to discover. Referring, in his Introduction, to Blake's abusive notes on +Bacon's _Essays_, he speaks of-- + + The sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men + indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position + when his gods fall out among themselves. His case [Sir Walter + wittily adds] is not much unlike that of Terah, the father of + Abraham, who (if the legend be true) was a dealer in idols among + the Chaldees, and, coming home to his shop one day, after a brief + absence, found that the idols had quarrelled, and the biggest of + them had smashed the rest to atoms. Blake is a dangerous idol for + any man to keep in his shop. + +We wonder very much whether he is kept in Sir Walter Raleigh's. + +It seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which +would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for +Blake. His treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very +far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are +liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'Plato,' said +Blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. +There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' And +this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'Satan's empire is the +empire of nothing'; there is no such thing as evil--it is a mere +'negation.' And the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate +between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely +'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' Such was one of +the most fundamental of Blake's doctrines; but it requires only a +superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their whole +tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. Every page he +wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings raised +in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists +never surpassed. His epigrams on Reynolds are masterpieces of virulent +abuse; the punishment which he devised for Klopstock--his impersonation +of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'--is unprintable; as for those +who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they +'crucify Christ with the head downwards.' The contradiction is indeed +glaring. 'There is no such thing as wickedness,' Blake says in effect, +'and you are wicked if you think there is.' If it is true that evil does +not exist, all Blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on +the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if +everything, in fact, is _not_ good in God's eyes--then why not say so? +Really Blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.' + +But of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. To judge him +according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal +whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. In +fact, to Blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible +phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the +business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. +Reason is the 'Spectre' of Blake's mythology, that Spectre, which, he +says, + + Around me night and day + Like a wild beast guards my way. + +It is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'Emanation,' or +imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the +universe. Ever since the day when, in his childhood, Blake had seen +God's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the +only reality and the only good. He beheld the things of this world 'not +with, but through, the eye': + + With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey, + With my outward, a Thistle across my way. + +It was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that Blake yielded +the allegiance of his spirit. His attitude towards reason was the +attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. He never +could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'Spectre'; struggle as +he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the +ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if +argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued to +what he worked in. As in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been +locked into a crystal cabinet--the world of the senses and of reason--a +gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had +danced so merrily before. + + I strove to seize the inmost Form + With ardour fierce and hands of flame, + But burst the Crystal Cabinet, + And like a Weeping Babe became-- + + A weeping Babe upon the wild.... + +To be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the +impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the +same time. But Blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. +He would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying Christ +with the head downwards. + +Besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious objection to +Blake's mysticism--and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. +The mystic's creed--even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic +beauty of Blake's verse--comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of +its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and +almost cruel. The sacrifices which it demands are too vast, in spite of +the divinity of what it has to offer. What shall it profit a man, one is +tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? +The mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. The +following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of +inspiration which he never surpassed, Blake's conception of that ideal: + + And throughout all Eternity + I forgive you, you forgive me. + As our dear Redeemer said: + 'This the Wine, & this the Bread.' + +It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for +instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would +have subjected such lines as these. His criticism would have been +irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter +at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of Blake's +words. But that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it +is difficult to doubt. Charles Lamb, perhaps, might have made it; +incidentally, indeed, he has. 'Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary +walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the +delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful +glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent +vanities, and jests, and _irony itself_'--do these things form no part +of your Eternity? + +The truth is plain: Blake was an intellectual drunkard. His words come +down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated +heights. His spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, +it stumbled in the gutter of Felpham. His lips brought forth, in the +same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the _Auguries of Innocence_ +and the epigrams on Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was in no condition to chop +logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. In the imaginary +portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can see +him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the +abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown +back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his +rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we +gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are +almost tempted to go and do likewise. + +But it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that Blake deserves the +highest honours and the most enduring fame. In spite of his hatred of +the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and +spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of +Heaven than the works of man. They have, besides, the two most obvious +characteristics of Nature--loveliness and power. In some of his lyrics +there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a child, +to be unconscious of itself. In his poem of _The Birds_--to mention, out +of many, perhaps a less known instance--it is not the poet that one +hears, it is the birds themselves. + + O thou summer's harmony, + I have lived and mourned for thee; + Each day I mourn along the wood, + And night hath heard my sorrows loud. + +In his other mood--the mood of elemental force--Blake produces effects +which are unique in literature. His mastery of the mysterious +suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete. + + He who torments the Chafer's Sprite + Weaves a Bower in endless Night. + +What dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! And, with the aid +of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to +produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, +and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his +words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm: + + The Guests are scattered thro' the land, + For the Eye altering alters all; + The Senses roll themselves in fear, + And the flat Earth becomes a Ball; + The Stars, Sun, Moon, all shrink away, + A desart vast without a bound, + And nothing left to eat or drink, + And a dark desart all around. + +And sometimes Blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and +infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin +mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to predict +the annihilation of worlds: + + On the shadows of the Moon, + Climbing through Night's highest noon: + In Time's Ocean falling, drowned: + In Aged Ignorance profound, + Holy and cold, I clipp'd the Wings + Of all Sublunary Things: + But when once I did descry + The Immortal Man that cannot Die, + Thro' evening shades I haste away + To close the Labours of my Day. + The Door of Death I open found, + And the Worm Weaving in the Ground; + Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb; + Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb: + Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife, + And weeping over the Web of Life. + +Such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our +weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of ordinary +converse, are enough. For Blake's words will always be strangers on this +earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own +Gods: + + above Time's troubled fountains, + On the great Atlantic Mountains, + In my Golden House on high. + +They belong to the language of Los and Rahab and Enitharmon; and their +mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the Sunflower's desire. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 8: _The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim +text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with +variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces._ By John +Sampson, Librarian in the University of Liverpool. Oxford: At the +Clarendon Press, 1905. + +_The Lyrical Poems of William Blake._ Text by John Sampson, with an +Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905.] + + + + +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN + +The shrine of Poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this +should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. The cult is too +mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no +turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be +fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of +worshippers, and to pass on. Yet, if Apollo were to come down (after the +manner of deities) and put questions--must we suppose to the +Laureate?--as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of +escaping wrath and destruction? Let us hope for the best; and perhaps, +if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be to +watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which +Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many +among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, +indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this +extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is +his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition +whatever. If his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one +or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current +anthologies. But Beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest +upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it +rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank +verse. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the +sixteenth. His proper place was among that noble band of Elizabethans, +whose strong and splendid spirit gave to England, in one miraculous +generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has +known. If Charles Lamb had discovered his tragedies among the folios of +the British Museum, and had given extracts from them in the _Specimens +of Dramatic Poets_, Beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to us +now as those of Marlowe and Webster, Fletcher and Ford. As it happened, +however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had +wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. It is +to very little purpose that Mr. Ramsay Colles, his latest editor, +assures us that 'Beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from +Shelley to Browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to +us a passage in _Death's Jest Book_ which anticipates the doctrines of +_The Descent of Man._ For Beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with his +contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such +after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. We must +take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover and +appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake. + + He hath skill in language; + And knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit, + A palm with winged imagination in it, + Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave; + And on them hangs a lamp of magic science + In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts + Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead. + +If the neglect suffered by Beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in more +ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has +never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. For one reader who +cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing +there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the +history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the +character of Beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, +mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers +to circulating libraries. Yet only one account of his career has ever +been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect as +it is, has long been out of print. It was supplemented some years ago +by Mr. Gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important +circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of Beddoes' +letters. The main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have +been put together by Mr. Ramsay Colles, in his introduction to the new +edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost +complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of +Beddoes' existence--full as those years certainly were of interest and +even excitement. Nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that +strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all. + +Readers of Miss Edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger sister +Anne, married a distinguished Clifton physician, Dr. Thomas Beddoes. +Their eldest son, born in 1803, was named Thomas Lovell, after his +father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_. Dr. Beddoes was a remarkable man, +endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare +independence of character. His scientific attainments were recognised by +the University of Oxford, where he held the post of Lecturer in +Chemistry, until the time of the French Revolution, when he was obliged +to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity +of his liberal opinions. He then settled at Clifton as a physician, +established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics +and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose +merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents +which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, +if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously +suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a +striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. +Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's +inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less +remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. In both cases, this +quality was coupled with a corresponding eccentricity of conduct, which +occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something +very near insanity. Many stories are related of the queer behaviour of +Dr. Beddoes. One day he astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing at +a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it was +East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual +kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves. More extraordinary +were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering cows +to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that +they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' It is easy to imagine the +delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an +invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of _Harpagus_ and +_The Oviparous Tailor_. But 'little Tom,' as Miss Edgeworth calls him, +was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for +Dr. Beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six +years old. + +The genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a rule, +one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous +world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than +the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a distinguished +martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On +the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been a +dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining account +of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school +reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though +his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests were devoted not so +much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. +Cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had +understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years +before he went to Charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading +which he chiefly delighted in was the Elizabethan drama. 'He liked +acting,' says Mr. Bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, and used to give +apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly Kean +and Macready. Though his voice was harsh and his enunciation offensively +conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, that +I was always glad to listen: even when I was pressed into the service as +his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of +curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. +One play in particular, Marlowe's _Tragedy of Dr. Faustus_, excited my +admiration in this way; and a liking for the old English drama, which I +still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' But +Beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; +when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material +himself. A locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock +on his bookcase; Beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man appeared +he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, +his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which was +interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal +torments. Such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the +locksmith, according to Mr. Bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and +execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his +work.' + +Besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, Beddoes' school +compositions included a novel in the style of Fielding (which has +unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an Elizabethan tragedy, +and much miscellaneous verse. In 1820 he left Charterhouse, and went to +Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in the following year, while still a +freshman, he published his first volume, _The Improvisatore_, a series +of short narratives in verse. The book had been written in part while he +was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. It contains no trace of +the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the +sentiment, to use his own expression, 'Moorish.' Indeed, the only +interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that +the singular pre-occupation which eventually dominated Beddoes' mind +had, even in these early days, made its appearance. The book is full of +death. The poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old +men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning +into mouldering heaps of corruption. The boy, with his elaborate +exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' +flesh creep. But the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, when +Beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very much +ashamed of his first publication. So eager was he to destroy every trace +of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of +his friends. The story goes that he amused himself by visiting their +libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the precious +volume, they found the pages gone. + +Beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next publication, +_The Brides' Tragedy_, which appeared in 1822. In a single bound, he had +reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. The line +which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry +itself--that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no +one can explain--Beddoes had not yet crossed. But he had gone as far as +it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, +and he was still in his twentieth year. Many passages in _The Brides' +Tragedy_ seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which +will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has +come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, +whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered +such words as these: + + Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye, + When first it darkened with immortal life + +or a line of such intense imaginative force as this: + + I've huddled her into the wormy earth; + +or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise: + + The day is in its shroud while yet an infant; + And Night with giant strides stalks o'er the world, + Like a swart Cyclops, on its hideous front + One round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze. + +The play was written on the Elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is +disfigured by Beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is +weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the +motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part +curiously remote from the realities of life. Yet, though the merit of +the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in +it that, while Beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless +possessed one important dramatic faculty--the power of creating detached +scenes of interest and beauty. The scene in which the half-crazed +Leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead daughter +lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the +highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of +pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and +absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus: + + ... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel, + Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye'; + Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure + She has the welcome news of some good fortune, + And hoards the telling till her father comes; + ... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then; + Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me, + I must be very angry till you speak. + Now this is silly; some of these young boys + Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport. + 'Tis very like her. I could make this image + Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head: + 'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face + Falls on my neck.--Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed! + I know it all--don't tell me. + +The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, such +as Webster himself might have been proud to write. + +_The Brides' Tragedy_ was well received by critics; and a laudatory +notice of Beddoes in the _Edinburgh_, written by Bryan Waller +Procter--better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry +Cornwall--led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The +connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that +Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his +friends--Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In +the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months, +and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of +his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It +was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, +even to the most fortunate, once and once only--when youth, and hope, +and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and +opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the +harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall +wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' +poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'His +poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more +than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished +act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, +and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, but +filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination +had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right +or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these +very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each +started into form, + + Like the red outline of beginning Adam, + +... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply cut +into their one observer's mind. The fine verse just quoted is the sole +remnant, indelibly stamped on the editor's memory, of one of these +extinct creations.' Fragments survive of at least four dramas, +projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this +time. Beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing +forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet: + + Creep not nor climb, + As they who place their topmost of sublime + On some peak of this planet, pitifully. + Dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly + Until you meet the gods! + +Eighteen months after his Southampton visit, Beddoes took his degree at +Oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action +which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. He determined to +take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established +himself, in 1825, at the University at Göttingen. It is very clear, +however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. He +took with him to Germany the beginnings of a new play--'a very +Gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which I have a jewel of a +name--DEATH'S JEST-BOOK; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read +it'; and, during his four years at Göttingen, he devoted most of his +leisure to the completion of this work. He was young; he was rich; he +was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that he +could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he +settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious occupation +of his life. But, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in +the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not only +a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might +not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. +Engulfed among the students of Göttingen, England and English ways of +life, and even English poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem Anbeter der +seligen Gottheiten der Musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to Kelsall, 'was +Unterhaltendes kann der Liebhaber von Knochen, der fleissige Botaniker +und Phisiolog mittheilen?' In 1830 he was still hesitating between the +two alternatives. 'I sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to +devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in +science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with +him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, +directed towards widely different ends. While he was still in this state +of mind, a new interest took possession of him--an interest which worked +havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: he +became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time +beginning to agitate Europe. The details of his adventures are unhappily +lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a +few scanty references in his rare letters to English friends; but it is +certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous one. +He was turned out of Würzburg by 'that ingenious Jackanapes,' the King +of Bavaria; he was an intimate friend of Hegetschweiler, one of the +leaders of liberalism in Switzerland; and he was present in Zurich when +a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half armed +with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the +liberal government.' In the tumult Hegetschweiler was killed, and +Beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. During the +following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over +Germany and Switzerland, at Berlin, at Baden, at Giessen, a strange +solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling +lampoons upon the King of Prussia, translating Grainger's _Spinal Cord_ +into German, and Schoenlein's _Diseases of Europeans_ into English, +exploring Pilatus and the Titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly +lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his +'Gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, and +giving it--as had been his wont for the last twenty years--just one more +touch before he sent it to the press. He appeared in England once or +twice, and in 1846 made a stay of several months, visiting the Procters +in London, and going down to Southampton to be with Kelsall once again. +Eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his +bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep +depression. He shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their +country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the Procters by starting +out one evening to set fire to Drury Lane Theatre with a lighted +five-pound note. After this last visit to England, his history becomes +even more obscure than before. It is known that in 1847 he was in +Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a +young baker called Degen--'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of +age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and of +a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following +year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the +theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in the +part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the +friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest gloom. +'Il a été misérable,' said the waiter at the Cigogne Hotel, where he was +staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted a deep wound in +his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. He +was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, +until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. The +operation was successful, Beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, +Degen came back to Basel. It seemed as if all were going well; for the +poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his +bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian +journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can +tell? Was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove +him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to +obtain there a phial of deadly poison? On the evening of that day--the +26th of January, 1849--Dr. Ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, +to find Beddoes lying insensible upon the bed. He never recovered +consciousness, and died that night. Upon his breast was found a pencil +note, addressed to one of his English friends. 'My dear Philips,' it +began, 'I am food for what I am good for--worms.' A few testamentary +wishes followed. Kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and--'W. Beddoes +must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet, 1847 growth, to drink +my death in ... I ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome +document concluded, 'a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg, +and that a bad one. Buy for Dr. Ecklin one of Reade's best +stomach-pumps.' It was the last of his additions to Death's Jest Book, +and the most _macabre_ of all. + +Kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary care. +The manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. There were three distinct +drafts of _Death's Jest Book_, each with variations of its own; and from +these Kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared in +1850. In the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical +works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope +and power of Beddoes' genius. They contain reprints of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_, together with two unfinished +tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the +poems are preceded by Kelsall's memoir of his friend. Of these rare and +valuable volumes the Muses' Library edition is almost an exact reprint, +except that it omits the memoir and revives _The Improvisatore_. Only +one other edition of Beddoes exists--the limited one brought out by Mr. +Gosse in 1890, and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. +Mr. Gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those +already published by Kelsall; he made public for the first time the true +story of Beddoes' suicide, which Kelsall had concealed; and, in 1893, he +followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of Beddoes' letters. It +is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of +Beddoes owe so much as to Mr. Gosse. He has supplied most important +materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the +lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of +the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos--_The +Old Ghost_--and one of the most singular examples of his vein of +grotesque and ominous humour--_The Oviparous Tailor_. Yet it may be +doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are +traces in Beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still +come to light. What has happened, one would like to know, to _The Ivory +Gate_, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which Beddoes +talked of publishing in 1837? Only a few fine stanzas from it have ever +appeared. And, as Mr. Gosse himself tells us, the variations in _Death's +Jest Book_ alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition of +that work--'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of +the matter--'if the interest in Beddoes should continue to grow.' + +'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama +must be a bold, trampling fellow--no creeper into worm-holes--no reviver +even--however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words +occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by +critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an +instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they +preach. But the truth is that Beddoes was not a 'creeper into +worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. +Everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and +elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his +spirit. We have Kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his +composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in his +letters and in the history of his life--records of a 'bold, trampling +fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry +itself. For the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped +unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. His mature blank verse +is perfect. It is not an artificial concoction galvanized into the +semblance of life; it simply lives. And, with Beddoes, maturity was +precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult and +dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. Blank verse is like the +Djin in the Arabian Nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, +or the most powerful of slaves. If you have not the magic secret, it +will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change them +into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a +flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. +Beddoes had mastered the 'Open, Sesame' at an age when most poets are +still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. In his twenty-second +year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as +easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. He wishes to compare, for +instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single +eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison +is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast +multiplicity of objects. There could be no better exercise for a young +verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then +to examine these lines by Beddoes--lines where simplicity and splendour +have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art. + + How glorious to live! Even in one thought + The wisdom of past times to fit together, + And from the luminous minds of many men + Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, + Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets + Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered + Into one ray. + +The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the +diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing--that art +by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to +combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, +impossible to do more than touch upon this side--the technical side--of +Beddoes' genius. But it may be noticed that in his mastery of +phrasing--as in so much besides--he was a true Elizabethan. The great +artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead +thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an +eighteenth-century dramatist--Addison, for instance--to understand how +right they were. + +Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had +already begun to show itself in _The Brides' Tragedy_, reached its full +development in his subsequent work. The opening act of _The Second +Brother_--the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies--is a +striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way +that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not +one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next +brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after +years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar--to find his younger +brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay +debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the +duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and +extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While +Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, +Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended +by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. +'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes: + + I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught + Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines. + +Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute his +brother. + + _Orazio_. Insolent beggar! + + _Marcello_. Prince! But we must shake hands. + Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, + Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown + Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks + Of two close planets, catching in the air: + You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, + Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top + Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, + With nothing reigning on my desolate head + But an old spirit of a murdered god, + Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father. + +They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims-- + + Aye, Prince, you have a brother-- + + _Orazio_. The Duke--he'll scourge you. + + _Marcello_. Nay, _the second_, sir, + Who, like an envious river, flows between + Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne.... + + _Orazio_. Stood he before me there, + By you, in you, as like as you're unlike, + Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old, + And many years nearer than him to Death, + The falling brilliancy of whose white sword + Your ancient locks so silverly reflect, + I would deny, outswear, and overreach, + And pass him with contempt, as I do you. + Jove! How we waste the stars: set on, my friends. + +And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish +down the darkened street: + + Strike, you myrtle-crownèd boys, + Ivied maidens, strike together!... + +and Marcello is left alone: + + I went forth + Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes + His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer, + And like its horrible return was mine, + To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat, + Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love, + And take a heart of venom: let me make + A staircase of the frightened breasts of men, + And climb into a lonely happiness! + And thou, who only art alone as I, + Great solitary god of that one sun, + I charge thee, by the likeness of our state, + Undo these human veins that tie me close + To other men, and let your servant griefs + Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in + Salt scorn and steaming hate! + +A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that the +dukedom is his. The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes' +inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed +end. The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with vivid +situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes +away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a +thousand streams. It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was +embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too easily, +and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his +imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. His conception of +Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he +appears in the opening scene. But Beddoes could not leave him there; he +must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once +brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. The +interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio's +character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with +his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and +interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn +becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. But, by +this time, what has happened to the second brother? It is easy to +believe that Beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than +finish an old one. But it is not so certain that his method was quite as +inexcusable as his critics assert. To the reader, doubtless, his faulty +construction is glaring enough; but Beddoes wrote his plays to be acted, +as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I +think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess +that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be +very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of +impertinence, as long as one chooses to write in the form of a play, +and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything +striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely upon the stage +that such faults of construction as those which disfigure Beddoes' +tragedies matter least. An audience, whose attention is held and +delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid +speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a +whole, is worthy of the separate parts. It would be foolish, in the +present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to wish +for the public performance of _Death's Jest Book_; but it is impossible +not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of +that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility +more thin than air.' Then, and then only, shall we be able to take the +true measure of Beddoes' genius. + +Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of +construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the common +realities of existence. Not only is the subject-matter of the greater +part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves +seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the +strange, and the unreal. They have no healthy activity; or, if they +have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are +all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting +the attributes of Death. The central idea of _Death's Jest Book_--the +resurrection of a ghost--fails to be truly effective, because it is +difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest +of the characters. The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of +Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to ponder, +and agonise, and dream: + + And yet how palely, with what faded lips + Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune! + Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter + Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost, + Arisen out of hoary centuries + Where none can speak his language. + +Orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome with the same feelings: + + Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests, + Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike + Marriage or death. + +And his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole +atmosphere of Beddoes' tragedies: + + Voices were heard, most loud, which no man owned: + There were more shadows too than there were men; + And all the air more dark and thick than night + Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more + Than living breaths. + +It would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, for +guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and +things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be +called a 'criticism of life.' If a poet must be a critic of life, +Beddoes was certainly no poet. He belongs to the class of writers of +which, in English literature, Spenser, Keats, and Milton are the +dominant figures--the writers who are great merely because of their art. +Sir James Stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that +Milton might have put all that he had to say in _Paradise Lost_ into a +prose pamphlet of two or three pages. But who cares about what Milton +had to say? It is his way of saying it that matters; it is his +expression. Take away the expression from the _Satires_ of Pope, or from +_The Excursion_, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will leave +behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from +_Hyperion_, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the +better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than a +rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the +other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression +that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many modulations, +of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. +Playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as +this: + + Just now a beam of joy hung on his eyelash; + But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye, + Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings + Into a darkening hole. + +Or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as this: + + I begin to hear + Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing + Of waves, where time into Eternity + Falls over ruined worlds. + +Or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these: + + So fair a creature! of such charms compact + As nature stints elsewhere: which you may find + Under the tender eyelid of a serpent, + Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose, + By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see, + Like water from a crystal overfilled, + Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave + Her fair sides to the ground. + +Or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration: + + My love was much; + My life but an inhabitant of his. + +Or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil: + + I should not say + How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow, + On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm + And soft at evening: so the little flower + Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water + Close to the golden welcome of its breast, + Delighting in the touch of that which led + The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops + Tritons and lions of the sea were warring, + And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood, + Of their own inmates; others were of ice, + And some had islands rooted in their waves, + Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds, + And showers tumbling on their tumbling self, + And every sea of every ruined star + Was but a drop in the world-melting flood. + +He can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the hectic, +dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:-- + + ... What shall I do? I speak all wrong, + And lose a soul-full of delicious thought + By talking. Hush! Let's drink each other up + By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I, + My heavenly wife?... + I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second + By thy cheek's change. + +In that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can almost +hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'Never!' exclaims the duke to his son +Torrismond: + + There lies no grain of sand between + My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, + Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb + Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, + Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! + And may this intervening earth be snow, + And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, + Plunging me, through it all, into the core, + Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, + If I do not--O, but he is my son! + +Is not that tremendous? But, to find Beddoes in his most characteristic +mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the +woof of mortality. One must wander with him through the pages of +_Death's Jest Book_, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution of +reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn +that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask--'Are the ghosts +eaves-dropping?'--one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' Among +the ruins of his Gothic cathedral, on whose cloister walls the Dance of +Death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of +existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean, + + Whose tumultuous waves + Are heaped, contending ghosts, + +one may understand how it is that + + Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful + To man than Life. + +Lingering there, one may watch the Deaths come down from their cloister, +and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque +contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may +sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of Death. + +In private intercourse Beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. His +mind was like one of those Gothic cathedrals of which he was so +fond--mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less +real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and +immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with +grinning gargoyles. His conversation, Kelsall tells us, was full of +humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or +affectation. He loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and +carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. His +letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his +verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had +produced his school-boy novel in the style of Fielding. He was a man +whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so +eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, +and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: not +the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, +Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who +forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a grave, +and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. His tragedy, like +Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will--a will so strong as +to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak +man to be decided--there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, +who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately +Beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so +rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality +beyond price. 'I might have been, among other things, a good poet,' were +his last words. 'Among other things'! Aye, there's the rub. But, in +spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. Perhaps for him, +after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high +nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of +death? There is a thought constantly recurring throughout his +writings--in his childish as in his most mature work--the thought of the +beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. He had +visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' +of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over +the soul. 'Let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his +earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' And, in _Death's +Jest Book_, Sibylla has the same thoughts: + + O Death! I am thy friend, + I struggle not with thee, I love thy state: + Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now; + And let me pass praying away into thee, + As twilight still does into starry night. + +Did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at last +for the one thing stranger than all these--the experience of it? It is +easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at +the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual +dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had +recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, +perhaps, came crowding back upon him--thoughts of the futility of life, +and the supremacy of death and the mystical whirlpool of the unknown, +and the long quietude of the grave. In the end, Death had grown to be +something more than Death to him--it was, mysteriously and +transcendentally, Love as well. + + Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature tells, + When laughing waters close o'er drowning men; + When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells; + When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken + Of those who seek a cure for long despair + Will learn ... + +What learning was it that rewarded him? What ghostly knowledge of +eternal love? + + If there are ghosts to raise, + What shall I call, + Out of hell's murky haze, + Heaven's blue pall? + --Raise my loved long-lost boy + To lead me to his joy.-- + There are no ghosts to raise; + Out of death lead no ways; + Vain is the call. + + --Know'st thou not ghosts to sue? + No love thou hast. + Else lie, as I will do, + And breathe thy last. + So out of Life's fresh crown + Fall like a rose-leaf down. + Thus are the ghosts to woo; + Thus are all dreams made true, + Ever to last! + +1907. + + + + +HENRI BEYLE + + +In the whole of French literature it would be difficult to point to a +figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to +English readers as Henri Beyle. Most of us are, no doubt, fairly +familiar with his pseudonym of 'Stendhal'; some of us have read _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_; but how many of us have +any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment +appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete edition, +every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with +enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary +periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and +appreciation? The eminent critic, M. André Gide, when asked lately to +name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of +France, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one +or other of the novels of Stendhal, his only difficulty was in making +his choice among these; and he finally decided upon _La Chartreuse de +Parme_. According to this high authority, Henri Beyle was indisputably +the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the French language, yet +on this side of the Channel we have hardly more than heard of him! Nor +is it merely as a writer that Beyle is admired in France. As a man, he +seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a +singular devotion. There are 'Beylistes,' or 'Stendhaliens,' who dwell +with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend +with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who +discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal +friendship, and register his opinions with a zeal which is hardly less +than sectarian. But indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his +French devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own +indifference. Beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, most +of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the French character. This +does not mean that he was a typical Frenchman; far from it. He did not, +like Voltaire or Hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius +vibrated in response. He has never been, it is unlikely that he ever +will be, a popular writer. His literary reputation in France has been +confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. +'On me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers 1880'; and the 'Beylistes' +point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost divine +prescience of the great man. But in truth Beyle was always read by the +_élite_ of French critics and writers--'the happy few,' as he used to +call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic +admirers. During his lifetime Balzac, in an enormous eulogy of _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, paid him one of the most magnificent compliments +ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. In the next +generation Taine declared himself his disciple; a little later--'vers +1880,' in fact--we find Zola describing him as 'notre père à tous,' and +M. Bourget followed with elaborate incense. To-day we have writers of +such different tendencies as M. Barrès and M. Gide acclaiming him as a +supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'Beylistes.' Yet, at +the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to +trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. It is the opinion +of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of French life. Thus +Sainte-Beuve, in two characteristic 'Lundis,' poured a great deal of +very tepid water upon Balzac's flaming panegyric. Then Flaubert--'vers +1880,' too--confessed that he could see very little in Stendhal. And, +only a few years ago, M. Chuquet, of the Institute, took the trouble to +compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail +all the known facts concerning the life and writings of a man whom he +forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. +These discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd +differences of taste? How are we to reconcile the admiration of Balzac +with the dislike of Flaubert, the raptures of M. Bourget and M. Barrès +with the sniffs of Sainte-Beuve and M. Chuquet of the Institute? The +explanation seems to be that Beyle occupies a position in France +analogous to that of Shelley in England. Shelley is not a national hero, +not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an Englishman, but +for the opposite reason--because he possessed so many of them in an +extreme degree. The idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the +unconventionality which give Shakespeare, Nelson, and Dr. Johnson their +place in our pantheon--all these were Shelley's, but they were his in +too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will +never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be Englishmen +unable to appreciate him at all. Such, _mutatis mutandis_--and in this +case the proviso is a very large one--is the position of Beyle in +France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French bean +he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French +French writer--too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and +so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet +this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some attention. +An understanding of this very Gallic individual might give us a new +insight into the whole strange race. And besides, the curious creature +is worth looking at for his own sake too. + +But, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the +dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. Even his +most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true +nature of his achievements. Balzac thought of him as an artist, Taine +was captivated by his conception of history, M. Bourget adores him as a +psychologist, M. Barrès lays stress upon his 'sentiment d'honneur,' and +the 'Beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. Certainly very +few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly +and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as Henri Beyle. The +circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity of +his genius. He was born in 1783, when the _ancien régime_ was still in +full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the Napoleonic +wars; he lived to see the Bourbon reaction, the Romantic revival, the +revolution of 1830, and the establishment of Louis Philippe; and when he +died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way +through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world +and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, +preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His +grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner +of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile +'mélangé de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two +representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the +result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty +others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the Republic, and +confined to his house. At the age of sixteen Beyle arrived in Paris, +just after the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Brumaire had made Bonaparte +First Consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin +Daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the +organisation of Napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure +moments--for apparently he had leisure moments--were devoted to the +composition of idylls in the style of Tibullus and to an enormous +correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. It was +as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that Beyle spent nearly +the whole of the next fifteen years of his life--in Paris, in Italy, in +Germany, in Russia--wherever the whirling tempest of the Napoleonic +policy might happen to carry him. His actual military experience was +considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his +friends to understand it had been. For hardly more than a year, during +the Italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: +the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat department. +The descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his adventures +at Marengo, at Jéna, at Wagram, or at the crossing of the Niémen have +been shown by M. Chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. +Beyle was present at only one great battle--Bautzen. 'Nous voyons fort +bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi à trois +heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est à dire rien.' He +was, however, at Moscow in 1812, and he accompanied the army through the +horrors of the retreat. When the conflagration had broken out in the +city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound +copy of the _Facéties_ of Voltaire; the book helped to divert his mind +as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that +followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who +could smile over Akakia and Pompignan in such a situation, one day he +left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow. + +The fall of Napoleon threw Beyle out of employment, and the period of +his literary activity began. His books were not successful; his fortune +gradually dwindled; and he drifted in Paris and Italy, and even in +England, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide +sometimes in his head. But in 1830 the tide of his fortunes turned. The +revolution of July, by putting his friends into power, brought him a +competence in the shape of an Italian consulate; and in the same year he +gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of _Le Rouge +et Le Noir_. The rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of his +official duties at Civita Vecchia, alternating with periods of +leave--one of them lasted for three years--spent in Paris among his +friends, of whom the most distinguished was Prosper Mérimée. In 1839 +appeared his last published work--_La Chartreuse de Parme_; and three +years later he died suddenly in Paris. His epitaph, composed by himself +with the utmost care, was as follows: + + QUI GIACE ARRIGO BEYLE MILANESE VISSE, SCRISSE, AMO. + +The words, read rightly, indicate many things--his adoration of Italy +and Milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society and +the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to +literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of his +experience--in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated +manhood, in his calm old age--there had never been a moment when he was +not in love. + +Beyle's work falls into two distinct groups--the first consisting of his +novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include +several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism and +travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of +the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; +and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is +promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition +which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of Beyle's +writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly +artistic. It was as a novelist that Beyle first gained his celebrity, +and it is still as a novelist--or rather as the author of _Le Rouge et +Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_ (for an earlier work, _Armance_, +some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out +of account)--that he is most widely known to-day. These two remarkable +works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which +they were composed. It was in the full flood of the Romantic revival, +that marvellous hour in the history of French literature when the +tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth +of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of suddenly +burst upon the view. It was the hour of Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Gautier, +Balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric +passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse +towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity +and the manifold comprehension of life. But, if we turn to the +contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a succession +of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact +narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the +eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the +perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his +grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It +is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment with a +_brochure_ attacking Racine at the expense of Shakespeare; but this was +merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent +in his nature; and in reality the whole Romantic movement meant nothing +to him. There is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend +between him and Hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a +couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. No +wonder! But Beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was +hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. As +for Chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like +poison. He used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point +of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a +phrase in _Atala_--'la cime indéterminée des forêts'--was not +intolerable. Probably he was romancing (M. Chuquet says so); but at any +rate the story sums up symbolically Beyle's attitude towards his art. To +him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'--the emphatic phrase, the +picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm--was anathema. The charm that +such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose +thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth +century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an +artificial neatness about the form which imposed itself upon the +substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the +perfect style, and that was the _Code Napoléon_; for there alone +everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of what +was to be said. A statement of law can have no place for irrelevant +beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it +must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be +seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. Beyle declared that +he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the Code every +morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' This again was for long +supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers +among the MSS. at Grenoble have discovered page after page copied out +from the Code in Beyle's handwriting. No doubt, for that wayward lover +of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what _he_ +took quite seriously. + +This attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an official +document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole +tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and +intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of +mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between +his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of +materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, +the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps Balzac's +greatest discovery, Beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. Such +matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no +small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. +In the earlier chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, for instance, he is +concerned with almost the same subject as Balzac in the opening of _Les +Illusions Perdues_--the position of a young man in a provincial town, +brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the +leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a woman +of refinement. But while in Balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete +vision of provincial life down to the last pimple on the nose of the +lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal +problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his +genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of a +surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. In fact, +Beyle's method is the classical method--the method of selection, of +omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central +impression of supreme reality. Zola criticises him for disregarding 'le +milieu.' + + Il y a [he says] un épisode célèbre dans 'Le Rouge et Le Noir,' la + scène où Julien, assis un soir à côté de Mme. de Rénal, sous les + branches noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la + main, pendant qu'elle cause avec Mme. Derville. C'est un petit + drame muet d'une grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analysé + merveilleusement les états d'âme de ses deux personnages. Or, le + milieu n'apparaît pas une seule fois. Nous pourrions être n'importe + où dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scène resterait la même + pourvu qu'il fit noir ... Donnez l'épisode à un écrivain pour qui + les milieux existent, et dans la défaite de cette femme, il fera + entrer la nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptés + molles. Et cet écrivain sera dans la vérité, son tableau sera plus + complet. + +More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? Zola, with his +statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell +a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. +He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol 'nuit,' +to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. Everybody +knows all about the night's accessories--'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses +voluptés molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once in a +way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! And Beyle is perpetually +evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'Comme il insiste +peu!' as M. Gide exclaims. Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence +is his capacity for making a summary. Beyle knew this, and his novels +are full of passages which read like nothing so much as extraordinarily +able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost. + +It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye for +detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was of +the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling +vividness, when he wished. But he very rarely did wish: it was apt to +involve a tiresome insistence. In his narratives he is like a brilliant +talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, +taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here and +there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too +obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and +taking care above all things never to force the note. His famous +description of the Battle of Waterloo in _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is +certainly the finest example of this side of his art. Here he produces +an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with +unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the +loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its +insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses and +indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his +own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero--a young Italian +impelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a volunteer +on the eve of the battle--go through the great day in such a state of +vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that he +really _was_ at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial and +unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by +two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot +from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he crosses +and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks +brandy with a _vivandière_, gallops over a field covered with dying men, +has an indefinite skirmish in a wood--and it is over. At one moment, +having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his +horse to splash into a stream, thereby covering one of the generals +with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good +specimen of Beyle's narrative style: + + En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouvé les généraux + tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla redoubler; ce fut à peine + s'il entendit le général, par lui si bien mouillé, qui criait à son + oreille: + + Où as-tu pris ce cheval? + + Fabrice était tellement troublé, qu'il répondit en Italien: _l'ho + comprato poco fa_. (Je viens de l'acheter à l'instant.) + + Que dis-tu? lui cria le général. + + Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne + put lui répondre. Nous avouerons que notre héros était fort peu + héros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne venait chez lui qu'en + seconde ligne; il était surtout scandalisé de ce bruit qui lui + faisait mal aux oreilles. L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait + une grande pièce de terre labourée, située au delà du canal, et ce + champ était jonché de cadavres. + +How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in +explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial +expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that +'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in +conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of +hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness has +produced? + +It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and +intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is +describing, for instance, the development of Julien Sorel's mind in _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant with +its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the +whirling vortex of life--then we seem to be witnessing not so much the +presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. The +procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the +inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the +demonstration is complete. Here the influence of the eighteenth century +is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of +syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of +Helvétius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its +austerest form--'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables +in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative +style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of the _Code Civil_. + +If this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and +brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the +French genius in an extreme degree, Beyle's position in literature would +present very little difficulty. He would take his place at once as a +late--an abnormally late--product of the eighteenth century. But he was +not that. In his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the +veins of Voltaire. It was the virus of modern life--that new +sensibility, that new passionateness, which Rousseau had first made +known to the world, and which had won its way over Europe behind the +thunder of Napoleon's artillery. Beyle had passed his youth within +earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the +echo of it. It was in vain that he studied Condillac and modelled his +style on the Code; in vain that he sang the praises of _la lo-gique_, +shrugged his shoulders at the Romantics, and turned the cold eye of a +scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained +essentially a man of feeling. His unending series of _grandes passions_ +was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to +the Fine Arts. Though his taste in music and painting was the taste of +his time--the literary and sentimental taste of the age of Rossini and +Canova--he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a +kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. The +'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into Italy he +heard at Novara the _Matrimonio Segreto_ of Cimarosa, marked an epoch in +his life. He adored Mozart: 'I can imagine nothing more distasteful to +me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile walk through the mud; but I would +take one at this moment if I knew that I should hear a good performance +of _Don Giovanni_ at the end of it.' The Virgins of Guido Reni sent him +into ecstasies and the Goddesses of Correggio into raptures. In short, +as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le Beau' in whatever form +he found it. _Le Beau!_ The phrase is characteristic of the peculiar +species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical +man of the world. His whole vision of life was coloured by it. His sense +of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'--his +immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act +or character--an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics +and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic +reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is surprising, +because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and +enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of a +schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? Beyle, for +instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of +himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'Il +respecta un seul homme: Napoléon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he must +have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his +unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, +and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double +nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, as +it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint. + +In his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for +what is best and what is worst. When the two forces work in unison the +result is sometimes of extraordinary value--a product of a kind which it +would be difficult to parallel in any other author. An eye of icy gaze +is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love +are recorded in the language of Euclid. The image of the surgeon +inevitably suggests itself--the hand with the iron nerve and the swift +knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. It is the intensity of +Beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that +makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of +adventure or all the marvels of high romance. The passage in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_ describing Count Mosca's jealousy has this quality, +which appears even more clearly in the chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ +concerning Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. Here Beyle has a +subject after his own heart. The loves of the peasant youth and the +aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, +and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each +other--these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' +which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. The climax +is reached when Mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws +herself into the arms of Julien, who forces himself to make no response: + + Ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort imposé par la politique était + pénible. Je ne dois pas même me permettre de presser contre mon + coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me méprise, ou elle me + maltraite. Quel affreux caractère! + + Et en maudissant le caractère de Mathilde, il l'en aimait cent fois + plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine. + + L'impassible froideur de Julien redoubla le malheur de Mademoiselle + de la Mole. Elle était loin d'avoir le sang-froid nécessaire pour + chercher à deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il sentait pour elle en cet + instant. Elle ne put se résoudre à le regarder; elle tremblait de + rencontrer l'expression du mépris. + + Assise sur le divan de la bibliothèque, immobile et la tête tournée + du côté opposé à Julien, elle était en proie aux plus vives + douleurs que l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire éprouver à une âme + humaine. Dans quelle atroce démarche elle venait de tomber! + + Il m'était réservé, malheureuse que je suis! de voir repoussées les + avances les plus indécentes! Et repoussées par qui? ajoutait + l'orgueil fou de douleur, repoussées par un domestique de mon père. + + C'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle à haute voix. + +At that moment she suddenly sees some unopened letters addressed to +Julien by another woman. + + --Ainsi, s'écria-t-elle hors d'elle-même, non seulement vous êtes + bien avec elle, mais encore vous la méprisez. Vous, un homme de + rien, mépriser Madame la Maréchale de Fervaques! + + --Ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant à ses genoux, + méprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus vivre privée + de ton amour. Et elle tomba tout à fait évanouie. + + --La voilà donc, cette orgueilleuse, à mes pieds! se dit Julien. + +Such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the +concentrated essence of Beyle's genius, and which, in its combination of +high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim +comparison with the great dialogues of Corneille. + +'Je fais tous les efforts possibles pour être _sec_,' he says of +himself. 'Je veux imposer silence à mon coeur, qui croit avoir beaucoup +à dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir écrit qu'un soupir, quand je +crois avoir noté une vérité.' Often he succeeds, but not always. At +times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages +with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his +sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in +an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot keep +up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his +imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the end +they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. When, in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, Fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first action is +to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured by +a cut in the face; and Beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by +it. In the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the +brilliant, worldly, sceptical Duchesse de Sanseverina, and then, not +quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the +reigning Prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. This +really makes her perfect. But the most striking example of Beyle's +inability to resist the temptation of sacrificing his head to his heart +is in the conclusion of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, where Julien, to be +revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down +into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. Not only +is Beyle entranced by the _bravura_ of this senseless piece of +brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial +observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero the +blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of Julien's execution, +even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic +style: 'Jamais cette tête n'avait été aussi poétique qu'au moment où +elle allait tomber.' Just as Beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an +extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he +expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally +characteristic quality of his compatriots--their instinctive +responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in +particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily +unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by the +'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades of +Napoleon, which animated the armies of France to victory, pieces of +nauseous clap-trap. And just now it is this side--to us the obviously +weak side--of Beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with French +critics. To judge from M. Barrès, writing dithyrambically of Beyle's +'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. The +sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this +side of the Channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too! + +The view of Beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen +with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. It is to these +that his most modern admirers devote their main attention--particularly +to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly +characteristic of their author, and--whatever the subject may be, from a +guide to Rome to a life of Napoleon--one gathers in them, scattered up +and down through their pages, a curious, dimly adumbrated +philosophy--an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view--_le +Beylisme_. It is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality that +their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. An +apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his +reflections upon Love. The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of +analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of +being a parody of _L'Esprit des Lois_, is yet full of originality, of +lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have +written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so +stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But +here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is +interesting--one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of +La Bruyère's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of +disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as +one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and +problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any +exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in +spite of his _lo-gique_, ever to have framed a coherent philosophy; it +is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, and +quick visions of flying thoughts. M. Barrès says that what lies at the +bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles énergies.' But +there are many kinds of 'belles énergies,' and some of them certainly do +not fit into the framework of 'le Beylisme.' 'Quand je suis arrêté par +des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande +colère contre le gouvernement et le curé de l'endroit. Quand au voleur, +il me plaît, s'il est énergique, car il m'amuse.' It was the energy of +self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not +interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at +times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an +egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. The +'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was no respectable +epicureanism; it had about it a touch of the fanatical. There was +anarchy in it--a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above +all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. Writing +his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on the +joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at +Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI. His father +announced it: + + --C'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont assassiné. + + Je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai éprouvé + en ma vie. Le lecteur pensera peut-être que je suis cruel, mais tel + j'étais à 5 X 2, tel je suis à 10 X 5 + 2 ... Je puis dire que + l'approbation des êtres, que je regarde comme faibles, m'est + absolument indifférente. + +These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are constantly +recurring in his books. He is always discharging his shafts against some +established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred +for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities--the Roman +Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly +hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, +and whose account of the seminary in _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ is one of the +most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of +the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a +prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern +thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of +Nietzsche. His love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, +his scorn of the Christian virtues, his admiration of the Italians of +the Renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the +herd--these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on +Rossini and the Coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past +and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a +surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of Zarathustra. The creator of +the Duchesse de Sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the +transvaluation of all values. Characteristically enough, the appearance +of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces in +European society--Goethe and the Austrian police. It is clear that +Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was +something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance in +his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal,' he observed to +Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so. He is extremely free and +extremely impertinent, and ... I recommend you to buy all his books.' As +for the Austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. Beyle's +book of travel, _Rome, Naples et Florence_, was, they decided, +pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was +hunted out of Milan in consequence. + +It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private +life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices +were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have +committed an 'espagnolisme.' Perhaps his worst sin was that of +plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely +'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied +several choice extracts culled from the _Edinburgh Review_. On this +occasion he was particularly delighted, since the _Edinburgh_, in +reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very +passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer +should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not +inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his +love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, +so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be +found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, +capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, covering +his papers with false names and anagrams--for the police, he said, were +on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and +less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was +he registered the fact--upon his braces. He dreamed and drifted a great +deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, wrote +the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up his +mind whether Napoleon after all _was_ the only being he respected; +no--there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at +Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite, +me fait songer à ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes rêveries et me +fait venir des idées excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me +dissimuler que j'ai le malheur _of being too great an admirer of Lady +L...._' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui +souvent encore remplissent ma tête à l'âge de _fifty-two_.' He wondered +whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat +scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the +fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until at +last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M. +Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing to +perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough +to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the +satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen by +the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or +the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since +the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more +cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was +never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late +at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be +very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he +said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, où la conversation est +gaie, anecdotique, et où l'on prend du punch léger à minuit et demie, +est l'endroit du monde où je me trouve le mieux.' + +And in such a Paradise of Frenchmen we may leave Henri Beyle. + +1914 + + + + +LADY HESTER STANHOPE + + +The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations +through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under +whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak +upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an +indomitable _hauteur_. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage. +The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the +hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady +Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a +nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some +eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the +air. + +Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the child +of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, +which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate results. +There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing +families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly +ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century +earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this +tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished +suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit was +still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate. + +She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl +Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the +first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the +House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings--'damned aristocratical +nonsense'--from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, Chatham's +daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years +old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her +stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen +Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of a +tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped +from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her +grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later, +Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his +death in 1806. + +Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid power, +were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the +movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her uncle's +household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not +beautiful, she was fascinating--very tall, with a very fair and clear +complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful +expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those +days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you +saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was +devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was +devoted, too--but in a more dangerous fashion--to the intoxicating +Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which she +carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something +overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. Lord +Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could +never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her +distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to Russia; +she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling +everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there were +rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to +_afficher_, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the slightest +provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a +terrible and unexpected catastrophe. Pitt died. And Lady Hester +suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in +Montague Square on a pension of £1200 a year. + +She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued +to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was +announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was +whispered that Canning was 'le régnant'--that he was with her 'not only +all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became +attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry +him--as she seems to have asserted many years later--is doubtful; his +letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly +warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on +his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it +was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from +London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set +sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his +regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England. + +There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought of a +lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she +moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in +England--at last even in Europe--grew distasteful to her; as late as +1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or three +English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private +physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly +and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She was +conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. +After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered +that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted +accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by +Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to visit +Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the +winter of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a violent storm sprang up; the +whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a +bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty hours. +Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in +safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's +career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping +raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman--a dress which she never +afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization. + +She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her appearance in +Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by +the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she +wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, +and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in +gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the +inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, +rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she +turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her +travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on +horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled burnous. +Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she +absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through +various and dreadful sufferings--shipwreck and starvation, rats and +black-beetles unspeakable--but she retained her equanimity. Whatever +her Ladyship might think fit to be, _she_ was an Englishwoman to the +last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr. + +Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most +fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in +man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was +begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. +'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the +city unveiled at midday. The population were thunderstruck; but at last +their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was +hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out +before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not +satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious +and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins of +Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever +seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she +preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs, +who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her courage, +enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their +company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild +enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple crowned +her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee of +Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily +declined. + +The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the year +1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere +as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from +town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she +herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was +uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West--must she return to it? +The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable--but could +she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was suddenly +struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne in +upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the +slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and +took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she +dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began +excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden +treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having unearthed nothing but +an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she +ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to +her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up +Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained +until her death, more than twenty years later. + +Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her +wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her +existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was +sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great +mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying +courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a +rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with +the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one +the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, +through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was +revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over +the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence +brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar +grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature +of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely the +tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of £20 a +year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled +imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been +transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself +believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a +French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the +punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester +actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems +probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady +Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her +terrible neighbour, the Emir Beshyr, she maintained an undaunted front. +She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as +physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might +have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe +admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain +is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and +loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became +at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she +awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter +Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred +horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last +triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an +Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go +there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her +own people.' + +Her expenses were immense--not only for herself but for others, for she +poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and was +swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants +pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of +terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her +habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up +all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who +alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having +withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a +poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and +there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on--talk that scaled +the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an +abolished past--stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations +against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire--mingled +phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and +speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and +lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable +figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the +tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be +robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked +on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that +the time was coming when she should talk no more? + +Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of her +brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends, +except Lord Hardwicke--with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose +kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the +English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and +harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled +her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable +disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, +filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of it +all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady +regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours +together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household +before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more +and more involved--grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the +faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her +affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful, +miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten +the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from +the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the +payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious +missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of +Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return +to Europe, and he--how could he have done it?--obeyed her. Her health +was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, +absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her--we know +no more. She had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her +house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden--that beautiful garden +which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and +its bowers--and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her +servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in +the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her +bed--inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air. + +1919. + + + + +MR. CREEVEY + + +Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone knows, +she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to +be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she +is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have +provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances +she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run +round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good +lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her +drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. +They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of +the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose +function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events +and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is +Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio, +with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is +measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and +the little wretch did his job very well. + +It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of +the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round +belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was +educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years +of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a +habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. In +1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life--a member of +Parliament, a familiar figure in high society, an insatiable gossip +with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place +he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the +greater part of his life his income was less than £200 a year. But those +were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they +were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and +splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, +penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into +Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the +country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole +political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of abuses, +he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and +ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was +relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but Mrs. +Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, +and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence--without a house, +without servants, without property of any sort--wandering from country +mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at +last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with a +pleasant little post which brought him in about £600 a year. Apart from +these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was +static--static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always +on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; +but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by +no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round +into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he would +gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the +wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was +before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an +observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his +tongue, and then--for so the Fates had decided--with his pen. He wrote +easily, spicily, and persistently; he had a favourite stepdaughter, +with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have +preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of +course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's +exhilarating _pas de chat_. + +Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There are +no great names in his vocabulary--only nicknames: George III. is 'Old +Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell +'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is +sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old +Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog +along on £40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of the great +Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his +scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his +own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course--Canning was all +perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual +confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious and +hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne +was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' +'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them--they were either knaves or +imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides +passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership of +the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man. + +Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or other, it +was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick +of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, at +Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical +moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during +Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the +Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; +one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. Blücher +and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing--the +nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't +think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the +Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, and +without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at +other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject. +'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he +speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not +ashamed to walk into the room with him.' + +When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was +inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in the +front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call +her Majesty, are characteristic: + + Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown + open, and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance + and manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe + she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is + therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest + resemblance I can recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy + which you used to call Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another + toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, + and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air. + The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of + the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once + into the House, made a _duck_ at the throne, another to the Peers, + and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. Her + dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, + &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white + veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near + to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and + inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling + ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their appearance + were not her Majesty's own property. + +Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the +presence of Royalty. + +But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of +his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat +pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself +extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest +during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose +hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable _verve_. 'This house,' he +says at Raby, 'is itself _by far_ the most magnificent and unique in +several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of +anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in +one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of +the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At Knowsley +'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height +that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are +two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles +over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about +the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground +floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow +furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which +cost £4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest yellow +satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and +there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and the +doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a +succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants +stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient Ports. Wine +had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it +was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous +living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon +him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect. +Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a +little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for +a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain--except, to be sure, at King +Jog's. There, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved. This was +too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for +breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as +could be,' fairly lost his temper. + + My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell + me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he + replied in the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I + turned to Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the + fuss and jaw of the thing, I would leave the room and the house + this instant'; and dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He + hears every word you say': to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It + was a regular scene. + +A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding himself +in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a +piece--excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat +butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., +wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.' + +It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six Acts, +of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed, +could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious +of the existence--of the possibility--of any mode of living other than +his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, broiled +bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a +part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and +the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only +once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, +something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The +occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes: + + I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is _insane._ He + quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in + support of this infernal nuisance--the loco-motive Monster, + carrying _eighty tons_ of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke + and sulphur, coming thro' every man's grounds between Manchester + and Liverpool. + +His perturbation grew. He attended the committee assiduously, but in +spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The +loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led +the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May +31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the +Monster. + + Well--this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we + had a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters + of the Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us. + +With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities of +which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having 12 +oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.' + +Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he +discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his silk +ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed to +increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr. +Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how +useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night +in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in +the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a +certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are +endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the +pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one +wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue +indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But +it could not be. + + Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame; + Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons. + +It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should catch +a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, laughing, eating, and +showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the +piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that was +preparing for very different characters, and with a very different style +of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey. + +1919. + + + + +INDEX + +Algarotti, 144, 145, 152 +Anne, Queen, 106 +Arnold, Matthew, 10 +Arouet. _See_ 'Voltaire' + +Bailey, Mr. John, 4-7, 9-12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22 +Balzac, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227 +Barrès, M., 220, 21, 234 +Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 194-196 +Beddoes, Thos. Lovell, 193-216 +Beethoven, 237 +Berkeley, 106 +Bernhardt, 23 +Bernières, Madame de, 96, 107 +Bernstorff, 76 +Berry, Miss, 67, 68 +Beshyr, Emir, 247 +Bessborough, Lady, 243 +Bevan, Mr. C.D., 196 +Beyle, Henri, 219-238 +Blake, 36, 63, 179-190 +Blücher, 255 +Boileau, 62 +Bolingbroke, 99, 101, 103, 104, 111 +Bonaparte, 222 +Boswell, 59 +Boufflers, Comtesse de, 76 +Boufflers, Marquise de, 75 +Bourget, M., 220, 221 +Brandes, Dr., 43, 51 +Brink, Mr. Ten, 43 +Broome, Major, 101 +Brougham, 255 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 27-28 +Buffon, 80, 154 +Burke, 76 +Butler, Bishop, 29, 106 + +Canning, George, 243, 247, 255 +Canning, Stratford, 243, 247 +Caraccioli, 76 +Carlyle, 93, 137, 144, 160 +Caroline, Queen, 256 +Carteret, 106 +Castlereagh, 255 +Cellini, 68 +Chasot, 152, 153 +Chateaubriand, 225 +Châtelet, Madame du, 113, 141-143 +Chatham, Lady, 242 +Chatham, Lord, 241 +Chesterfield, Lord, 63 +Choiseul, Duc de, 79 +Choiseul, Duchesse de, 70, 85, 86 +Chuquet, M., 220, 221, 223, 238 +Cicero, 68 +Cimarosa, 230 +Claude, 17 +Coleridge, 16, 30, 62, 63 +Colles, Mr. Ramsay, 194, 195 +Collins, Anthony, 110, 111 +Collins, Churton, 93, 98, 103 +Condillac, 230 +Congreve, 101 +Conti, Prince de, 96 +Corneille, 80, 129 +Correggio, 231 +Cowley, 196 +Creevey, Mr., 253-260 + +D'Alembert, 70, 75, 131, 162, 166 +Dante, 10 +d'Argens, 152 +d'Argental, 72 +Darget, 152 +Daru, 222 +Davy, Sir Humphry, 195 +Deffand, Madame du, 67-89, 97 +Degen, 203 +d'Egmont, Madame, 72 +Denham, 62 +Denis, Madame, 149, 150 +d'Epinay, Madame, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171-174 +Descartes, 113 +Desnoiresterres 93 +Devonshire, Duchess of, 247 +d'Houdetot, Madame, 171 +Diderot, 70, 166-175 +Diogenes, 115 +Donne, 62 +Dowden, Prof., 42, 43, 45, 49, 51 +Dryden, 4, 22, 29, 62 +Durham, Lord, 255 + +Ecklin, Dr., 203, 204 +Edgeworth, Miss, 195, 196 +Euler, 154, 155 + +Falkener, Everard, 98 +Fielding, 80, 197 +Flaubert, 220, 221 +Fleury, Cardinal, 112 +Fontenelle, 73, 222 +Foulet, M. Lucien, 93, 94, 96, 98, 103, 105 +Fox, Charles James, 76, 78 +Frederick the Great, 137 +Fry, Mrs., 243, 244, 247 +Furnivall, Dr., 42, 43 + +Gautier, 225 +Gay, 102 +George III, 247, 255 +Gibbon, 29, 76, 80 +Gide, M. André, 219, 220, 227 +Goethe, 237 +Gollancz, Sir I., 43, 49 +Goncourts, De, 10 +Gosse, Mr., 27-31, 35, 115, 204, 205 +Gramont, Madame de, 79 +Granville, Lord, 242 +Gray, 60, 62 +Grey, Lord, 255 +Grimm, 166-174 + +Hardwicke, Lord, 248 +Hegetschweiler, 202 +Helvétius, 230 +Hénault, 72, 75 +Herrick, 38 +Higginson, Edward, 100 +Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, 59, 63 +Hill, Mr., 243 +Hugo, Victor, 62, 225 +Hume, 30, 112, 114, 167, 169 +Huskisson, 255 + +Ingres, 3 + +Johnson, Dr., 22, 28-30, 32, 59-63, 103, 221 +Jordan, 140 +Jourdain, Mr., 154 + +Keats, 211 +Kelsall, Thomas Forbes, 200, 203, 204, 209 +Klopstock, 186 +Koenig, 155 + +La Beaumelle, 154 +Lamb, Charles, 30, 188, 194 +Lambton, 258 +La Mettrie, 152-154, 158 +Lanson, M., 93, 100 +Latimer, 31 +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 95 +Lee, Sir Sidney, 43 +Leibnitz, 155 +Lemaître, M., 4-6, 17, 18 +Lemaur, 70 +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 70, 71, 75, 86, 238 +Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, 242 +Locke, 29, 110, 112, 113, 115 +Louis Philippe, 222 +Louis XIV., 71 +Lulli, 70 +Luxembourg, Maréchale de, 77, 83 + +Macaulay, 137 +Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, 164-173 +Maine, Duchesse du, 71, 74 +Malherbe, 62 +Marlborough, Duke of, 105 +Marlborough, Duchess of, 101 +Marlowe, 197 +Massillon, 74 +Matignon, Marquis de, 84 +Maupertuis, 153-156, 158, 159, 161 +Mehemet Ali, 244 +Mérimée, Prosper, 223 +Meryon, Dr., 243, 247, 248 +Middleton, 111 +Milton, 10, 16, 211 +Mirepoix, Bishop of, 142 +Mirepoix, Maréchale de, 76 +Molière, 134 +Moncrif, 72 +Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 241 +Montespan, Madame de, 74 +Montesquieu, 78, 107, 230, 238 +Moore, Sir John, 243 +Morley, Lord, 110, 167, 172 +Moses, 115 +Mozart, 23, 230 +Musset, 225 + +Napoleon, 67, 230, 231, 234, 238 +Necker, 84 +Nelson, 221 +Newton, Sir Isaac, 100, 106, 112, 113 + +Pascal, 36, 112 +Pater, 31 +Peterborough, Lord, 102, 103 +Pitt, William, the younger, 241-243, 247 +Plato, 185 +Pöllnitz, 152 +Pompadour, Madame de, 143 +Pont-de-Veyle, 72, 75 +Pope, 4, 22, 34, 38, 103, 106, 211 +Prie, Madame de, 71, 94, 96 +Prior, 63 +Proctor, Bryan Waller, 200, 203 +Puffendorf, 76 + +Quinault, 70 + +Racine, 3-24, 80, 129-131, 225, 237 +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 45, 179, 183, 185 +Regent, the Prince, 255 +Reni, Guido, 231 +Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 30, 186, 188 +Richardson, 80 +Richelieu, 73 +Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier de, 94, 96, 98 +Rossetti, 183 +Rousseau, 85, 165-175, 230 +Rubens, 34 +Russell, Lord John, 255 + +Sainte-Beuve, 10, 12, 18, 61, 167, 220 +Saint-Lambert, 172 +Saint-Simon, 80, 179-183 +Sampson, Mr. John, 179-183 +Sanadon, Mlle., 84 +Shaftesbury, 110 +Shakespeare, 3, 4, 14, 34, 41-56, 80, 112, 132, 221, 225 +Shelley, 23, 38 +Sheridan, 257 +Sophocles, 132 +Spenser, 211 +Stanhope, Lady Hester, 241-249 +'Stendhal.' _See_ Beyle, Henri +Stephen, Sir James, 211 +Sully, Duc de, 95, 105 +Swift, 29, 101, 104, 106 +Swinburne, 184 + +Taine, 220, 221 +Thévenart, 70 +Thomson, 63 +Tindal, 111 +Toland, 110, 111 +Tolstoi, 228 +Toynbee, Mrs. Paget, 67-69, 75 +Turgot, 70, 169 + +Velasquez, 34 +Vigny, 225 +Virgil, 14, 23 +Voltaire, 69, 70, 72, 75, 79-81, 83, 93-117, 121-134, 137-162, 174, 188 + +Walpole, Horace, 30, 63, 67, 68, 69-71, 75, 76, 78-80, 86-89, 103, 104, 106 +Webster, 36 +Wellington, Duke of, 255 +White, W.A., 180 +Winckelmann, 237 +Wolf, 138 +Wollaston, 111 +Woolston, 111 +Wordsworth, 16, 62, 63, 184 +Würtemberg, Duke of, 156 + +Yonge, Miss, 134 +Young, Dr., 101 + +Zola, 220, 227, 228 + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12478-8.txt or 12478-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/4/7/12478/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Books and Characters + French and English + +Author: Lytton Strachey + +Release Date: May 30, 2004 [EBook #12478] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>BOOKS & CHARACTERS</h1> +<h2>FRENCH & ENGLISH</h2> +<h3><i>By</i></h3> +<h1>LYTTON STRACHEY</h1> +<br> +<h3>LONDON</h3> +<h3>First published May 1922</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="TO_JOHN_MAYNARD_KEYNES"></a> +<h2>TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES</h2> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<p><i>The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the +Editors +of the Independent Review, the New Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the +Edinburgh Review.</i></p> +<p><i>The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a +manuscript, +apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his English +period</i>.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONTENTS"></a> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<div style="margin-left: 160px;"><a href="#RACINE">RACINE </a><br> +<a href="#SIR_THOMAS_BROWNE">SIR THOMAS BROWNE </a><br> +<a href="#SHAKESPEARES_FINAL_PERIOD">SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_LIVES_OF_THE_POETS">THE LIVES OF THE POETS </a><br> +<a href="#MADAME_DU_DEFFAND">MADAME DU DEFFAND </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRE_AND_ENGLAND">VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND </a><br> +<a href="#A_DIALOGUE">A DIALOGUE </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRES_TRAGEDIES">VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES </a><br> +<a href="#VOLTAIRE_AND_FREDERICK_THE_GREAT">VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE +GREAT</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_ROUSSEAU_AFFAIR">THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR </a><br> +<a href="#THE_POETRY_OF_BLAKE">THE POETRY OF BLAKE</a> <br> +<a href="#THE_LAST_ELIZABETHAN">THE LAST ELIZABETHAN</a> <br> +<a href="#HENRI_BEYLE">HENRI BEYLE </a><br> +<a href="#LADY_HESTER_STANHOPE">LADY HESTER STANHOPE</a> <br> +<a href="#MR_CREEVEY">MR. CREEVEY </a><br> +<a href="#INDEX">INDEX </a><br> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="RACINE"></a> +<h2>RACINE</h2> +<a name="Page_3"></a><br> +<p>When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, +grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient +and +modern worlds, with a single exception—Shakespeare. After some +persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a <i>part</i> +of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the Louvre can now +see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather +less than half of the author of <i>King Lear</i> just appearing at the +extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has +changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be +advanced—though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty—to the very steps +of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a +similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged +as the most characteristic representative of the literature of France? +Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would +more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, +whisking away into the outer darkness?</p> +<p>There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national +tastes +and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, +I +could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, +as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the +matter. But alas! <i>nous avons changé tout cela</i>. Now we +are each of us +obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, +ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on +different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either that I +am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen +that while on one side of that 'span of waters' Racine is despised and<a + name="Page_4"></a> +Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and +Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and +illustrated in a singular way. Mr. John Bailey, in a volume of essays +entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of +Racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the +second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the +merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages +of +Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance +of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant +critic, M. Lemaître, published a series of lectures on Racine, in +which +the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from +beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting +criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated +classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of +these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to +the +opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue +along lines so different and so remote that they never come into +collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side +the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French +critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the +romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that +England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was +to +be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaître, on +the +other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. +Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's +supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. +Lemaître +never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of +his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness +already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaître's +book, one +begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find +it +difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. <a + name="Page_5"></a>It is no +paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find +so eminent a critic as M. Lemaître observing that Racine 'a +vraiment +"achevé" et porté à son point suprême de +perfection <i>la tragédie</i>, cette +étonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la +trouve +peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to +the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of +this +kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful +consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the +susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a +French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue, +he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether +he +willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the +difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate +a +writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is +least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this +essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. +Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the +average +English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to +the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense +value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some +important general questions of literary doctrine will have been +discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to +vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that +English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, +brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost +personal +distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to +think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of +an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, +comes +fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared +by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice +of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, +and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have <a + name="Page_6"></a>discovered +something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious +boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be +grateful? +Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may +enjoy, and render thanks?</p> +<p>M. Lemaître, starting out, like a native of the mountains, +from a point +which can only be reached by English explorers after a long journey and +a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series +of brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on +one side almost altogether the questions connected both with Racine's +dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very +questions by which English readers are most perplexed, and which they +are most anxious to discuss. His style in particular—using the word in +its widest sense—forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. +Bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of Mr. +Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet +can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric +of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. Before, +however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well +to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because +the +English reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very +outset +of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the +Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he +should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. +After +the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our +early +tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of +life +and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of +Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of +setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their +spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give +one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious +pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, +after one has been rambling through an open <a name="Page_7"></a>forest. +'La scène est à +Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'—could +anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? Here is +nothing +for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no +wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here +is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five +acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to +meet in and make their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of +the +'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself quite +unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a +critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those +antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, +believes +that Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great +advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the +once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of +time and place are of no importance in themselves.' So far as critics +are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that +plays +can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance +with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any +rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in +effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and +justifies the unities of time and place? Surely it is not, as Mr. +Bailey +would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for +it +is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must +possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen—as in +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, for instance—that the very essence of this +interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local +activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true +justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the +conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis—the vision, +thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final +catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the +views of the Elizabethan <a name="Page_8"></a>tragedians, who aimed at +representing not only +the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it +was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the +rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great +persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in +the +literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have +become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along +totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more +consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the +crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is +narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come +more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of +form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather +than +that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of <i>Macbeth</i> +have been superseded by plays of the type of <i>Britannicus</i>. +<i>Britannicus</i>, no less than <i>Macbeth</i>, is the tragedy of a +criminal; but +it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the +fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the +precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is +taken, and the criminal is made. The method of <i>Macbeth</i> has +been, as it +were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of <i>Britannicus</i> +still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more +rigorously +and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his +attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of +importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the +English reader—the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the +absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action—was no more +than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and +for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. +His dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, +supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact +that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to +the ground. Approached in this light, even <a name="Page_9"></a>the +'salle du palais de +Pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. We come to realise that, if it is +nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the +invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one +little room an everywhere.' It will show us no views, no spectacles, it +will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it +will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the +closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of +human hearts.</p> +<p>It is remarkable that Mr. Bailey, while seeming to approve of the +classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him +for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical +form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in +the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of +human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects +which +Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the +range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction +of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; +and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into +his +compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to +find fault with a Mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration +of +Wagner. But it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise +nature of Mr. Bailey's criticism. When he speaks of Racine's vision not +including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that Racine cannot be +reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat +different ground and discussing a more general question. All truly +great +poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of +life'—a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the +universe; and, since Racine is without this quality, his claim to true +poetic greatness must be denied. But, even upon the supposition that +this view of Racine's philosophical outlook is the true one—and, in its +most important sense, I believe that it is not—does Mr. Bailey's +conclusion really follow? Is it possible to test a <a name="Page_10"></a>poet's +greatness by +the largeness of his 'view of life'? How wide, one would like to know, +was Milton's 'view of humanity'? And, though Wordsworth's sense of the +position of man in the universe was far more profound than Dante's, who +will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? The truth is that +we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only +of +Mr. Bailey's criticism of Racine, but of an entire critical method—the +method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in +general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it +possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. How often this +method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously +fallacious! For, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, +amenable to the rules of scientific induction. Its component parts +cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which +defies foreknowledge. When Matthew Arnold declared that the value of a +new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in +the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this +very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself +a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto +itself? It is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle +expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a +precedent. Thus Mr. Bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from +Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Goethe, the qualities without which no poet +can be great, and his condemnation of Racine because he is without +them, +is a fallacy in criticism. There is only one way to judge a poet, as +Wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, +has +pointed out—and that is, by loving him. But Mr. Bailey, with regard to +Racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of Wordsworth. Let us +look a little more closely into the nature of his attack.</p> +<p>'L'épithète rare,' said the De Goncourts,'voilà +la marque de +l'écrivain.' Mr. Bailey quotes the sentence with approval, +observing +that if, with Sainte-Beuve, we extend the phrase to <a name="Page_11"></a>'le +mot rare,' we +have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may +test +the merit of poetry. And doubtless most English readers would be +inclined to agree with Mr. Bailey, for it so happens that our own +literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge +of +extravagance, reigns supreme. Owing mainly, no doubt, to the double +origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between +the highly-coloured crudity of the Saxon words and the ambiguous +splendour of the Latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national +taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and +penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie—the Hebrew +Prophets—our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of +writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the +extraordinary, and the bold. No one in his senses would regret this, +for +it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, +of +course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the +bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example +and its final justification. But the result is that we have grown so +unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to +believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an +impossibility. The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, +and +of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but +coldness +and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the +bravado that we love so well. It is as if we had become so accustomed +to +looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an +exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us +as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the +dancers, +which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. But let +us be patient, and let us look again.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessée,<br> +</span><span>Vous mourûtes aux bords où vous fûtes +laissée.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to <a + name="Page_12"></a>catch the mind +or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, +plainly set forth. But is there not an enchantment? Is there not a +vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the +ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is +precisely this—that he brings about, by what are apparently the +simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to +produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a +proof +of his amazing art. In the following passage, for instance, what a +sense +of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice:<br> +</span><span>C'est faire à vos beautés un triste sacrifice<br> +</span><span>Que de vous présenter, madame, avec ma foi,<br> +</span><span>Tout l'âge et le malheur que je traîne avec +moi.<br> +</span><span>Jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire mêmes<br> +</span><span>Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diadèmes.<br> +</span><span>Mais ce temps-là n'est plus: je régnais; et +je fuis:<br> +</span><span>Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is that wonderful 'trente' an 'épithète rare'? Never, +surely, before or +since, was a simple numeral put to such a use—to conjure up so +triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! But these are subtleties which +pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals +of the great romantic poets. As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison +between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is +like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At +first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'éclatante +vérité pittoresque du +grand maître flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste français +qu'un ton assez +uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pâle et douce lumière. +Mais qu'on +approche de plus près et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances +fines +vont éclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont +sortir de ce +tissu profond et serré; on ne peut plus en détacher ses +yeux.'</p> +<p>Similarly when Mr. Bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more +general +questions of style, declares that there is no <a name="Page_13"></a>'element +of fine +surprise' in Racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of +Pindar and the Greek choruses—the reply is that he would find what he +wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'Who will forget,' he says, +'the comparison of the Atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty +nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human +bodies, of Helen to the lion's whelps?... Everyone knows these. Who +will +match them among the formal elegances of Racine?' And it is true that +when Racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the +romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters +of +the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and +anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his +pages +will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the +daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out +of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus +many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration +of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in +the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'était pendant l'horreur d'une +profonde nuit.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might +pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after +vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. But, sometimes, +the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate +and +terrific force—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'est Vénus toute entière +à sa proie attachée!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>A few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having.</p> +<p>But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognise the +beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack +of +extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis +and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic +of +his style to which <a name="Page_14"></a>we are perhaps even more +antipathetic—its +suppression of detail. The great majority of poets—and especially of +English poets—produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of +details—details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty +or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details +Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words +which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our +minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have +been +accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of +significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is +more +marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few +expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate +reality. When Shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so +with a single stroke of detail—'not a mouse stirring'! And Virgil adds +touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque +volucres,<br> +</span><span>Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis<br> +</span><span>Rura tenent, etc.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Racine's way is different, but is it less masterly?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les +vents, et Neptune.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the Englishman's first +thought—with the conventional 'Neptune,' and the vague 'armée,' +and the +commonplace 'vents.' And he forgets to notice the total impression +which +these words produce—the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and +vastness and ominous hush.</p> +<p>It is particularly in regard to Racine's treatment of nature that +this +generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'Is he so much as aware,' +exclaims Mr. Bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, +that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear +will +never have enough of the music of the sea? He might have written every +page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of <a + name="Page_15"></a>his +study.' The accusation gains support from the fact that Racine rarely +describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, +we +know, was not his plan. But he is constantly, with his subtle art, +suggesting them. In this line, for instance, he calls up, without a +word +of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Déjà le jour plus grand nous +frappe et nous éclaire.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! He can +give +us the desolation of a calm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">La rame inutile<br> +</span><span>Fatigua vainement une mer immobile;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Voyez tout l'Hellespont blanchissant sous nos +rames;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Quoi! pour noyer les Grecs et leurs mille +vaisseaux,<br> +</span><span>Mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux!<br> +</span><span>Quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recèle,<br> +</span><span>L'Aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle,<br> +</span><span>Les vents, les mêmes vents, si longtemps +accusés,<br> +</span><span>Ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brisés!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a +triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Prêts à vous recevoir mes +vaisseaux vous attendent;<br> +</span><span>Et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter,<br> +</span><span>Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this +line, +where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long +syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect.</p> +<p>But it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like Mr. +Bailey +are unable to find in Racine—they miss in him no less suggestions of +the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our +English habit of associating <a name="Page_16"></a>these qualities +with expressions which are +complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of +fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>we are apt not to hear that it is there. But there is another +reason—the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism +ever since the triumph of Wordsworth and Coleridge at the beginning of +the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. It would be easy to +prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of +'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that Mr. Bailey's +criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects +of +this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the +unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the +key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find +in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he +is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious +when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind +of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' +in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and that <i>Paradise Lost</i> is one of the +greatest +poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory, +however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which +may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in +its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity +and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine—that is to say, +there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the +transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the +constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere +rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking +what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will +not +our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put +out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical +suggestion, the <a name="Page_17"></a>more we examine Racine, the more +clearly we shall +discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually +console us for the loss of the first—the mystery of the mind of man. +This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it +adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how +much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with +the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, +wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies—Hermione and +Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phèdre—seem to +emerge for +a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose +depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we +shall +find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure +infinities of the heart.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous +taire.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. +That +is all affection; and this all desire—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>J'aimais jusqu'à ses pleurs que je +faisais couler.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or let us listen to the voice of Phèdre, when she learns that +Hippolyte +and Aricie love one another:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher?<br> +</span><span>Dans le fond des forêts alloient-ils se cacher?<br> +</span><span>Hélas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence;<br> +</span><span>Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence;<br> +</span><span>Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux;<br> +</span><span>Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This last line—written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious +rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window—does it not +seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty +of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul?</p> +<p>It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most +remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a +critic as M. Lemaître has chosen to devote the <a name="Page_18"></a>greater +part of a volume +to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's +portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and +vitality +with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending +more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the +combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, +and +his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaître, in fact, goes so far +as to +describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in +him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no +doubt, +but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to +compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous +kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And +there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never +tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and +monotonous; while M. Lemaître speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' +and +Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' The +explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the +two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When +Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and +depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a +directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the +utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon +stroke, +swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her +tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Prétendez-vous longtemps me cacher +l'empereur?<br> +</span><span>Ne le verrai-je plus qu'à titre d'importune?<br> +</span><span>Ai-je donc élevé si haut votre fortune<br> +</span><span>Pour mettre une barrière entre mon fils et moi?<br> +</span><span>Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi?<br> +</span><span>Entre Sénèque et vous disputez-vous la gloire<br> +</span><span>A qui m'effacera plus tôt de sa mémoire?<br> +</span><span>Vous l'ai-je confié pour en faire un ingrat,<br> +</span><span>Pour être, sous son nom, les maîtres de +l'état?<br> +</span><span>Certes, plus je médite, et moins je me figure<br> +</span><span>Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre créature;<br> +</span><a name="Page_19"></a><span>Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir +l'ambition<br> +</span><span>Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque légion;<br> +</span><span>Et moi, qui sur le trône ai suivi mes ancêtres,<br> +</span><span>Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mère de vos +maîtres!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the +hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on +other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, +artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of +high-sounding words and elaborate inversions.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides<br> +</span><span>Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses frères perfides.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her +brothers' +conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison +ce gage trop sincère.' It is obvious that this kind of +expression has +within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century +tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got +out of the difficulty by referring to—'De la fidélité le +respectable +appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts +Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based +upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the +spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense—physical +objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that +go to make up the machinery of existence—these must be kept out of the +picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have +ruined +the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, +they +must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the +entire +attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the +composition—the spiritual states of the characters—which, laid bare +with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly +imprint themselves upon the mind. To condemn Racine on the score of his +ambiguities and his <a name="Page_20"></a>pomposities is to complain +of the hastily dashed-in +column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention +the face. Sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own +conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with +a wonderful significance. Thus when the Sultana, Roxane, discovers her +lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge +and +death, and she exclaims—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est +extrême<br> +</span><span>Que le traître une fois se soit trahi lui-même.<br> +</span><span>Libre des soins cruels où j'allais m'engager,<br> +</span><span>Ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'à se venger.<br> +</span><span>Qu'il meure. Vengeons-nous. Courez. Qu'on le saisisse!<br> +</span><span>Que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice;<br> +</span><span>Qu'ils viennent préparer ces noeuds +infortunés<br> +</span><span>Par qui de ses pareils les jours sont terminés.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>To have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and +Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis +in +such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. +She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of +virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally +orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of +speech.</p> +<p>But, as a rule, Racine's characters speak out most clearly when they +are +most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an +intensity of directness unknown in actual life. In such moments, the +phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed +significance of character and situation; the 'Qui te l'a dit?' of +Hermione, the 'Sortez' of Roxane, the 'Je vais à Rome' of +Mithridate, +the 'Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!' of Athalie—who can forget these +things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? Very different is the +Shakespearean method. There, as passion rises, expression becomes more +and more poetical and vague. Image flows into image, thought into +thought, until <a name="Page_21"></a>at last the state of mind is +revealed, inform and +molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. Such revelations, +no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of Racine. +In life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; +and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and +agglomerated rather than compact and defined. But Racine's aim was less +to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon +its +inmost being and to give expression to that. One might be tempted to +say +that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, +after all, reality has no degrees. Who can affirm that the wild +ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical +existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and +'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'?</p> +<p>It would be nearer the truth to rank Racine among the idealists. The +world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and +rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an +ampler ether, a diviner air.' It is a world where the hesitations and +the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a +world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown +ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love +the beginning and the end of all. It is, too, the world of a poet, so +that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through +the +poet's sweet articulation—through verse. Upon English ears the rhymed +couplets of Racine sound strangely; and how many besides Mr. Bailey +have +dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! But to his lovers, to those who +have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are +impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. +Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep +enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu +de ma part le roi de Comagène?'—How is it that words of such +slight +import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. +And, as to his <a name="Page_22"></a>rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the +true worshipper, the +final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet is only +fit +for satire. Has he forgotten <i>Lamia</i>? And he asks, 'How is it +that we +read Pope's <i>Satires</i> and Dryden's, and Johnson's with enthusiasm +still, +while we never touch <i>Irene</i>, and rarely the <i>Conquest of +Granada</i>?' +Perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our <i>a priori</i> +theories, even the fiery art of Dryden's drama may remain dead to us, +and that, if we touched <i>Irene</i> even once, we should find it was +in +blank verse. But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. +Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: +'Suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more +displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see +there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the +confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce +anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your +sight ... 'Tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the +shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, +cannot +be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we +attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the +rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as +bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' In this exquisite passage +Dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the +central argument for rhyme—its power of creating a beautiful +atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the +associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For Racine, +with +his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier +between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his +art. His rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which +we +can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the +forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' +And truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing +them'!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_23"></a><span>Oui, prince, je +languis, je brûle pour Thésée ...<br> +</span><span>Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage,<br> +</span><span>Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage,<br> +</span><span>Lorsque de notre Crète il traversa les flots,<br> +</span><span>Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos.<br> +</span><span>Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte,<br> +</span><span>Des héros de la Grèce assembla-t-il +l'élite?<br> +</span><span>Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne pûtes-vous alors<br> +</span><span>Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords?<br> +</span><span>Par vous aurait péri le monstre de la Crète,<br> +</span><span>Malgré tous les détours de sa vaste retraite:<br> +</span><span>Pour en développer l'embarras incertain<br> +</span><span>Ma soeur du fil fatal eût armé votre main.<br> +</span><span>Mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancée;<br> +</span><span>L'amour m'en eût d'abord inspiré la +pensée;<br> +</span><span>C'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours<br> +</span><span>Vous eût du labyrinthe enseigné les +détours.<br> +</span><span>Que de soins m'eût coûtés cette +tête charmante!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is difficult to 'place' Racine among the poets. He has affinities +with many; but likenesses to few. To balance him rigorously against any +other—to ask whether he is better or worse than Shelley or than +Virgil—is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is +too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets—with +Virgil's for instance—Racine wrote for the stage. Virgil's poetry is +intended to be read, Racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the +theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. In +a +sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of +Mozart with silent eyes. But, when the strings begin, when the whole +volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we +understand and feel! And so, at the theatre, before one of those high +tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations +of the greatest actresses of France, we realise, with the shock of a +new +emotion, what we had but half-felt before. To hear the words of +Phèdre +spoken by the mouth of Bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror +of +crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of <a + name="Page_24"></a>despair, +all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when +the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic +urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground—that indeed is to come +close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, +and +to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light.</p> +<p>1908.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="SIR_THOMAS_BROWNE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_27"></a>SIR +THOMAS BROWNE</h2> +<p>The life of Sir Thomas Browne does not afford much scope for the +biographer. Everyone knows that Browne was a physician who lived at +Norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one +must +call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient +summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty +and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what +Sir +Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what +he +wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so +many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those +half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the +pleasantest kind of criticism is composed.</p> +<p>Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the 'English Men of +Letters' Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. He has +not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he +has simply gone 'about it and about.' The result is a book so full of +entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary +tact, +that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the +obvious—though surely irrelevant—truth, that the general impression +which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite +presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow +indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. It would be rash +indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse's example; after his +luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne's life at Norwich, on the +<i>Vulgar Errors</i>, and on the self-revelations in the <i>Religio +Medici</i>, +there seems to be no room for further comment. One can only admire in +silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour.</p> +<p><a name="Page_28"></a>There is, however, one side of Browne's work +upon which it may be worth +while to dwell at somewhat greater length. Mr. Gosse, who has so much +to +say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very +small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the +most important thing about the author of <i>Urn Burial</i> and <i>The +Garden of +Cyrus</i>—his style. Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as +a +master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered. Why then +does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about +his +family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his +porridge, +and who fished up the <i>murex</i>?</p> +<p>Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of +Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his +book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. +Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In +spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid +and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat +acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is +so +ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He +ranks the <i>Hydriotaphia</i> among the gems of English literature; +and the +prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as +fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be +little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal +homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks +upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough +the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely +misleading a preconceived theory may be.</p> +<p>The study of Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Gosse says, 'encouraged Johnson, +and +with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth +century, +to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned +but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being +dispelled.' Such is Mr. Gosse's account of the influence of <a + name="Page_29"></a>Browne and +Johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. But to +dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is +surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which +he +brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the +pre-Johnsonian prose style—the style which Dryden first established and +Swift brought to perfection—are obvious enough. Its advantages are +those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are +unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of +the +second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, or of +Bishop +Butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave +defects. +It is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, +no +balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. Johnson, there can be no +doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the +texture of English prose; and he went back for a model to Sir Thomas +Browne. Now, as Mr. Gosse himself observes, Browne stands out in a +remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and +predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. +He was, says Mr. Gosse, 'never carried away. His effects are closely +studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; +and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who +compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> +with +any page in <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>. The peculiarities of +Browne's +style—the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its +tendency towards sonorous antithesis—culminated in his last, though not +his best, work, the <i>Christian Morals</i>, which almost reads like +an +elaborate and magnificent parody of the Book of Proverbs. With the +<i>Christian Morals</i> to guide him, Dr. Johnson set about the +transformation of the prose of his time. He decorated, he pruned, he +balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting +the Doric order of Swift into the Corinthian order of Gibbon. Is it +quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of +rhetorical <a name="Page_30"></a>writers' was encouraged 'to avoid +circumlocution' by the +invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that +gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly +all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century—that +of Johnson himself, of Hume, of Reynolds, of Horace Walpole—which can +be traced even in Burke, and which fills the pages of Gibbon? It is, +indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the +facts, that the <i>Decline and Fall</i> could not have been precisely +what it +is, had Sir Thomas Browne never written the <i>Christian Morals</i>.</p> +<p>That Johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of +the +writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by +Mr. Gosse, who adds that Browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and +asserted by Coleridge and Lamb.' But we have already observed that Mr. +Gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. +His view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of Dr. Johnson's; +he swallows the spirit of Browne's writing, and strains at the form. +Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the +terminology of late Latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical +extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it +is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not +studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of +Latin and Greek.' He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he +meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; +and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of +Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' Attacks +of this kind—attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's +style—are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who +holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with +the subject as to make argument all but impossible. To the true Browne +enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state +of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hang<a name="Page_31"></a>ing,' +and 'asperous' +for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and +'quodlibetically' +altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between +those +who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. +There +is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the +more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had +better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the +jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, +a spectacle of curious self-contradiction.</p> +<p>If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no +attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be +valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms +without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary +part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a +mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might +never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been +a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that +classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which +interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated +man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that +if +he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only +legitimate ones, the <i>Hydriotaphia</i> would have been as free from +words +of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little +reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken +this +view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered +all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, +is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are +full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this +the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be +written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A +striking phrase from the <i>Christian Morals</i> will suffice to show +the +deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:—'the +<a name="Page_32"></a>areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If +Browne had thought the +Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to +use +it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The +truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which +would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery +and +secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. He did not +choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which +he +wished them to have. Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme +contrast +between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct +antithesis to classical ones. In the last sentence of <i>Urn Burial</i>, +we +are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as +content +with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus.' How could Browne have produced +the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if +his +vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to +words of a single stock?</p> +<p>There is, of course, no doubt that Browne's vocabulary is +extraordinarily classical. Why is this? The reason is not far to seek. +In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with +thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be +expressed in Latinistic language. The state of mind which he wished to +produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were +to +be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense +of mystery and awe. 'Let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things +which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long +past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the +stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. Let intellectual +tubes +give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a +glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts +but +tenderly touch.' Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, 'uncommon +sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of +pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? Not only is <a + name="Page_33"></a>the Saxon form +of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is +still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce +(by +some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, +though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex +or +the remote. To understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for +the highly subtle and rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only +necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of Saxon +prose.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same +down at Doctor Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this +manner: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall +this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust +shall never be put out.'</p> +</div> +<p>Nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this +passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. But who could +conceive +of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of +these sentences from the <i>Hydriotaphia</i>?</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, +and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in +the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, +whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are +providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being +necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally +constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably +decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids +pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.</p> +</div> +<p>Here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous +Latin +substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense +succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, +the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. The +entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity +and +subtlety which is utterly alien to Saxon prose. It would be foolish to +claim a superiority for either of the two <a name="Page_34"></a>styles; +it would be still +more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by +means of the other.</p> +<p>Wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a +highly +Latinised vocabulary conferred on Browne. Without it, he would never +have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic <i>bravura</i>, +which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in +his finest passages. The precise quality cannot be easily described, +but +is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to +be +curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork +in +a Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled +in +English literature, except by the very greatest masters of +sophisticated +art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer +technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but +pyramidally extant'—'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful +voices'—'predicament of chimaeras'—'the irregularities of vain glory, +and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'—are examples of this +consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of +others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days +of +absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long +walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the +ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to +go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon +the +inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that +one +begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to +have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English.</p> +<p>One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be +mentioned, +because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of +the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain +classical +words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, +possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of +Saxon +derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyrami<a name="Page_35"></a>dally,' +gives one at +once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something +extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And +this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only +Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. +The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was +visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him +simply +and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has +flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of +humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference +in +the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and +general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The +Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were +altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When +they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or +embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' +they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, +like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a +multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are +discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd.</p> +<p>There can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for +curious +details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. For +Browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of +detail ends, and its coordination begins. He knew little or nothing of +general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. And +the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. He was +always ready to begin some strange inquiry. He cannot help wondering: +'Whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose +bellies?' 'Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace +book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how +warrantable +his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything +but treacle in the day, may <a name="Page_36"></a>admit of great +doubt.' To inquire thus is, +perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of +which great scientific theories are made. Browne, however, used his +love +of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a +scientific theory, but into a work of art. His method was one which, to +be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a +technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. Everyone +knows Pascal's overwhelming sentence:—'Le silence éternel de ces +espaces infinis m'effraie.' It is overwhelming, obviously and +immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. Browne's ultimate object +was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down +blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, +by +an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a +mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles +drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of +heaven. His success gives him a place beside Webster and Blake, on one +of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, +Browne's peak is—or so at least it seems from the plains below—more +difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road +skirts +the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one +is +merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He +who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star +to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, +and tossed forever in the Paradise of Fools.</p> +<p>Browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing +in +the <i>Religio Medici</i> which reaches the same level of excellence +as the +last paragraphs of <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> and the last chapter of <i>Urn +Burial</i>. A long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the +background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. +His strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. +His +art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could +have produced this perfect sentence in <i>The <a name="Page_37"></a>Garden +of Cyrus</i>, so well +known, and yet so impossible not to quote?</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in +sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable +odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight +raise up the ghost of a rose.</p> +</div> +<p>This is Browne in his most exquisite mood. For his most +characteristic, +one must go to the concluding pages of <i>Urn Burial</i>, where, from +the +astonishing sentence beginning—'Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's +hell'—to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to +be found. The subject—mortality in its most generalised aspect—has +brought out Browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his +art—elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of +suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination—are accumulated in every +paragraph. To crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a +multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of +them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions +from the unknown depths of the past. As one reads, an extraordinary +procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes—Moses, +Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and +Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the +Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a +mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar +and +ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, +almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is—who can doubt?—the +only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. But it would be vain +to +dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note +the +extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. Browne never +states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe +actually are. He speaks of everything but that; and yet, with +triumphant +art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the +vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul.</p> +<p><a name="Page_38"></a>It is interesting—or at least amusing—to +consider what are the most +appropriate places in which different authors should be read. Pope is +doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, Herrick in an +orchard, and Shelley in a boat at sea. Sir Thomas Browne demands, +perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. One could read him floating down the +Euphrates, or past the shores of Arabia; and it would be pleasant to +open the <i>Vulgar Errors</i> in Constantinople, or to get by heart a +chapter +of the <i>Christian Morals</i> between the paws of a Sphinx. In +England, the +most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some +habitation consecrated to learning, some University which still smells +of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. The present writer, at +any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of Browne's syllables +amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few +happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the +<i>Hydriotaphia</i> out to the darkness and the nightingales through +the +studious cloisters of Trinity.</p> +<p>But, after all, who can doubt that it is at Oxford that Browne +himself +would choose to linger? May we not guess that he breathed in there, in +his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which +pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in +the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his +footstep +beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid +that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, +the circumference of the Sheldonian.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="SHAKESPEARES_FINAL_PERIOD"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_41"></a>SHAKESPEARE'S +FINAL PERIOD</h2> +<br> +<p>The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been +fundamentally +affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, +for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, +or +at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a +coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that <i>The Tempest</i> +was +written before <i>Romeo and 'Juliet</i>; that <i>Henry VI.</i> was +produced in +succession to <i>Henry V.</i>; or that <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +followed close +upon the heels of <i>Julius Caesar</i>. Such theories were sent to +limbo for +ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external +evidence revealed the fact that, as Shakespeare's life advanced, a +corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his +verse. The establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate +position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once +followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics +became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the +whole +succession of the works of Shakespeare.</p> +<p>Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to +build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological order, +showed something more than a mere development in the technique of +verse—a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of +characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those +characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was +easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of +Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly +drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit +assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true +index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The <a + name="Page_42"></a>validity +of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for +instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually +merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact +that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, +during +that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the +awful +problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose of this +essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the +artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally +accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that +of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this +hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of +Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable.</p> +<p>What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as +follows:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness +and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, to +the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of middle age, +to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so many men) in later +life, when, though outwardly successful, the world seemed all against +him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on scenes of faithlessness of +friends, treachery of relations and subjects, ingratitude of children, +scorn of his kind; till at last, in his Stratford home again, peace +came to him, Miranda and Perdita in their lovely freshness and charm +greeted him, and he was laid by his quiet Avon side.</p> +</div> +<p>And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet +entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace.</p> +</div> +<p>Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon +Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at +last—it is the universal opinion—a state of quiet serenity in which he +died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives the +most <a name="Page_43"></a>popular expression to this view, a view +which is also held by Mr. +Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr. Brandes. +Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period +with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition to the +preceding +one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir Sidney Lee, too, +seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in Shakespeare's mind, the +orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of +meditative romance.</p> +<p>Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of +Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually +attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy—it +is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some +reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford +the +light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear +in +some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly +the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, +perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it be true that +Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last attain to the +serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent +effort'; +that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of +the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, +in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's level meads, Shakespeare +closed his life on earth'—we have obtained a piece of knowledge which +is both interesting and pleasant. But if it be not true, if, on the +contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually +the +case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our +judgment +as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole +drift and bearing of Shakespeare's 'inner life'?</p> +<p>The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate +serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final +retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It consists +of three plays—<i>Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The Tempest</i>—and +three fragments—the <a name="Page_44"></a>Shakespearean parts of <i>Pericles, +Henry VIII.</i>, +and <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>. All these plays and portions of +plays form +a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and +they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all Shakespeare's +previous work.</p> +<p>One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do +resemble in +some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding +them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new +method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they +immediately succeed—that great series of tragedies which began with +<i>Hamlet</i> in 1601 and ended in 1608 with <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. +In the +latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an +astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied +with +a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to +the highest point of excellence—the tragedy of character. Every one of +his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon +character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his +greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has +made them what they are. Yet, after <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> +Shakespeare +deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past +career. There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year +after year, to produce <i>Othellos, Hamlets</i>, and <i>Macbeths</i>; +instead, he +turned over a new leaf, and wrote <i>Coriolanus</i>.</p> +<p><i>Coriolanus</i> is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an +intolerable play: +remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the +Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible +to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick with +situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of +sudden +disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles +between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge +and egotism on the other—these would have made a tragic and tremendous +setting for some character <a name="Page_45"></a>worthy to rank with +Shakespeare's best. But +it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in +the +play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve +merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. +For +rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the +beginning and the middle and the end of <i>Coriolanus</i>. The hero is +not a +human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, +which +roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, +through a melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is +true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So +far and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties +of <i>Cleopatra</i>. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one +wonders, +as one beholds it, what will happen next.</p> +<p>At about the same time, some of the scenes in <i>Timon of Athens</i> +were in +all probability composed: scenes which resemble <i>Coriolanus</i> in +their +lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it +in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of +foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably +unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if +draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of +furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we +are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to +blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, +like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of +Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before +him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more lamentable +ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves of Prince +Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind was restored, +gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave serenity in <i>The +Tempest</i>, and so ended.</p> +</div> +<p>This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be +admitted at +once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are <a name="Page_46"></a>charming +creatures, that +Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but +why +is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our +attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? Modern +critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful +and +good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is +another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that +these +plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose +wickedness +finds expression in language of extraordinary force. Coming fresh from +their pages to the pages of <i>Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The +Tempest</i>, one is astonished and perplexed. How is it possible to fit +into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow +Iachimo,' or Cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the +'crafty +devil,' his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these +figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them +comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda +dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the +presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and +vigorous as that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's +violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle +utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a +torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from +'pastoral love,' exclaiming to Leontes:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?<br> +</span><span>What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling<br> +</span><span>In leads or oils? what old or newer torture<br> +</span><span>Must I receive, whose every word deserves<br> +</span><span>To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny,<br> +</span><span>Together working with thy jealousies,<br> +</span><span>Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle<br> +</span><span>For girls of nine, O! think what they have done,<br> +</span><span>And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all<br> +</span><span>Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.<br> +</span><span>That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;<br> +</span><a name="Page_47"></a><span>That did but show thee, of a fool, +inconstant<br> +</span><span>And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much<br> +</span><span>Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour,<br> +</span><span>To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,<br> +</span><span>More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon<br> +</span><span>The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter<br> +</span><span>To be or none or little; though a devil<br> +</span><span>Would have shed water out of fire ere done't.<br> +</span><span>Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death<br> +</span><span>Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts,<br> +</span><span>Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart<br> +</span><span>That could conceive a gross and foolish sire<br> +</span><span>Blemished his gracious dam.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does +he +verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel +coarseness. +Iachimo tells us how:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">The cloyed will,<br> +</span><span>That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub<br> +</span><span>Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb,<br> +</span><span>Longs after for the garbage.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and talks of:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">an eye<br> +</span><span>Base and unlustrous as the smoky light<br> +</span><span>That's fed with stinking tallow.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her +husband in an access of hideous rage.</p> +<p>What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene +self-possession,' +of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? English +critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, +have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in +<i>Pericles</i> but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the +grossnesses +of <i>The Winter's Tale</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Is there no way for men to be, but women<br> +</span><span>Must be half-workers?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_48"></a><span class="i11">We are all +bastards;<br> +</span><span>And that most venerable man, which I<br> +</span><span>Did call my father, was I know not where<br> +</span><span>When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools<br> +</span><span>Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed<br> +</span><span>The Dian of that time; so doth my wife<br> +</span><span>The nonpareil of this—O vengeance, vengeance!<br> +</span><span>Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained<br> +</span><span>And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with<br> +</span><span>A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't<br> +</span><span>Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her<br> +</span><span>As chaste as unsunned snow—O, all the devils!—<br> +</span><span>This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,—was't not?<br> +</span><span>Or less,—at first: perchance he spoke not; but,<br> +</span><span>Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,<br> +</span><span>Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition<br> +</span><span>But what he looked for should oppose, and she<br> +</span><span>Should from encounter guard.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no +less +to the point.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">There have been,<br> +</span><span>Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now,<br> +</span><span>And many a man there is, even at this present,<br> +</span><span>Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,<br> +</span><span>That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence<br> +</span><span>And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by<br> +</span><span>Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't,<br> +</span><span>Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened,<br> +</span><span>As mine, against their will. Should all despair<br> +</span><span>That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind<br> +</span><span>Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none;<br> +</span><span>It is a bawdy planet, that will strike<br> +</span><span>Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,<br> +</span><span>From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,<br> +</span><span>No barricade for a belly, know't;<br> +</span><span>It will let in and out the enemy<br> +</span><span>With bag and baggage: many thousand on's<br> +</span><span>Have the disease, and feel't not.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to <a + name="Page_49"></a>agree +with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the beautiful +pathetic light is always present.'</p> +<p>But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has +been so +completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be +found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming, Brutus +is +grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that <i>Hamlet</i>, +and +<i>Julius Caesar</i>, and <i>King Lear</i> give expression to the same +mood of +high tranquillity which is betrayed by <i>Cymbeline, The Tempest</i>, +and +<i>The Winter's Tale</i>? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, +'for +you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not tragedies; +they all end happily'—'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz, 'of +forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not only +virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more?</p> +<p>But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of +Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty +triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of +horror and of gloom. For, in <i>Measure for Measure</i> Isabella is no +whit +less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as +complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of <i>Measure +for Measure</i> was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What +is +it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in +one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes +matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is +rewarded or not?</p> +<p>The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. <i>Measure for Measure</i> +is, +like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before <i>Coriolanus</i>, +essentially +realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to +them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and +women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their +wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible +enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just +as +we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in the plays of the +final period, all this has <a name="Page_50"></a>changed; we are no +longer in the real world, +but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of +shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which +anything may happen next. The pretences of reality are indeed usually +preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is supposed to be the king +of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is supposed to demand tribute +of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience +with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for +war:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i9">Remember, sir, my liege,<br> +</span><span>The Kings your ancestors, together with<br> +</span><span>The natural bravery of your isle, which stands<br> +</span><span>As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in<br> +</span><span>With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters,<br> +</span><span>With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats,<br> +</span><span>But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest<br> +</span><span>Caesar made here; but made not here his brag<br> +</span><span>Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame—<br> +</span><span>The first that ever touched him—he was carried<br> +</span><span>From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping—<br> +</span><span>Poor ignorant baubles!—on our terrible seas,<br> +</span><span>Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd<br> +</span><span>As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof<br> +</span><span>The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point—<br> +</span><span>O giglot fortune!—to master Caesar's sword,<br> +</span><span>Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright<br> +</span><span>And Britons strut with courage.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of +poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other +person than the Octavius of <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>; and the +contrast is +the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation +and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between Octavius, +Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and Enobarbus on the +other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage +of Antony and Octavia.</p> +<p>Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's <a + name="Page_51"></a>latest period; and +it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally +unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate +princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost +princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy +land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the +prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever +afterwards, +or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the +goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it is clear that +such +happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be +taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; +they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories +ought to end.</p> +<p>Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming +heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics +to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban, are to be +left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are +forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious +fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages +never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met +Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia? In this +land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In this world of +dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is it fair to say +that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil +mood,' when he was creating the Queen in <i>Cymbeline</i>, or writing +the +first two acts of <i>The Winter's Tale</i>?</p> +<p>Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other +characteristic +of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and +Dr. Brandes—the singular carelessness with which great parts of them +were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the +<i>dénouement</i> of <i>Cymbeline</i>? And with what perversity +is the great +pastoral scene in <i>The Winter's Tale</i> interspersed with +long-winded +intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! <a name="Page_52"></a>For +these blemishes are unlike +the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier +plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in +themselves; +they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are +sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it cannot be denied, often bored, +and occasionally irritated, by Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and +Gonzalo and Belarius; these personages have not even the life of +ghosts; +they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance +to +involution upon involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of +Shakespeare's earlier works!</p> +<p>It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored +himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, +bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He +is +no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says +what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, +unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this +mood +he must have written his share in <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>, +leaving the +plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and +reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this +mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of +<i>Henry VIII</i>.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all +the +resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of <i>Pericles</i>.</p> +<p>Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years +of +his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half +bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the +singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust +to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent +speech? +If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is +surely this.</p> +<p>And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a +consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of +Shakespeare's later work, and the one which <a name="Page_53"></a>critics +most consistently +point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity—<i>The +Tempest</i>. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics +which +distinguish <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>The Winter's Tale</i> from the +dramas of +Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In <i>The +Tempest</i>, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the principal +characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action +passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which +can +only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, +peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of +persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, +and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did +Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights +than +in some of the speeches of Prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty +than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions +that the triumph of his language asserts itself. It finds as splendid a +vent in the curses of Caliban:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>All the infection that the sun sucks up<br> +</span><span>From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him<br> +</span><span>By inch-meal a disease!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and in the similes of Trinculo:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks +like a foul<br> +</span><span>bombard that would shed his liquor.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The <i>dénouement</i> itself, brought about by a +preposterous piece of +machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg +for fine writing.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">O, it is monstrous, monstrous!<br> +</span><span>Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;<br> +</span><span>The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,<br> +</span><span>That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced<br> +</span><span>The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.<br> +</span><span>Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and<br> +</span><span>I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,<br> +</span><span>And with him there lie mudded.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_54"></a>And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance +from the mouth of the pale +phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play.</p> +<p>A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the +last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first +gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points +of +resemblance between <i>The Tempest</i> and <i>A Midsummer Night's +Dream</i>, their +common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of +their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the +delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the +<i>verve</i> of their vulgar comedy—these, of course, are obvious +enough; +but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison +striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near +Athens—it is full of life. The persons that haunt it—though most of +them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and +all of them are too agreeable to be true—are nevertheless substantial +creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough +sympathy; and the air they breathe—the lords and the ladies, no less +than the mechanics and the elves—is instinct with an exquisite +good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from +Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out +of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions +have +vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too +delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the +gaiety +of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. +Prospero is the central figure of <i>The Tempest</i>; and it has often +been +wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author—an embodiment of +that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo +over Shakespeare's later life. But, on closer inspection, the portrait +seems to be as imaginary as the original. To an irreverent eye, the +ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty +personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had +developed an <a name="Page_55"></a>inordinate propensity for talking. +These may have been the +sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to +risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is +sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also +self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for +pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, +during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his +Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. +'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of +Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she +would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of +Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and +Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. At all events, there can be +little doubt that they would not have had the entrée at Athens.</p> +<p>The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best +measured +by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his +companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are +interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the +hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and +deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. +Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, +Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies +between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the +'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, +eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of +disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The physical vigour of +the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'I left them,' +says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell,<br> +</span><span>There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake<br> +</span><span>O'erstunk their feet.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell <a + name="Page_56"></a>like the +'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You taught me language, and my profit on't<br> +</span><span>Is, I know how to curse.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may +be +either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the +Heights.'</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_LIVES_OF_THE_POETS"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_59"></a>THE +LIVES OF THE POETS<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>No one needs an excuse for re-opening the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>; +the book +is too delightful. It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but +who re-opens Boswell? Boswell is in another category; because, as every +one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. But, on +its different level, the <i>Lives</i> will always hold a firm and +comfortable +place in our affections. After Boswell, it is the book which brings us +nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson. That is its primary +import. We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that +our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we +go +to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, +we +are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these +benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a +mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; +but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is +Samuel +Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and +admired, +that further description would be superfluous. It is sufficient for us +to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that +is +due. In one of Emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to +discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant +conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can +crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. The parallel is +close enough between this impudence and the attitude—implied, if not +expressed—of too much modern criticism towards the sort of +qualities—the easy, indolent <a name="Page_60"></a>power, the +searching sense of actuality, +the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence +of thought—which went to the making of the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>. +There +is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular +instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than +any squirrel that ever lived.</p> +<p>That the <i>Lives</i> continue to be read, admired, and edited, is +in itself +a high proof of the eminence of Johnson's intellect; because, as +serious +criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far +removed from the futile. Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost +invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good +quality +to recommend them—except one: they are never right. That is an +unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up +for it, and that his wit has saved all. He has managed to be wrong so +cleverly, that nobody minds. When Gray, for instance, points the moral +to his poem on Walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that +glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to +the purpose; if <i>what glistered</i> had been <i>gold</i>, the cat +would not have +gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been +drowned.' +Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously +true? But then, to use Johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less +'relation to the purpose'? It is his wit—and we are speaking, of +course, of wit in its widest sense—that has sanctified Johnson's +peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has +put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the +reach +of time.</p> +<p>For it is not only in particular details that Johnson's criticism +fails +to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. Our +judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, +but because our whole method of judging has changed. Thus, to the +historian of letters, the <i>Lives</i> have a special interest, for +they +afford a standing example of a great dead tradition—a tradition whose +<a name="Page_61"></a>characteristics throw more than one curious light +upon the literary +feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the +most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth +century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. +The +most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged +authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every +infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, +which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson +never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at +discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of +poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon +one +condition—that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry +were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of +arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets +themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to +bow +to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that +his +first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his +criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of +Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater +width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its +drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set +of +errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this +was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, +and +how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and +tastes—that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in +question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the +Johnsonian black cap.</p> +<p>But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the <i>Lives of +the +Poets</i>. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson +might +have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the +masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. +Whatever critical <a name="Page_62"></a>method he might have adopted, +he still would have +been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our +minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion +of <i>Lycidas</i> is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and +therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in <i>Comus</i> he remarks: 'they +are +harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He +could +see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering +accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of +Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a +writer could be so absurd. Such preposterous judgments can only be +accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; Johnson had no ear, +and +he had no imagination. These are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a +critic. What could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is +sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry?</p> +<p>The answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change +which +has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when +Johnson wrote. It has often been stated that the essential +characteristic of that great Romantic Movement which began at the end +of +the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of Nature into the +domain of poetry. Incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly +every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return +to Nature. No less than the school of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the +school of Denham, of Dryden, and of Pope, proclaimed itself as the +champion of Nature; and there can be little doubt that Donne +himself—the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the +seventeenth century—wrote under the impulse of a Naturalistic reaction +against the conventional classicism of the Renaissance. Precisely the +same contradictions took place in France. Nature was the watchword of +Malherbe and of Boileau; and it was equally the watchword of Victor +Hugo. To judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the +development +of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the +<a name="Page_63"></a>more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more +and more natural as it +grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at +least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be +called +Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the +operations +of the external world—'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it—as +subject-matter for poetry. But it would have done very little, if it +had +done nothing more than this. Thomson, in the full meridian of the +eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it +would +be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a +fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more +than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation +of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i> is a landmark in the history of letters, not +because of +its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the +poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it +was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i>; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which +suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and +imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because +they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be +invoked. +But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord +Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was +nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was +disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have +expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, +be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough.</p> +<p>The new edition of the <i>Lives</i>, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill +prepared for +publication before his death, and which has been issued by the +Clarendon +Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have +astonished +Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and +appendices <a name="Page_64"></a>might have surprised him, it would +not have put him to +shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific +conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of +Dr. +Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their +voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a +little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the +weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the +compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the +margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. +The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like +edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, +where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one +another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the +paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and, +as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the +Past, with the friendliness of a conversation.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Lives of the English Poets</i>. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. +Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, +1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="MADAME_DU_DEFFAND"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_67"></a>MADAME +DU DEFFAND<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia, he ordered +the +proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some +disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his +carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it +might +be necessary to make. 'Je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et +j'écrirai de Mayence ce qu'il y aura à faire.' The +volumes thus chosen +to beguile the imperial leisure between Paris and Mayence contained the +famous correspondence of Madame du Deffand with Horace Walpole. By the +Emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book—reprinted +from Miss Berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier +in England—was published almost at once. The sensation in Paris was +immense; the excitement of the Russian campaign itself was half +forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the Convent of +Saint Joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning +of Moscow and the passage of the Berezina. We cannot wonder that this +was so. In the Parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of +Madame +du Deffand must have exercised a double fascination—on the one hand as +a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to +many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant +record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and +become historical. The letters were hardly more than thirty years old; +but the world which they <a name="Page_68"></a>depicted in all its +intensity and all its +singularity—the world of the old régime—had vanished for ever +into +limbo. Between it and the eager readers of the First Empire a gulf was +fixed—a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the +volcanic fires of the Revolution. Since then a century has passed; the +gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us +to-day seems hardly less remote—from some points of view, indeed, even +more—than that which is revealed to us in the Memoirs of Cellini or the +correspondence of Cicero. Yet the vision is not simply one of a strange +and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the +letters +which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to +ourselves. The soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and +these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the +eighteenth century, can never be out of date.</p> +<p>A fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate +them in their completeness. The late Mrs. Paget Toynbee, while +preparing +her edition of Horace Walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the +original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a +country house in Staffordshire. The publication of these manuscripts in +full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which Mrs. Toynbee's +well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is +an event of no small importance to lovers of French literature. A great +mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. The +original edition produced by Miss Berry in 1810, from which all the +subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, +turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small +fraction of the whole correspondence; of the 838 letters published by +Mrs. Toynbee, 485 are entirely new, and of the rest only 52 were +printed +by Miss Berry in their entirety. Miss Berry's edition was, in fact, +simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. +It skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves +the main outline of the <a name="Page_69"></a>story which the letters +reveal. No doubt that +was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the +more +exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in +the closely packed 2000 pages of Mrs. Toynbee's volumes. Enthusiasm +alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be +rewarded. In place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we +have now the truth itself—the truth in all its subtle gradations, all +its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable +obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in +black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. Probably Miss Berry's +edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to +become acquainted with a celebrated figure in French literature; but +Mrs. Toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, +and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste +for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the +heart.</p> +<p>The Marquise du Deffand was perhaps the most typical representative +of +that phase of civilisation which came into existence in Western Europe +during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most +concentrated and characteristic form about the year 1750 in the +drawing-rooms of Paris. She was supremely a woman of her age; but it is +important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, +half +of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the Regent Orleans, +Fontenelle, and the young Voltaire; not that of Rousseau, the +'Encyclopaedia,' and the Patriarch of Ferney. It is true that her +letters to Walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written +between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and +they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the +whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new +forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, +in +sentiment, in action—which for us form its peculiar interest and its +peculiar glory—were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her letters to +Walpole, <a name="Page_70"></a>whenever she compares the present with +the past her bitterness +becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs +indicibles aux opéras de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de +Thévenart et +de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me paraît détestable: +acteurs, +auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais +goût, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards +intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the +'Encyclopaedia' and the <i>Philosophes</i> was the object of her +particular +detestation. She saw Diderot once—and that was enough for both of them. +She could never understand why it was that M. de Voltaire would persist +in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as +religion. Turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a +'sot animal.' His dismissal from office—that fatal act, which made the +French Revolution inevitable—delighted her: she concealed her feelings +from Walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the +Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Le renvoi du Turgot me plaît +extrêmement,' she +wrote; 'tout me paraît en bon train.' And then she added, more +prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurément, nous n'en +resterons pas +là.' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their +works was +in part a matter of personal pique—the result of her famous quarrel +with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert +and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly +ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a +deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for +influence between two rival <i>salonnières</i>. There are +indications that, +even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'Alembert +was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and +her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'Il y a de certains +articles,' she complained to Voltaire in 1763—a year before the final +estrangement—'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur +lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' The truth is that +<a name="Page_71"></a>d'Alembert and his friends were moving, and +Madame du Deffand was +standing still. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse simply precipitated and +intensified an inevitable rupture. She was the younger generation +knocking at the door.</p> +<p>Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common +with +that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met +together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de +Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come +into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and +licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and +bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a +fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's +mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. Then +she became the intimate friend of Madame de Prie—the singular woman +who, for a moment, on the Regent's death, during the government of M. +le +Duc, controlled the destinies of France, and who committed suicide when +that amusement was denied her. During her early middle age Madame du +Deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of Sceaux, where +the Duchesse du Maine, the grand-daughter of the great Condé and +the +daughter-in-law of Louis XIV., kept up for many years an almost royal +state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. It was at +Sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and +conversations—supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked +balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of +the park—that Madame du Deffand came to her maturity and established +her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. +The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters +and +the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast +representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no +longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the +glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern +life had <a name="Page_72"></a>not yet begun. It was an intermediate +period, and the +comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and +intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity +and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since, +have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and +for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle +years +of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those +days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found +all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however +fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of +the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a +society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that +there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms +of +personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of +the +eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was +expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, +those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run +smoothly—the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of +delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation—with the result that +a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and +obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those +persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it +in an unequivocal way—by the tenacity with which they clung to the +scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they +almost +refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have +been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the +furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire, +d'Argental, Moncrif, Hénault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand +herself—all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived +to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities +unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young—at the age of +seventy-seven. Another <a name="Page_73"></a>contemporary, Richelieu, +who was famous for his +adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within +a +year of the opening of the States-General. More typical still of this +singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in +his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in +existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so.</p> +<p>Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring +smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of +trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was +no +light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being +blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, +realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a +peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le +commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly +true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were +those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, +over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so +charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the +rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion—the kind that +lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in +their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious +orders—the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of +personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour—these things must be +left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow +sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised +as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself +should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and +absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be +tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew +serious +and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for +literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for +recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat +<a name="Page_74"></a>such trifles as if they had a value of their own? +Only one thing; and +that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the +inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation +was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not +even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of +perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the +solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared +to +the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a +convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to +instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered +serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a +preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful +heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the +generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still +believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange +indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. +The +Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a +threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the case +was hopeless.</p> +<p>An innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm +that +wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving +devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse—such +were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who +had +spent their youth at the Court of the Regent, and dallied out their +middle age down the long avenues of Sceaux. About the middle of the +century the Duchesse du Maine died, and Madame du Deffand established +herself in Paris at the Convent of Saint Joseph in a set of rooms which +still showed traces—in the emblazoned arms over the great +mantelpiece—of the occupation of Madame de Montespan. A few years later +a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she +became +totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a +transition, among the ranks of the old. <a name="Page_75"></a>For the +rest of her life she +hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most +celebrated in Europe. The thirty years of her reign there fall into two +distinct and almost equal parts. The first, during which d'Alembert was +pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse. During the second, which lasted for the rest of her +life, +her salon, purged of the Encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly +worldly tone; and the influence of Horace Walpole was supreme.</p> +<p>It is this final period of Madame du Deffand's life that is +reflected so +minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of Mrs. Toynbee +have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. Her +letters +to Walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of +fifteen years (1766-1780). They allow us, on the one hand, to trace +through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, +and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps +the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed +society. For the circle which came together in her drawing-room during +those years had the hand of death upon it. The future lay elsewhere; it +was simply the past that survived there—in the rich trappings of +fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety—but still irrevocably the past. +The radiant creatures of Sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. We see +them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to +amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. Pont-de-Veyle, the +youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what +a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go +the +rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard +no more. Hénault—once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for +having +written an historical treatise—which, it is true, was worthless, but he +had written it—Hénault was beginning to dodder, and Voltaire, +grinning +in Ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre délabré +Président.' Various +dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. The Marquise de Boufflers +was gambling <a name="Page_76"></a>herself to ruin; the Comtesse de +Boufflers was wringing +out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; +the Maréchale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the +Maréchale +de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous +attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: +'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a +shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage que le Saint +Esprit eût aussi peu de goût!' Then there was the floating +company of +foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at Madame +du +Deffand's: Caraccioli, for instance, the Neapolitan Ambassador—'je +perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en +dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and Bernstorff, the +Danish +envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and +fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'à travers tous +ces +éloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler Puffendorf,' and Puffendorf the +poor +man remained for evermore. Besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign +traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned <i>salon</i>; +Englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar +figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to +Walpole +are Burke, Fox, and Gibbon. Sometimes influential parents in England +obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of +Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced +by +his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle +of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and +orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the +fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the +leading word or smile or nod of an ancient Sibyl, who seemed to survey +the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. It is +easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. Madame du +Deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not +know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the +same +difficulty. To an English <a name="Page_77"></a>youth, unfamiliar with +the language and shy +as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old +lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the +stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, +from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the +pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. +As a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony—or rather, not the days, +but the nights. For Madame du Deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in +the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past +the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived—the moment of +supper. Upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. Supper, she +used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three +were she could never remember. She lived up to her dictum. She had an +income of £1400 a year, and of this she spent more than +half—£720—on +food. These figures should be largely increased to give them their +modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could +only just manage to rub along. Her parties varied considerably in size; +sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper—sometimes twenty +or thirty. No doubt they were elaborate meals. In a moment of economy +we +find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer +give 'des repas'—only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at +which there should be served nothing more than two entrées, one +roast, +two sweets, and—mysterious addition—'la pièce du milieu.' This +was +certainly moderate for those days (Monsieur de Jonsac rarely provided +fewer than fourteen entrées), but such resolutions did not last +long. A +week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, +day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty +guests. But she did not always have supper at home. From time to time +she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of +Paris to one of her still extant dowagers—a Maréchale, or a +Duchesse—or the more and more 'délabré Président.' +There the same +company awaited her <a name="Page_78"></a>as that which met in her own +house; it was simply a +change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper +every night with the same half-dozen persons. The entertainment, apart +from the supper itself, hardly varied. Occasionally there was a little +music, more often there were cards and gambling. Madame du Deffand +disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a +choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of +seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing +vingt-et-un with Charles Fox. But distractions of that kind were merely +incidental to the grand business of the night—the conversation. In the +circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two +or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk +continually flowed. For those strange creatures it seemed to form the +very substance of life itself. It was the underlying essence, the +circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had +their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men +might go, but talk went on for ever. It is difficult, especially for +those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to +realise the nature of such conversation. Brilliant, charming, +easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never +intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, +never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most +vigorous flow of language. 'Écoutez! Écoutez!' Walpole +used constantly +to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling +cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part—to +drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, +exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the +pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a +breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at +moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of +radiant +jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to +us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great <a name="Page_79"></a>book—'C'est +de l'esprit sur les +lois'—is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so +dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A +garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint +Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and +carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what +was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his +head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint +Denis—a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du +Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui +coûte.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests +began to +go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened +to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred +going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a +chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and +stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to +hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it +was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was +ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home.</p> +<p>It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to +bed, +for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part +of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she +devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that +she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed—all bound +alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat—she had only +read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually +complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In +nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours +than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How +the +eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our +biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge +and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! <a + name="Page_80"></a>In those days, +even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to +read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from +catholic—they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that +Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once—in +<i>Athalie</i>. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the +whole he +was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de +Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was +enraptured by the style—but only by the style—of <i>Gil Blas</i>. And +that +was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or +insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it, +but she soon gave it up—it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon, +but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une +monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne +s'occupe +que des bêtes; il faut l'être un peu soi-même pour se +dévouer à une +telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in +manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted +by +the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she +embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was +unexpected; she was positively pleased. <i>Coriolanus</i>, it is true, +'me +semble, sauf votre respect, épouvantable, et n'a pas le sens +commun'; +and 'pour <i>La Tempête</i>, je ne suis pas touchée de ce +genre.' But she was +impressed by <i>Othello</i>; she was interested by <i>Macbeth</i>; +and she admired +<i>Julius Caesar</i>, in spite of its bad taste. At <i>King Lear</i>, +indeed, she +had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle pièce! +Réellement la +trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'âme à un point que +je ne puis +exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader +was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning +early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the +cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous +company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and +Lady Macbeth?</p> +<p><a name="Page_81"></a>Often, even before the arrival of the old +pensioner, she was at work +dictating a letter, usually to Horace Walpole, occasionally to Madame +de +Choiseul or Voltaire. Her letters to Voltaire are enchanting; his +replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole +correspondence has never been collected together in chronological +order, +and published as a separate book. The slim volume would be, of its +kind, +quite perfect. There was no love lost between the two old friends; they +could not understand each other; Voltaire, alone of his generation, had +thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to Madame du Deffand +progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an +unpleasant necessity. She distrusted him profoundly, and he returned +the +compliment. Yet neither could do without the other: through her, he +kept +in touch with one of the most influential circles in Paris; and even +she +could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. +Besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other +genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long +familiarity. The result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. If +they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to +write so well. They were on their best behaviour—exquisitely courteous +and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. His cajoleries +are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, +have almost the quality of a caress. She replies in the tone of a +worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her +'Monsieur de Voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. +He rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he +alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. Sometimes one +just +catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the +smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one +is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat.</p> +<p>Madame du Deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely +than +that of Voltaire himself, the common-sense <a name="Page_82"></a>of +the eighteenth century. +Its precision is absolute. It is like a line drawn in one stroke by a +master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. There is no +breadth in it—no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. One +cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her +blindness. What did she lose by it? Certainly not</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i2">The sweet approach of even or morn,<br> +</span><span>Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at +their +clearest? Her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating +glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere +irrelevance. The kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may +seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of +the Romantic school. Yet it will repay attention. The vocabulary is +very +small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, +who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote—and spelt—by the +light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary +accomplishments—'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' +The object of all art is to make suggestions. The romantic artist +attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling +up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the +reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the +classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring +everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact +propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame +du +Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never +strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such +is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on +their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the +dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to Walpole +is +characteristic:</p> +<a name="Page_83"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Nous eûmes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la +harpe à merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du +regret que vous ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. +Nous eûmes aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fût +touché avec une grande perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison +de la harpe. Je fus fort triste toute la soirée; j'avais appris +en partant que Mme. de Luxembourg, qui était allée samedi +à Montmorency pour y passer quinze jours, s'était +trouvée si mal qu'on avait fait venir Tronchin, et qu'on l'avait +ramenée le dimanche à huit heures du soir, qu'on lui +croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. L'ancienneté de la +connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitié; voir +disparaître ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-même; +sentir que l'on ne tient à rien, que tout fuit, que tout +échappe, qu'on reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgré +cela on craint de le quitter; voilà ce qui m'occupa pendant la +musique.</p> +</div> +<p>Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases—only the most flat and +ordinary expressions—'un instrument admirable'—'une grande +perfection'—'fort triste.' Nothing is described; and yet how much is +suggested! The whole scene is conjured up—one does not know how; one's +imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, +by +a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless +rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old +harp seems to be lingering still.</p> +<p>While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant +exterior +of Madame du Deffand's mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of +her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, +pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair—these are the feelings +that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's +lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed +the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the +rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was +surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? +The +harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little +appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a +feast; +the finer the dishes that <a name="Page_84"></a>were set before her, +the greater her +distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act +of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from +her for ever. Yet—and this intensified her wretchedness—though the +banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself +away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts +of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was +out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and +there she must remain. 'Je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de +me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' She was extremely +lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her +life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'Je ne +vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which +were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in +analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she +lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, +Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her—'elle fait +des définitions,' she wails—to that of the lady who hoped to +prove her +friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears—'comme je n'y +tâte +pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de goût que j'ai pour +elle.' Then +there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. +'Tous les Matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the Regent, +'excepté le Marquis de Matignon.' 'Cela est vrai,' the Regent +replied, +'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' +Madame +du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, +there +was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet—what was +it? Something was the matter—yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool +yourself—'l'on est plus bête avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout +seul.' As +she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentée d'arracher les +masques +qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out +unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked +behind the gravest or the most <a name="Page_85"></a>fascinating +exterior; then her fingers +began to itch, and she could resist no longer—she gave way to her +besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with +Rousseau's +remark about her—'J'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fléau de sa +haine +qu'à celui de son amitié.' There, sitting in her great +Diogenes-tub of +an armchair—her 'tonneau' as she called it—talking, smiling, +scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the +remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces +that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed +itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and +meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>J'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui était chez +moi; hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines à ressorts, +qui allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans +réfléchir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son rôle par +habitude: Madame la Duchesse d'Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de +Forcalquier dédaignait tout, Mme. de la Vallière jabotait +sur tout. Les hommes ne jouaient pas de meilleurs rôles, et moi +j'étais abîmée dans les réflexions les plus +noires; je pensai que j'avais passé ma vie dans les illusions; +que je m'étais creusée tous les abîmes dans +lesquels j'étais tombée.</p> +</div> +<p>At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual +hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Je ramenai la Maréchale de Mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, +je causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mécontente. Elle +hait la petite Idole, elle hait la Maréchale de Luxembourg; +enfin, sa haine pour tous les gens qui me déplaisent me fit lui +pardonner l'indifférence et peut-être la haine qu'elle a +pour moi. Convenez que voilà une jolie société, un +charmant commerce.</p> +</div> +<p>Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had +found +in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But +there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she <i>was</i> +perfect!—'Elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand défaut qu'on +ne +pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' At last one day the inevitable +happened—she <a name="Page_86"></a>went to see Madame de Choiseul, and +she was bored. 'Je +rentrai chez moi à une heure, pénétrée, +persuadée qu'on ne peut être +content de personne.'</p> +<p>One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final +irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop +that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had +come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within +a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such +a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die +quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and +she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was +embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she +experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. +Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an +ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways +of +worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, +and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. +Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of +a +holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, +hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blasé bachelor of fifty, +should +have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have +treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him +which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in +a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest +fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our +knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; +nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and +painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an +inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that +letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived +in +terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with <a + name="Page_87"></a>a blind +old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his +friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the +laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less +terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the +object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his +London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France +with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him +by +turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by +the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand—so far as he could like +anyone—and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her +letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was +probably +the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute +rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the +most +ordinary friendship—on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to +continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du +Deffand. She accepted them—what else could she do?—but every line she +wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. +Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on +her +side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. +Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked +by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the +same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the +charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a +miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he +had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a +good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was +the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had +been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing +searchlight +of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole +too would have felt 'le fléau de son amitié'? His mask, +too, would have +been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, <a name="Page_88"></a>his +absence saved +him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his +brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of +about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks—just long enough to +rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was +that +she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of +which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once +or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in +plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most +violent +and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and +for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and +pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some +satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a +peculiarly painful attack of the gout.</p> +<p>About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, +after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After +seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was +broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully +accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she +resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, +her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more +complete. +She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations +on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'âme,' +she +says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est +le +ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est +l'avant-goût du +néant, mais le néant lui est préférable.' +Her existence had become a +hateful waste—a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been +uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le +répète sans +cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'être né.' The +grasshopper had +become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. +'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie +aussi triste?' When Death did come at last, <a name="Page_89"></a>he +came very gently. She +felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in +her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: +'Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez +point de mon état, nous étions presque perdus l'un pour +l'autre; nous ne +nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien +aise de se savoir aimé.' That was her last word to him. Walpole +might +have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he +realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would +have +been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived—her +room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her +ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one +attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it +is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. +Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such +an +unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an +uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing +that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was +she perhaps right after all?</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole</i> +(1766-80). Première Edition complète, augmentée +d'environ 500 Lettres +inédites, publiées, d'après les originaux, avec +une introduction, des +notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, +1912.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRE_AND_ENGLAND"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_93"></a>VOLTAIRE +AND ENGLAND<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></small></h2> +<p>The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the +history of +civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of +interaction—big with momentous consequences—between the French and +English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance +and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire +planted +a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile +influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on +good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native +country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, +so +that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his +was +the hand which did the work.</p> +<p>It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in +Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a +hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could +find +nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's +day +the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long +Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate +the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the +publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>, the work in which Voltaire gave to the +world +the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien +Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the +period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which +he +has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and +disputed points. M. Lanson's great <a name="Page_94"></a>attainments +are well known, and to +say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to +the edition of the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> is simply to say that +he is +a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and +perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories +of +European culture.</p> +<p>Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure +for +England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The +story, +as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official +documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the +early +days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, +occupied +a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could +hardly +have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising +poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of +Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been +rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, +his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of +the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his +middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his +middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his +ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank +and jested, and for whose wives—it was <i>de rigueur</i> in those +days—he +expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was +his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One +night +at the Opéra the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and +powerful +family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, +whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to +taunt the poet upon his birth—'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire—what +<i>is</i> your name?' To which the retort came quickly—'Whatever my +name may +be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered +something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had +let +his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, <a + name="Page_95"></a>and he was to +pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty +with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those <i>grands seigneurs</i> +to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at +dinner to-night, <i>je te donnerai cent coups de bâtons.</i>' It +was +dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such +privileged persons, but to do so at their expense——! A few days later +Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in +Adrienne +Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and +'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan +lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, +and +the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the +arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's, +where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, +received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went +out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of +Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he +shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, +according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which +had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to +everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into +Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood +of +words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up +to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the +signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted +itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, +if +they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then +the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age—the +convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule—came +into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, +perhaps—until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at +him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was <a + name="Page_96"></a>received with +icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de +Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he +placed +the author of <i>Oedipe</i> side by side with the authors of <i>Le Cid</i> +and +<i>Phèdre</i>, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that +'ces coups +de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' +'Nous serions bien +malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of +snuff, 'si les poètes n'avaient pas des épaules.' Such +friends as +remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing. +'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitié,' she said; 'dans le +fond il a +raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, +and +she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, +lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two +months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised +swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation +was +cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally +rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long +term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did +not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those +days to a man of honour in such circumstances—to avenge the insult by a +challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, +began +to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so +soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One +day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for +Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police +reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and +making +no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec +éclat M. +le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly +on +the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the <i>Police Gazette</i>, +'le sieur Arrouët de Voltaire, fameux poète,' was arrested, +and +conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille.</p> +<p>A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de +Bernières while he +was still in hiding, reveals the effect which <a name="Page_97"></a>these +events had produced +upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected +correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit. +The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting +smile—these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are +informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, +for the first time in his life, is serious.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>J'ai été à l'extrémité; je +n'attends que ma convalescence pour abandonner à jamais ce +pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitié tendre que vous avez eue pour +moi; au nom de cette amitié informez-moi par un mot de votre +main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez à l'homme que je vous envoi, +en qui vous pouvez prendre une entière confiance. +Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand; dites +à Thieriot que je veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je +serai mort, ou quand je serai heureux; jusque-là, je lui +pardonne son indifférence. Dites à M. le chevalier des +Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la générosité de +ses procédés pour moi. Comptez que tout +détrompé que je suis de la vanité des +amitiés humaines, la vôtre me sera à jamais +précieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir à Paris que pour +vous voir, vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma +constance dans mon amitié et dans mes malheurs.</p> +</div> +<p>'Présentez mes respects à Madame du Deffand!' Strange +indeed are the +whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernières was then living in none +other +than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai +des Théatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century +later, +the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of +an +enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; +where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with +the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to +the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, +which—so it seemed to her as she sat entranced—could never, never grow +old.<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_98"></a>Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. +For some time he had +entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged +for +permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was +to prevent an unpleasant <i>fracas</i>, were ready enough to +substitute exile +for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux +poète' was released on condition that he should depart +forthwith, and +remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty +leagues from Versailles.</p> +<p>It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and +confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is +generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. +His +subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at +Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the +interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object—in which +he did not succeed—of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel. +Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was +not +in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in +doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned +secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length +of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, +however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over +all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters +during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary +English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend +upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We +know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard +Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in +English—an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of +another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned +Jew +was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a +Jewish broker.)</p> +<a name="Page_99"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, +alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to nobody; +my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could not make +bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I had never +undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all the +misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among all its +direful influences pours allways on me some kind refreshment, sent to +me an English gentleman unknown to me, who forced me to receive some +money that I wanted. Another London citisen that I had seen but once at +Paris, carried me to his own country house, wherein I lead an obscure +and charming life since that time, without going to London, and quite +given over to the pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and +generous affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life +brings me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp +indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady +Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even increased +in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, their money, +their house; but I have refused all, because they are lords, and I have +accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a single gentleman.</p> +</div> +<p>We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but +as +to who or what Everard Falkener was—besides the fact that he was a +'single gentleman'—we have only just information enough to make us wish +for more.</p> +<p>'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, +neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect +health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, +without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all +this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' +This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame +his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first +Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General—has anyone, +before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?—and +to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of +sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.'</p> +<p><a name="Page_100"></a>We have another glimpse of Voltaire at +Wandsworth in a curious document +brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at +a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to +argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' +until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed +conclusive.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in Fulham, +with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on the subject of +water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a quaker, and at length +came to mention that assertion of Paul. They questioned there being +such an assertion in all his writings; on which was a large wager laid, +as near as I remember of £500: and Voltaire, not retaining where +it was, had one of the Earl's horses, and came over the ferry from +Fulham to Putney.... When I came he desired me to give him in writing +the place where Paul said, <i>he was not sent to baptize</i>; which I +presently did. Then courteously taking his leave, he mounted and rode +back—</p> +</div> +<p>and, we must suppose, won his wager.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out +the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be very +exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it might, he +would give it on condition I would yield to be his companion, keeping +the same company, and I should always, in every respect, fare as he +fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal value: telling me then +plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were most of the noblemen in France +and in England; deriding the account given by the four Evangelists +concerning the birth of Christ, and his miracles, etc., so far that I +desired him to desist: for I could not bear to hear my Saviour so +reviled and spoken against. Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, +and left me with some reluctance.</p> +</div> +<p>In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager +gesticulating +figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square—'Belitery +Square' he calls it—or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane, +Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in +Westminster Abbey, <a name="Page_101"></a>or to pay a call on +Congreve, or to attend a +Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he +found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the +'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and +delivering a harangue beginning—'Brave Englishmen! Am I not +sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are +one or two stories of him in the great country houses—at Bubb +Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the +episode of Sin and Death in <i>Paradise Lost</i> with such vigour that +at +last Young burst out with the couplet:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>You are so witty, profligate, and thin,<br> +</span><span>At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure +him +into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had +scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I +thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom +either +a fool or a philosopher.'</p> +<p>It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at +its +scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, +and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might +have +been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, +and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His +correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose +presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to +England—a correspondence which must have been considerable—has +completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which +passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there +any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark +raises +our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many +years +later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to +Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary:</p> +<a name="Page_102"></a> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very +old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots on +it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke all the +time in English.... His house is not very fine, but genteel, and stands +upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall and very thin, has a +very piercing eye, and a look singularly vivacious. He told me of his +acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with whom he lived for three months at +Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who first showed him the <i>Beggar's +Opera</i> before it was acted. He says he admires Swift, and loved Gay +vastly. He said that Swift had a great deal of the ridiculum acre.</p> +</div> +<p>And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' +at +Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision +has +he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from +our gaze in that brief parenthesis—'with whom he lived for three months +at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than +one +or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk +which flowed then with such a careless abundance!—that prodigal stream, +swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of +forgetfulness and the long night of Time!</p> +<p>So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated +information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of +Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a +very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to +suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a +purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire +himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the +great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he +was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not +that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and <i>réclame</i>, +with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold +of +those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is +even +less evidence to support it than there is to support <a name="Page_103"></a>Voltaire's +own +story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire +was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is +only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at +him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in +England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody +else—'avec des détails que je ne rapporterai point'—that 'M. de +Voltaire se conduisit très-irrégulièrement en +Angleterre: qu'il s'y est +fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procédés qui +n'accordaient pas avec les +principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England +'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an +infuriated +publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of +money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the +miscreant, +who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more +circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, +it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of +betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale +first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it +from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton +Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by +the +'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in +Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom +'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. +There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no +law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' +Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy +premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth +century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has +examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with +conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without +foundation.</p> +<p>It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not +limited +to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which <a name="Page_104"></a>centred +about the +disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London +with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English +Ambassador +at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, +a +poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the +favour +and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to +support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.," +which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and +the +priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and +Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London +edition of the <i>Henriade</i>, there was hardly a great name in +England +which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the +poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of £240. Now +it is +also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were +suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act +in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' +who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But +to +conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was +known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the +inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, +owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves +subscribers +to the <i>Henriade</i>—Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty +copies—and +that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of +Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition +of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have +had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can +conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very +summit +of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew +to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of +himself +and his friends?</p> +<p>Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in +England as during every other period of his career. <a name="Page_105"></a>Besides +the edition +of the <i>Henriade</i>, which was considerably altered and +enlarged—one of +the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its +pages—he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon +the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of +<i>Julius Caesar</i> for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of +his +tragedy of <i>Brutus</i>, and he collected a quantity of material for +his +History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged +with the preparations for his <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>. The <i>Henriade</i> +met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition +was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as +many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. +M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly +successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in +some +town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the +completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it +may, +he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he +applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th +of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more +than three years before came to a close.</p> +<p>It was not until five years later that the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> +appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which +Voltaire +gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a +focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the +nation +into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had +scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the +culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the +Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to +England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration +which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the +hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, +like +most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar +<a name="Page_106"></a>attribute of being deep-rooted in popular +traditions and popular +sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The +agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign +of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of +intellectual +activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed +to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime +the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of +the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State. +Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly +English; +never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence +of +judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and +complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of +Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the +whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those +elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of +the national genius—'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'—both +appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of +the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were +visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets—in the +Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into +English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy +Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of +English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny +fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable +silence, over their English beef and English beer.</p> +<p>It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful +stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it +with +the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the +narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the +result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for +what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, <a + name="Page_107"></a>Voltaire +makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, +the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible +not +to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment +which was not published until after his death, describing his first +impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a +fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of +Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would +have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be +painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the +master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in +reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher +and +more important, something more original and more profound. He +determined +to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an +ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of +faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's +dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note +to Madame de Bernières, was to grow, in the congenial air of +England, +into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and +follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he +was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter +in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was +now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great +blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu +in his <i>Lettres Persanes</i>; the second was struck by Voltaire in +the +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i>. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous +precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work +appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as +its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections +upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common +point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England +is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of +which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy <a name="Page_108"></a>is +brought into operation. The +book is an extremely short one—it fills less than two hundred small +octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy +gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it—a set of private letters +to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an +extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a +hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance—from the +theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the +effects +of inoculation to the immortality of the soul—and every touch tells. It +is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential +point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this +quality +of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The +matters +treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed +so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder +whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been +expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been +expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an +exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial +trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough. +Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop +of some strange liquor—is it a poison or is it an elixir of +life?—whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the +remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French +readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were +looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had +begun +among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid +frame-work of society—of life itself—the hard, dark, narrow, +antiquated structure of their existence—had suddenly, in the twinkling +of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing.</p> +<p>It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a +work +would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to +those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been +crowned with <a name="Page_109"></a>triumph, and all that was best in +English life was founded +upon the political institutions which had been then established. The +moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a +free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and +incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by +Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; +he +gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly +mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the +responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or +even +the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, +whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the +importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the +constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to +the reader than the famous lines in the <i>Henriade</i>:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Aux murs de Westminster on voit +paraître ensemble<br> +</span><span>Trois pouvoirs étonnés du noeud qui les +rassemble.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the +English +edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be +inserted in the preface:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Some of his <i>English</i> Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at +his not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which +most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is an +effect of <i>M. de Voltaire's</i> Judgment. He contented himself with +giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which is +entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the <i>British</i> +Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible for a +Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy Labyrinth, in +which such of the <i>English</i> themselves as are best acquainted +with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and lost?</p> +</div> +<p>Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of +Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later +eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They +turned +away in disgust from the 'gloomy <a name="Page_110"></a>labyrinth' of +practical fact to take +refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts, +'the Cast of which was entirely new'—and the conclusion of which was +also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution.</p> +<p>It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the <i>Lettres +Philosophiques</i> should have been condemned by the authorities, not +for +any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in +question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the <i>ancien +régime</i> was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its +immediate +effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was +increased. And the <i>ancien régime</i> itself was not slow to +realise the +danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the +unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La +seule matière philosophique que j'y traite est la petite +bagatelle de l'immortalité de l'âme; mais la chose a trop +de conséquence pour la traiter sérieusement. Il a fallu +l'égorger pour ne pas heurter de front nos seigneurs les +théologiens, gens qui voient si clairement la +spiritualité de l'âme qu'ils feraient brûler, s'ils +pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent.</p> +</div> +<p>Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so +gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then +beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly +perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names +of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In +this +connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the +writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord +Morley +says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of +the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian +theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is +certain +both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that +his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England. +There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous <a name="Page_111"></a>letter, +preserved +among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the +police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Vous venez de mettre à la Bastille [says the writer, who, it +is supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il +y a plus de 15 années.</p> +</div> +<p>The writer goes on to speak of the</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>métier que faisait l'homme en question, prêchant le +déisme tout à découvert aux toilettes de nos +jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu +de contes et de fables, les apôtres étaient de bonnes gens +idiots, simples, et crédules, et les pères de l'Eglise, +Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le plus, n'étaient que +des charlatans et des suborneurs.</p> +</div> +<p>'Je voudrais être homme d'authorité,' he adds, 'pour un +jour seulement, +afin d'enfermer ce poète entre quatre murailles pour toute sa +vie.' That +Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such +pious +ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn +from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of +England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and +Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of +second-rate +and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was +only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and +fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused +rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may +each +and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and +suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. +Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal +relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and +superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in +his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions +and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; +but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and +far-<a name="Page_112"></a>reaching speculations of Hume belong, of +course, to a totally +different class.</p> +<p>Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in +which +the <i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> did pioneer work of a highly +important +kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. +The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best—succinct, lucid, +persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other +hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention +his existence—a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely +afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's +nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high +Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such +aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition +for +matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he +had +never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see +before him. All was 'barbare, dépourvu de bienséances, +d'ordre, de +vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and +elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs étonnantes'; but to the +true +significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind.</p> +<p>Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his +best to +reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by +slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, +quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions +upon +some of the <i>Pensées</i> of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that +these +reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious +venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his +subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and +intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the +aged +Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice +extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of +his +book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt +<a name="Page_113"></a>that it would be safer to skip the best +parts—'the poor man!' he said +afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'—but the permission +never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit +publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The +<i>Lettres Philosophiques</i> were officially condemned; the book was +declared to be scandalous and 'contraire à la religion, aux +bonnes +moeurs, et au respect dû aux puissances,' and it was ordered to +be +publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might +have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from +putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps +and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. +Loke +and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de +Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered +message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was +carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete.</p> +<p>He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath +of +the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's +country +house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, +and +a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work +of +the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, +and +condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of +Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of +orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard. +But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton <i>was</i> heard. The men +of +science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much +to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which +took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century +were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire.</p> +<p>With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English +influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never +lost his interest in England; he was <a name="Page_114"></a>never +tired of reading English +books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in +the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of +that +deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so +foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But +it +is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's +nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central +standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in +England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has +ever +trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found +its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially +conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of +Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising +passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the +nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the +careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and +explicit, +and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Écrasez +l'infâme!' +was enough for him.</p> +<br> +<p>1914.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Correspondance de Voltaire</i> (1726-1729). By Lucien Foulet. +Paris: Hachette, 1913.</p> +</div> +<a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> 'Il est aussi animé qu'il ait jamais été. Il a +quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en vérité je le crois +immortel; il jouit de +tous ses sens, aucun même n'est affaibli; c'est un être +bien singulier, +et en vérité fort supérieur.' Madame du Deffand to +Horace Walpole, 12 +Avril 1778.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="A_DIALOGUE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_115"></a>A DIALOGUE</h2> +<h2>BETWEEN</h2> +<h2>MOSES, DIOGENES, AND MR. LOKE</h2> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess, oh <i>Moses</i>! Your Miracles were but conjuring-tricks, +your +Prophecies lucky Hazards, and your Laws a <i>Gallimaufry</i> of +Commonplaces +and Absurdities.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the Vulgar than in +ascertaining the Truth, and that your Reputation in the World would +never have been so high, had your Lot fallen among a Nation of +Philosophers.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess that when you taught the <i>Jews</i> to spoil the <i>Egyptians</i> +you +were a sad rogue.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that it was a Fable to give Horses to Pharaoh and an +uncloven +hoof to the Hare.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>Confess that you did never see the <i>Back Parts</i> of the Lord.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Confess that your style had too much Singularity and too little +Taste to +be that of the Holy Ghost.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>All this may be true, my good Friends; but what are the Conclusions +you +would draw from your Raillery? Do you suppose that I am ignorant of all +that a Wise Man might urge against my <a name="Page_116"></a>Conduct, +my Tales, and my +Language? But alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by Choice but by +Necessity. I had not the Happiness of living in <i>England</i> or a <i>Tub</i>. +I +was the Leader of an ignorant and superstitious People, who would never +have heeded the sober Counsels of Good Sense and Toleration, and who +would have laughed at the Refinements of a nice Philosophy. It was +necessary to flatter their Vanity by telling them that they were the +favour'd Children of God, to satisfy their Passions by allowing them to +be treacherous and cruel to their Enemies, and to tickle their Ears by +Stories and Farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a +Nursery or <i>Bedlam</i>. By such Contrivances I was able to attain my +Ends +and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is +not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must +fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from +Expediency. It is his Duty to <i>sacrifice</i> the Best, which is +impossible, +to a <i>little Good</i>, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay +down a +Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in +a +few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and +Superstitious, the <i>Jews</i> would never have escaped from the +Bondage of +the <i>Egyptians</i>.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES.</p> +<p>Perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming Disaster. But, in +truth, you are right. There is no viler Profession than the Government +of Nations. He who dreams that he can lead a great Crowd of Fools +without a great Store of Knavery is a Fool himself.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>Are not you too hasty? Does not History show that there have been +great +Rulers who were good Men? Solon, Henry of <i>Navarre</i>, and Milord +Somers +were certainly not Fools, and yet I am unwilling to believe that they +were Knaves either.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>No, not Knaves; but Dissemblers. In their different degrees, they +all +juggled; but 'twas not because Jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because Men +cannot be governed without it.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>I would be happy to try the Experiment. If Men were told the Truth, +might they not believe it? If the Opportunity of <a name="Page_117"></a>Virtue +and Wisdom is +never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be +willing to take it? Let Rulers be <i>bold</i> and <i>honest</i>, and +it is +possible that the Folly of their Peoples will disappear.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>A pretty phantastick Vision! But History is against you.</p> +<br> +<p>MOSES</p> +<p>And Prophecy.</p> +<br> +<p>DIOGENES</p> +<p>And Common Observation. Look at the World at this moment, and what +do we +see? It is as it has always been, and always will be. So long as it +endures, the World will continue to be rul'd by Cajolery, by Injustice, +and by Imposture.</p> +<br> +<p>MR. LOKE</p> +<p>If that be so, I must take leave to lament the <i>Destiny</i> of +the Human +Race.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRES_TRAGEDIES"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_121"></a>VOLTAIRE'S +TRAGEDIES</h2> +<p>The historian of Literature is little more than a historian of +exploded +reputations. What has he to do with Shakespeare, with Dante, with +Sophocles? Has he entered into the springs of the sea? Or has he walked +in the search of the depth? The great fixed luminaries of the firmament +of Letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more +than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes +of +an ordinary mortal. His business is with the succeeding ages of men, +not +with all time; but <i>Hyperion</i> might have been written on the +morrow of +Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The +literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the +geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of +forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great +men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer +great—mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the +siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is +for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the +platitudes of Cicero. It is for him to sit up all night with the +spectral heroes of Byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable +alexandrines with the faded heroines of Voltaire.</p> +<p>The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly +indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of +him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, +and +not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of <i>Candide</i>, +of +<i>Akakia</i>, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass +of his +productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons +now +living have travelled through <i>La Henriade</i> or <a name="Page_122"></a><i>La +Pucelle</i>? How many +have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of <i>L'Esprit des +Moeurs</i>? <i>Zadig</i> and <i>Zaïre, Mérope</i> and <i>Charles +XII</i>. still linger, +perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of <i>Oreste</i>, and +of +<i>Mahomet</i>, and of <i>Alzire</i>? <i>Où sont les neiges +d'antan</i>?</p> +<p>Though Voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as +a +precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a +poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, +not +only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every +scribbler, +every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to +the +censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded +houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and +Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got +by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf +which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a +comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our +feelings +and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing—a tragedy by +Voltaire. For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, +as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort +to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets +our +eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to +its forgotten corner—to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the +scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same +words must have conjured up. The splendid gaiety, the refined +excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion—all these things have +vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, +the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had +their being. It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to +examine +one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may +do +so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the +footsteps of Voltaire himself. His examination of <i>Hamlet</i> +affords a +precedent which is particularly <a name="Page_123"></a>applicable, +owing to the fact that the +same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which +divides +ourselves from him. One point of difference, indeed, does exist between +the relative positions of the two authors. Voltaire, in his study of +Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our +interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. +At +the present moment,<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> +a literal translation of <i>King Lear</i> is drawing +full houses at the Théâtre Antoine. As a rule it is rash +to prophesy; +but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of +them—hundred years hence a literal translation of <i>Zaïre</i> +will not be +holding the English boards.</p> +<p>It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the +worst, of +Voltaire's tragedies. Our object is to review some specimen of what +would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of +the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in +<i>Alzire, ou Les Américains</i>, first produced with great +success in 1736, +when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist +already well established.</p> +<p><i>Act I</i>.—The scene is laid in Lima, the capital of Peru, some +years +after the Spanish conquest of America. When the play opens, Don Gusman, +a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the +Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and +just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of +his +countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the +work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's +temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, +harsh, headstrong, and bigoted.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>L'Américain farouche est un monstre +sauvage<br> +</span><span>Qui mord en frémissant le frein de l'esclavage ...<br> +</span><span>Tout pouvoir, en un mot, périt par l'indulgence,<br> +</span><span>Et la sévérité produit +l'obéissance.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_124"></a>Such were the cruel maxims of his +government—maxims which he was only +too ready to put into practice. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded +his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and that, as he +epigrammatically put it, 'Le vrai Dieu, mon fils, est un Dieu qui +pardonne.' To enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of +how his own life had been spared by a virtuous American, who, as he +said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' But Don Gusman +remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was +one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. He +was in love with Alzire, Alzire the young and beautiful daughter of +Montèze, who had ruled in Lima before the coming of the +Spaniards. 'Je +l'aime, je l'avoue,' said Gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne +veux.' With these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes +plain to the spectator. The wicked Spanish Governor is in love with the +virtuous American princess. From such a state of affairs, what +interesting and romantic developments may not follow? Alzire, we are +not +surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a Peruvian +prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the +tyranny of Don Gusman. Yet, for the sake of Montèze, her +ambitious and +scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the Governor. She +consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to Zamore. +'Sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to Don Gusman, 'il eut pour moi +des charmes.'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Il m'aima: son trépas me coûte +encore des larmes:<br> +</span><span>Vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur,<br> +</span><span>Jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The ruthless Don did not allow these pathetic considerations to +stand in +the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should +be immediately performed. But, at the very moment of his apparent +triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes.</p> +<p><i>Act II</i>.—It was only natural to expect that a heroine <a + name="Page_125"></a>affianced to a +villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. The hero adored by +Alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural +than his resurrection? The noble Zamore was not dead; he had escaped +with his life from the torture-chamber of Don Gusman, had returned to +avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying +imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved +princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe.</p> +<p>In this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable +Alvarez, +who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's +release. In the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to +distinguish the features of Zamore; but the old man at last discovered +that he was addressing the very American who, so many years ago, +instead +of hitting him, had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this +extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, +behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let +us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to +state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, +hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the +Governor.</p> +<p><span style="font-style: italic;">Act III.</span>—Meanwhile, Alzire +had been married. But she still could not +forget her Peruvian lover. While she was lamenting her fate, and +imploring the forgiveness of the shade of Zamore, she was informed that +a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'Admit him.' He was +admitted. 'Heaven! Such were his features, his gait, his voice: +Zamore!' +She falls into the arms of her confidante. 'Je succombe; à peine +je +respire.'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant.<br> +</span><span>ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire!<br> +</span><span class="i8">Est-ce une illusion?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to +confess +to her lover that she was already married <a name="Page_126"></a>to +Don Gusman. Zamore was at +first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still +struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and +Don Gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room.</p> +<p>A double recognition followed. Zamore was no less horrified to +behold in +Don Gusman the son of the venerable Alvarez, than Don Gusman was +infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had +consented was no other than Zamore. When the first shock of surprise +was +over, the Peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him +with the tortures he had inflicted. The Governor replied by ordering +the +instant execution of the prince. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded his son of Zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that Alzire +herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. Zamore was +dragged from the apartment; and Alzire and Don Alvarez were left alone +to bewail the fate of the Peruvian hero. Yet some faint hopes still +lingered in the old man's breast. 'Gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, +'je le sais, j'en frémis;</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Mais il est ton époux, il t'aime, il +est mon fils:<br> +</span><span>Son âme à la pitié se peut ouvrir +encore.'<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>'Hélas!' (replied Alzire), 'que n'êtes-vous le +père de Zamore!'</p> +<p><i>Act IV</i>.—Even Don Gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel +itself +entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and +he consented to allow a brief respite to Zamore's execution. Alzire was +not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for +she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of +bribing the warder of the dungeon. Zamore was free. But alas! Alzire +was +not; was she not wedded to the wicked Gusman? Her lover's +expostulations +fell on unheeding ears. What mattered it that her marriage vow had been +sworn before an alien God? 'J'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe +à quel +dieu!'</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_127"></a><span>ZAMORE: Ta promesse +est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu.<br> +</span><span>Périssent tes serments et ton Dieu que j'abhorre!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>ALZIRE: Arrête; quels adieux! +arrête, cher Zamore!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>But the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his +lips +than an oath to be revenged upon the Governor. Alzire, perplexed, +deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned +for comfort to that God, who, she could not but believe, was, in some +mysterious way, the Father of All.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Great God, lead Zamore in safety through the desert places. ... Ah! +can it be true that thou art but the Deity of another universe? Have +the Europeans alone the right to please thee? Art thou after all the +tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... No! The conquerors +and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all are equally the +work of thy hands....</p> +</div> +<p>Her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. She heard +shrieks; +she heard a cry of 'Zamore!' And her confidante, rushing in, confusedly +informed her that her lover was in peril of his life.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Ah, chère Emire [she exclaimed], +allons le secourir!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>ALZIRE: Je puis mourir.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an +emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself +under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately +removed to the lowest dungeon.</p> +<p><i>Act V</i>.—It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt +the +reason of her arrest. Zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight +from +her apartment into the presence of Don Gusman, and had plunged a dagger +into his enemy's breast. The hero had then turned to Don Alvarez and, +with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_128"></a><span>J'ai fait ce que j'ai +dû, j'ai vengé mon injure;<br> +</span><span>Fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Before Don Alvarez could reply to this appeal, Zamore had been haled +off +by the enraged soldiery before the Council of Grandees. Don Gusman had +been mortally wounded; and the Council proceeded at once to condemn to +death, not only Zamore, but also Alzire, who, they found, had been +guilty of complicity in the murder. It was the unpleasant duty of Don +Alvarez to announce to the prisoners the Council's sentence. He did so +in the following manner:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! My own liberator +is the assassin of my son. Zamore!... Yes, it is to thee that I owe +this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal +gift.... I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy fury, +in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance from my +agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy benefactions. And +thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our misery I yet call by a +name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how far is it from thy father's +wishes to add to the agony which he already feels the horrible pleasure +of vengeance. I must lose, by an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my +liberator, my daughter, and my son. The Council has sentenced you to +death.</p> +</div> +<p>Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the +culprits were to be spared—that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. +What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for +a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while +Alzire +added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by +hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was +just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor +of death upon his features, was carried into the room. The implacable +Governor was about to utter his last words. Alzire was resigned; +Alvarez +was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last. But lo! when +the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change +had +come over his mind. He was no longer proud, he was no longer <a + name="Page_129"></a>cruel, he +was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, +he +had repented. Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the +truth +of Christianity. And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don +Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in +the +arms of Don Alvarez. For thus were the guilty punished, and the +virtuous +rewarded. The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, +and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her +lover +to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. That they +were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don +Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave.</p> +<p>Such is the tragedy of <i>Alzire</i>, which, it may be well to +repeat, was in +its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. It was +upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries +recognised Voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic +triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and +Racine. With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and +it +is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of <i>Alzire</i> +was +a worthy successor of the author of <i>Athalie</i>. At first sight, +indeed, +the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a +closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be +spanned +by any superficial likeness.</p> +<p>A careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere +<i>tours de force</i>; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. +For, +as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly +unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere +<i>tour de force</i>' carries with it something more than the idea of +technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is +technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and +nothing +more. The problem before a writer of a Chant Royal is to overcome +certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his +<i>tour de force</i>, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is +accomplished. But Racine's problem was <a name="Page_130"></a>very +different. The technical +restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary +was +cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic +movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every +conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the +alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he +was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a <i>mot bas</i>. +But his +triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it +was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of +them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and +enchanting work of art. To have brought about this amazing combination, +to have erected, upon a structure of Alexandrines, of Unities, of Noble +Personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia +of the Classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite +poetry, of overwhelming passion—that is a <i>tour de force</i> whose +achievement entitles Jean Racine to a place among the very few +consummate artists of the world.</p> +<p>Voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, +when he took up the mantle of Racine, he put it, not upon a human +being, +but upon a tailor's block. To change the metaphor, Racine's work +resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted +our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming +tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire +was +able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and +the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut +into +curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one +instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same +pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of +similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. It is amusing to +note the exclamations which rise to the lips of Voltaire's characters +in +moments of extreme excitement—<i>Qu'entends-je? Que vois-je? Où +suis-je? +Grands Dieux! Ah, c'en est trop, Seigneur! Juste Ciel! Sauve-toi de ces +<a name="Page_131"></a>lieux! Madame, quelle horreur</i> ... &c. +And it is amazing to discover +that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to +express +all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his +best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing +hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly +falls +within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, +of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>C'est ce même guerrier dont la main +tutélaire,<br> +</span><span>De Gusman, votre époux, sauva, dit-on, le +père,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or as</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en +eux-mêmes,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends +pas.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his +predecessors. Alzire's 'Je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious +reminiscence of the 'Qu'il mourût!' of le vieil Horace; and the +cloven +hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'O ciel!' with which Alzire's +confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. Many of these +blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for +Voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'This +tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'Alembert, enclosing +<i>Olympie</i>. 'You should not have rested on the seventh,' was +d'Alembert's +reply. But, on the whole, Voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a +high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very +clever +man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most +palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a +real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can +only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains +and +his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for +a +moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and +they are all put back into their box. The <a name="Page_132"></a>glance +which the reader has +taken into the little case labelled <i>Alzire</i> has perhaps given +him a +sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes.</p> +<p>Voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate +incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It +is +only possible to write good plays without the power of +character-drawing, upon one condition—that of possessing the power of +creating dramatic situations. The <i>Oedipus Tyrannus</i> of +Sophocles, for +instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of +horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of +persons. +One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the +manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire +himself. The guilt of Oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience +very early in the play; and, when the <i>dénouement</i> at last +arrives, it +comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the King. There can be no +doubt that Voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those +underlying causes which make the <i>Oedipus</i> perhaps the most awful +of +tragedies. To know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon +one +after another of the characters, to see Oedipus at last alone in +ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his +struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable +moment, the appalling revelation—few things can be more terrible than +this. But Voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an +effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own +sense +of the dramatic. 'Nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que Sophocle n'avait +pas perfectionné son art.'</p> +<p>More detailed evidence of Voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight +is +to be found, of course, in his criticisms of Shakespeare. Throughout +these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which Voltaire +seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great +predecessor, +and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as Shakespeare +himself +was by Voltaire. It is unnecessary to dwell further upon so <a + name="Page_133"></a>hackneyed a +subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this +dramatic insensibility of Voltaire's was able to go—his adaptation of +<i>Julius Caesar</i> for the French stage. A comparison of the two +pieces +should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the +degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. Particular +attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral +oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of +the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent +sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>ANTOINE: Brutus ... où suis-je? O +ciel! O crime! O barbarie!'<br> +</span><span class="i9">Chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits +...<br> +</span><span class="i9">Brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre +était son fils!<br> +</span><span>ROMAINS: Ah dieux!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If Voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits +were +equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not +perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. The weight of +a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere—it is so +universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came +to a performance of <i>Alzire</i> unconscious of the burden of the +Classical +rules. They found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes +just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of +startling +incidents, of happy <i>mots</i>. They were dazzled by an easy display +of +cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it +was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a +distance, and under artificial light. When, in <i>Mérope</i>, +one saw La +Dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote Voltaire himself, 'les yeux +égarés, la +voix entrecoupée, levant une main tremblante, elle allait +immoler son +propre fils; quand Narbas l'arrêta; quand, laissant tomber son +poignard, +on la vit s'évanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle +sortit de +cet état de mort avec les transports d'une mère; lorsque, +ensuite, +s'élançant aux yeux de Polyphonte, traversant en un clin +d'oeil tout le +<a name="Page_134"></a>théâtre, les larmes dans les yeux, +la pâleur sur le front, les sanglots +à la bouche, les bras étendus, elle s'écria: +"Barbare, il est mon +fils!"'—how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one +question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? +Alas! to us, who know not La Dumesnil, to us whose <i>Mérope</i> +is nothing +more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our +forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. Its +glittering +was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the +manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, Voltaire was able to make +up +for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a +great deal of 'go.'</p> +<p>And to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. His +vivacity, +indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. +He introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to +write +tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he +was so bold as to rhyme 'père' with 'terre.' The wild diversity +of his +incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under +happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose +path which ended in the bonfire of 1830.</p> +<p>But it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of +decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as +would be—let us say—that of a shilling shocker written by Miss Yonge. +His heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in +inversions. Amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his +cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able +to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. The Classical +tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous +achievement was that it prevented Molière from being a great +tragedian. +But there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have +taken—if only for some scattered moments—the sense of the ridiculous +from Voltaire.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> April, 1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VOLTAIRE_AND_FREDERICK_THE_GREAT"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_137"></a>VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT</h2> +<br> +<p>At the present time,<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a + href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a> when it is so difficult to +think of anything but +of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast +occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least +prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be +instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that +Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless +to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely +active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would +be as well for him <i>not</i> to live in France. For, just as modern +Germany +dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so +modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of +the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms +one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in +history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few +brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's +masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of +<i>The History of Friedrich II</i>. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty +years +have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of +new +material—including the valuable edition of the correspondence between +Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the +Archives at Berlin—has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite +of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another +rapid +review of it will not be out of place.</p> +<p><a name="Page_138"></a>Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and +already one of the most famous +men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the +Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence +which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over +forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose +personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed +to +lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the +secondary +European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his +nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was +moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a +smattering +of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted +with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his +admiration for the author of the <i>Henriade</i> and <i>Zaïre</i> +was unbounded.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour +tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font +espérer que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous +trouvez dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de +lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être +pensant. J'ose même avancer, sans déroger au mérite +d'autrui, que dans l'univers entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception +à faire de ceux dont vous ne pourriez être le maître.</p> +</div> +<p>The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that +graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his +correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' +and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion +of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had +commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' +For the next +four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It +was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his +passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured +out +with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and <i>la raison +suffisante</i>, odes <i>sur la Flatterie</i>, and epistles <i>sur +l'Humanité</i>, +<a name="Page_139"></a>while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no +less enormous +philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal +Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, +though +the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young +Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but +extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it +possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs +of feeling or of character. Voltaire's <i>empressement</i> seems to +take on, +once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one +notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with +'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly +into +'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his +'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a +little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que +vous ne vous y mépreniez plus ... J'ai peu de mérite et +peu de savoir; mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds +inépuisable d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une +vertu distinguée, et avec cela je suis capable de toute la +constance que la vraie amitié exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour +vous rendre toute la justice que vous méritez; mais je n'en ai +pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de mauvais vers.</p> +</div> +<p>But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the +place +of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of +comparing +Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of +proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus +d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est +Frédéric +que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow +of +protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez +pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... Je +crois, +par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je +crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un +Voltaire pour +le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments <a + name="Page_140"></a>were too +emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said +afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; +yet neither was +without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered +upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope +that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a +crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love +of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening.</p> +<p>In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the +relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both +sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered +that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes +heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His <i>prince philosophe</i> +started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and +turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was +at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than +Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the +King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed +a +good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, +remarkably +rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in +Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his +accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no +more, and its place is taken—at once and for ever—by the +self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In +this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of +Voltaire should lose some of its glitter—especially since Frederick now +began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh +with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is +noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the +part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse +Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only +been +sent him on the condition of <i>un secret inviolable</i>. He writes to +Jordan +complaining of Voltaire's <a name="Page_141"></a>avarice in very +stringent terms. 'Ton avare +boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... Son +apparition de +six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante +écus. C'est bien +payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' +He declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi +légère que le style de +ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man +<i>extraordinaire en tout</i>.</p> +<p>Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing +more +and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. +For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, +Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised +in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for +years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would +<i>posséder</i>—for so he put it—the author of the <i>Henriade</i>, +would keep +him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, +would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own +verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish +would +be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was +dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his +surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the +Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was +Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Châtelet. He had lived +with her +for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of +friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would +never +leave her—no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is +true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a +solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of +ladies—even of ladies like Madame du Châtelet—learned enough to +translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the +Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to <i>posséder</i> +Voltaire +either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated +temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first <a + name="Page_142"></a>time, poor +Madame du Châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters +from +Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew +nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her +distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she +dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But +suddenly +Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at +her feet once more.</p> +<p>What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of +the +King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found +the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an +insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial +way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he +should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France +for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the +Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick +had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, +he +had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that +of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an +opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give +verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded +the +Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly +sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix +would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever +to return to France; and in that case—well, Voltaire would have no +other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and +Madame +du Châtelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, +Frederick's +plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had +happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to +stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had +been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to +stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he +forgave <a name="Page_143"></a>Frederick. But the King was most +anxious to patch up the +quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing +Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more +immediate desire—to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous +work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet +and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates—<i>La +Pucelle</i>.</p> +<p>Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more +flattering +than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point +injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de +badiner +sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '<i>La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La +Pucelle!</i> et encore <i>La Pucelle</i>!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour +de Dieu, +ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' And at +last +Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his +<i>Pucelle</i>—just enough to whet Frederick's appetite—and he declared +himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in +March +1749; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous +ai pardonné, et actuellement +je vous aime à la folie.' Within a year of this date his +situation had +undergone a complete change. Madame du Châtelet was dead; and his +position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de +Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to +have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this +time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good +bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at +Berlin +in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin +and +Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of +Merit, together with a pension of £800 a year. These arrangements +caused +considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying +prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien! +Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the +Quays.</p> +<p>The curious drama that followed, with its farcical <a + name="Page_144"></a>περιπετἑια +and its tragi-comic <i>dénouement</i>, can hardly be understood +without a +brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief +actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had +now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem +which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He +frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year +before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most +urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a +letter +to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He +had +been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's +letters).</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au Parnasse. +C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie +à un aussi beau génie. Il a les gentillesses et les +malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que c'est, lorsque je vous +reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de rien, car j'en ai besoin +pour l'étude de l'élocution française. On peut +apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. Je veux savoir +son français; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouvé +le moyen de réunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en +même temps qu'on méprise son caractère.</p> +</div> +<p>There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he +was a +scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of +<i>l'élocution française</i>; therefore it was necessary +that he should come +and live in Berlin. But as for anything more—as for any real +interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of +respect, or even of regard—all that was utterly out of the question. +The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, +and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. +In +the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude +which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle—that he was the victim of +an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, +and +that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly +disappointed—becomes obviously untenable. <a name="Page_145"></a>If +any man ever acted with +his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin.</p> +<p>Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in +more +than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to +<i>l'élocution française</i> is easy enough to +understand; but Frederick's +devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense +that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, +or +by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and +constant proximity of—what?—of a man whom he himself described as a +'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and +despicable character. +And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it +quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but +delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted +roguery, +so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less +undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange; +but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue—a vogue, +indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern +reader +to realise it—enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and +literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick +was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of +any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady +and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the +social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid +to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole +standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast +majority +of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was +concentrated +in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French +poetry +meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French +poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this +curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The <i>Grand +Siècle</i> +was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of +Boileau.</p> +<p><a name="Page_146"></a>Frederick's library, still preserved at +Potsdam, shows us what +literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed +entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the +masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. +But +Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; +he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after +the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred +sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. +It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of +the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his +own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept +him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled +volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most +complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb—<i>Poeta +nascitur, non fit</i>. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with +her +feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible +conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and +now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or +pathetic—one hardly knows which—were it not so certainly neither the +one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, +from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. +Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong—something, but +not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; +and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it—Voltaire, the one true +heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of +Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over +<i>Mahomet</i> as over <i>Britannicus</i>?), the epic poet who had +eclipsed Homer +and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read +the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the +lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed +(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la +Fare. +Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just <a name="Page_147"></a>what +was needed; he +would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German +Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of +rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last <i>nuances</i> +of +correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the +blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes +choses +d'un scélérat.'</p> +<p>And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite +convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the +master's whip—a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage +of the pension—and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon +enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the +possession +of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an +ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the +ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to +Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no +delusion +as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great +writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner +of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi +lâche +soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' <i>C'est bien dommage</i>!—as +if there was +nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty +woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little +tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that <i>beau +génie</i>, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was +wrong: it +was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing.</p> +<p>A devil—or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the +complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so +mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the +elements +of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold +within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the +more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at +least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable <a + name="Page_148"></a>or whether it +was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to +realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to +Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of +publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood +the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. +He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still +before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was +to +take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his +consciousness, +aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at +this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth +into the unknown?</p> +<p>What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure +it +is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with +Paris—he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless +literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his +countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not +appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he +admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. +'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de +plus, il +était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, +attendu la +faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal +intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased +consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his +order—to say nothing of the addition of £800 to his income. Yet, +on the +other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for +servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would +make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in +his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however +successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to +Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he +had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened +by +the uses of the world he had grown to be <a name="Page_149"></a>completely +what in essence he +always was—a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without +remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes—however dubious +those purposes may have been.</p> +<p>And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his +niece, +Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris +establishment and in whom he confided—in so far as he can be said to +have confided in anyone—he repeatedly states that there is nothing +permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is +only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on +to +Italy to visit 'sa Sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville +souterraine,' that +he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads +are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they +will +be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will +certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of +finishing his <i>Siècle de Louis XIV</i>.; he really must wait +just a few +weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris +until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying +and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers +on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. +Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried +official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other +friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could +see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true +intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret +corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a +premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems +to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room +through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when +all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window +which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery +fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going +after all.</p> +<p><a name="Page_150"></a>In any case, it is evident to the impartial +observer that Voltaire's +visit could only have ended as it did—in an explosion. The elements of +the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two +confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house +together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of +mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or +later human nature will assert itself, and the <i>ménage</i> +will break up. +And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such +cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them +was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very +thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he +might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and +perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the +incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the +gist +of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the +skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked +how +much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on +his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses +were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man +expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well +enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and +uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very +few +weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible +on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take +place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and +one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling +each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he +opens all our letters in the post'—Voltaire, whose light-handedness +with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The +monkey,' +mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his +friends'—Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's +letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. <a name="Page_151"></a>'How happy I +should be here,' +exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing—his Majesty is +utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a +farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was +busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire.</p> +<p>It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the +first +really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the +temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of +illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in +a +series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with +the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and +countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost +his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the +court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it +is almost certain—the evidence is not quite conclusive—that he +committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was +furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from +Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not +part +with his <i>beau génie</i> so soon. He cracked his whip, and, +setting the +monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the +shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu +tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once +more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, +came out and basked again in those refulgent beams.</p> +<p>And the beams were decidedly refulgent—so much so, in fact, that +they +almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite. +For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's +admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses—there is a +letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein +the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, +she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'—though he +had ample +leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the +brilliant conversation of the King, though he <a name="Page_152"></a>could +often forget for +weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot—yet, in +spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, +and +he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's +court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of +persons—foreigners for the most part—whose business it was to instruct +him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out +of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one +of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant +dabbler in scientific matters—he had written a book to explain Newton +to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull +free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many +debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love +affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for +atheism and bad manners; and Pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, +under +stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his +religion six times.</p> +<p>These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend +his +leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange +rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with +d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of <i>La +Pucelle</i>. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith +prove +the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout +with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the +salt, +and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place +where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times +Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of +Pöllnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long +and +serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a +Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough, +Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his +little +menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and <a + name="Page_153"></a>Chasot +both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to +visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow +their +example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to +return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch +was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his +escape in a different manner—by dying after supper one evening of a +surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jésus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt +the pains +of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous +voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' La +Mettrie, with an oath, +expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, +remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.'</p> +<p>Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single +figure +whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast +from +the rest—that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of +the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate +fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then +recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very +anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing +measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to +Lapland, +and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the +Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He +possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was +energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories +of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to +come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply +justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in +his +earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once +overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited +Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an <i>homme d'esprit</i>, +and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal +supper-parties. It was <a name="Page_154"></a>the happy—the too +happy—President who was the +rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other +slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest +admiration +for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a +severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces +deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer +ensemble dans la même chambre.' And indeed to the vain and +sensitive +poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden +enemies, +intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at +supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior +to +the shady mediocrities who sat around—that sight was gall and wormwood; +and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing +eyes +began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its +work.</p> +<p>Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to +conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was +very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five +years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he +was +deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who +could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?—Voltaire, who as +obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and +Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the +length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, +La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and +war was not long in coming.</p> +<p>Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an +important mathematical law—the 'principle of least action.' The law +was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the +development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a +recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without +realising +its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it +was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, <a + name="Page_155"></a>however, was very +proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the +principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was +therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in +Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir +attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support +of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law +was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the +case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, +and +that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When +Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He +summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig +was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should +solemnly +pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious +and +false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions +depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler +was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful +condemnation.</p> +<p>Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had +put +himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in +attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was +wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he +was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper +subject +for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck +now, +he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to +give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon +this +matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick +certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive +of +the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would +certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who +himself +drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. +But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two +years in Berlin, <a name="Page_156"></a>and the atmosphere of a Court +was beginning to weigh +upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for +a +fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick +combined—he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered +himself that he would settle the hash of the President.</p> +<p>As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from +Berlin, +and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement +ordre à mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September +18, +1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled +'Réponse +d'un Académicien de Berlin à un Académicien de +Paris.' It was a +statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its +concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President +must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The +terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, +and that man was receiving a royal pension of £800 a year and +carrying +about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his +writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be +published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble +work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy +invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely +compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Réponse d'un +Académicien +de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans +génie,' an +'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the +'Réponse' itself +was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an +'action malicieuse, +lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the +royal +insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le +sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien +étonnés de se trouver là.' But one thing was now +certain: the King had +joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind +of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear—he +would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever. +<a name="Page_157"></a>And it so happened that just then an unexpected +opportunity occurred +for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that +weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,' +he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.'</p> +<p>Meanwhile the life of the Court—which passed for the most part at +Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built +for himself—proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life, +half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the +ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do +here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb +<i>s'ennuyer</i>,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a +verb +unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still +preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the +formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly +coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable +old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his <i>Pucelle</i>, +and +his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill—very ill; he was +probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed +to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. +He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he +was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But +he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found +him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,' +remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up +from +the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques +meurent l'oeil enflammé?' When the evening came it was time to +dress, +and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to +the +little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, +was +preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered +together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the +sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little <a + name="Page_158"></a>space, +to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the +royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, +and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of +Rossbach drew tears from the author of <i>Candide</i>. But a moment +later it +was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid +laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of +Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations +of Voltaire.</p> +<p>Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the +rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but +nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, +but +still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's +enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours, +the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number +of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly +speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very +unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and +Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The +famous <i>Diatribe du Docteur Akakia</i> is still fresh with a +fiendish +gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the +skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have +glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted +with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' +<i>rêveries</i> have been detected, dragged forth into the light +of day, and +nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The <i>Diatribe</i>, +however, +is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For +instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that +Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B +divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well +founded. 'Lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la +géometrie,' Voltaire +wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui +entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des +ténèbres'; and +Maupertuis <a name="Page_159"></a>had in fact vitiated his treatment +of the 'principle of +least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through +Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific +principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the +experimental method, a consistent attack upon <i>a priori</i> +reasoning, +loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all +this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of +effervescent raillery—cruel, personal, insatiable—the raillery of a +demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed +till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade +Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. +Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, +under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book +appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within +bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them +privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he +flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the +President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est +finie. J'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai +lavé si bien la tête que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, +et je connais son âme lache, incapable de sentiments d'honneur. +Je l'ai intimidé du côté de la boursse, ce qui a +fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai déclaré +enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et non +une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent +des poissons.</p> +</div> +<p>Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had +come +a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and +by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick +wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe +qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait +fouetté.' But now the monkey +<i>had</i> been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems +strange +that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close +observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He +might as well have <a name="Page_160"></a>supposed that he could stop +a mountain torrent in +spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose +obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a +threat 'du côté de la boursse.' Before the month was out +all Germany was +swarming with <i>Akakias</i>; thousands of copies were being printed +in +Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is +difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who +thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the +enraged +master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'étonne,' +fulminated +Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all +Europe +was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the +President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly +espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. +'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper, +'dans l'état où je suis!' (He was, of course, once more +dying.) 'Quoi! +vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.' +Frederick replied by having copies of <i>Akakia</i> burnt by the +common +hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his +Order, +his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the +final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed +before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and +to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's +suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of +Voltaire +to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly +controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's +accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually +went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. +But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at +Potsdam—'soupers de Damoclès' Voltaire called them; and then, on +March +26, 1753, the two men parted for ever.</p> +<p>The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in +the +wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters <a name="Page_161"></a>of +Plombières, stopped at +Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises +to +the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of +<i>Akakia</i>. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to +Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued +yet another edition of <i>Akakia</i>, appended a somewhat unauthorised +version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and +cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a +vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which +figure so freely in the comedies of Molière. This stroke was the +<i>coup +de grâce</i> of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he +dragged himself +from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple +of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In +the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had +suddenly +remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few +privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had +spent +so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several +passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that +those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious +Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which +he +now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by +feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered +uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have +been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident +in +Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet +in +arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange +blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much +controversial +and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German +biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little +comedy +of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame—that +Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian +Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was <a + name="Page_162"></a>careless in his +orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need +any +Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government +in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the +rule +of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd.</p> +<p>After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free—free in +every sense of the word—free from the service of Kings and the clutches +of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He +hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of +Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the +profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering +and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to +and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time +even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were +almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was +submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose +compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. +But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier +and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even +Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of +Ferney +something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He +actually came to respect the author of <i>Akakia</i>, and to cherish +his +memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told +d'Alembert, +when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin +Voltaire, <i>ora pro nobis</i>.'</p> +<p>1915.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> October 1915.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_ROUSSEAU_AFFAIR"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_165"></a>THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR</h2> +<br> +<p>No one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and +fascinating country, Eighteenth-Century France, can have come away from +it without at least <i>one</i> impression strong upon him—that in no +other +place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. France +in +the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been—however splendid +in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour—was +certainly not a quiet place to live in. One could never have been +certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was +out, one would not be in the Bastille for something one had said at +dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one +had +never said at all.</p> +<p>Of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more +remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, +which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly +affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the +most potent of the precursors of the Revolution. The affair is +constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a +prominent place in the later books of the <i>Confessions</i>; and +there is an +account of its earlier phases—an account written from the anti-Rousseau +point of view—in the <i>Mémoires</i> of Madame d'Epinay. The +whole story is +an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been +satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers +has been decidedly hostile to Rousseau, though it has not subscribed to +all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of +the +quarrel. This, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an +unprejudiced +reader of the <i>Confessions</i> would <a name="Page_166"></a>naturally +come to. Rousseau's story, +even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. He would have +us +believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of +which Grimm and Diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in +alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included +all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does +such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but +the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems +totally +insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the +unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by +rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded +mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given +by +contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own +writings subsequent to the <i>Confessions</i>, where his endless +recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear +all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years; +and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for +reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a +recently-published work<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a + href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a>, has produced some new and +important +evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts +of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For +it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely +overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot, +and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told +in the <i>Confessions</i> is simply the truth.</p> +<p>If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's +newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value +of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a +revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of +the +eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a +cheat, that d'Alembert <a name="Page_167"></a>was a dupe, and Hume a +liar—that, surely, were +no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from +Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the +data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may +be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' +as +she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all +students of that remarkable age.</p> +<p>Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the <i>Mémoires</i> +of +Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the +concluding +quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most +detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It +has, however, always been doubtful how far the <i>Mémoires</i> +were to be +trusted as accurate records of historical fact. The manuscript +disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed +book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in +the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted +known events. Had Madame d'Epinay merely intended to write a <i>roman +à +clef</i>? What seemed, so far as concerned the Rousseau narrative, to +put +this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel +as it appears in the <i>Mémoires</i> is, in its main outlines, +substantiated +both by Grimm's references to Rousseau in his <i>Correspondance +Littéraire</i>, and by a brief memorandum of Rousseau's +misconduct, drawn +up by Diderot for his private use, and not published until many years +after Madame d'Epinay's death. Accordingly most writers on the subject +have taken the accuracy of the <i>Mémoires</i> for granted; +Sainte-Beuve, for +instance, prefers the word of Madame d'Epinay to that of Rousseau, when +there is a direct conflict of testimony; and Lord Morley, in his +well-known biography, uses the <i>Mémoires</i> as an authority +for many of +the incidents which he relates. Mrs. Macdonald's researches, however, +have put an entirely different complexion on the case. She has +discovered the manuscript from which the <i>Mémoires</i> were +printed, and +she has examined <a name="Page_168"></a>the original draft of this +manuscript, which had been +unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably +neglected by previous scholars. From these researches, two facts have +come to light. In the first place, the manuscript differs in many +respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a +conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; +the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies +of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a +fiction. And in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript +turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in +those portions which concern Rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and +notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the +corrections were made by Madame d'Epinay herself; but in nearly every +case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the +notes themselves are in the handwriting of Diderot and Grimm. Mrs. +Macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, +which +amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before +long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the +<i>Mémoires</i>, with all the manuscript alterations clearly +indicated; for +until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the +text. However, it is now beyond dispute both that Madame d'Epinay's +narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its +agreement with the statements of Grimm and Diderot is by no means an +independent confirmation of its truth, for Grimm and Diderot themselves +had a hand in its compilation.</p> +<p>Thus far we are on firm ground. But what are the conclusions which +Mrs. +Macdonald builds up from these foundations? The account, she says, of +Rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, +is hostile to him, but it was not the account which Madame d'Epinay +herself originally wrote. The hostile narrative was, in effect, +composed +by Grimm and Diderot, who induced Madame d'Epinay to substitute it for +her own story; and <a name="Page_169"></a>thus her own story could not +have agreed with +theirs. Madame d'Epinay knew the truth; she knew that Rousseau's +conduct +had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; +until, falling completely under the influence of Grimm and Diderot, she +had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the +reputation of her old friend. Mrs. Macdonald paints a lurid picture of +the conspirators at work—of Diderot penning his false and malignant +instructions, of Madame d'Epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last +touches to the fraud, of Grimm, rushing back to Paris at the time of +the +Revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that +the +result of all these efforts should reach posterity. Well! it would be +difficult—perhaps it would be impossible—to prove conclusively that +none of these things ever took place. The facts upon which Mrs. +Macdonald lays so much stress—the mutilations, the additions, the +instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts +tell—these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald's +theories; but there are other facts—no less important, and no less +certain—which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald's view, and +over which she passes as lightly as she can. Putting aside the question +of the <i>Mémoires</i>, we know nothing of Diderot which would +lead us to +entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and +badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a +singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted +his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. We know less +of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of +Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. Is all +this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? Are we to dismiss +it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? Surely +Diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in +the draft of the <i>Mémoires</i>. It is quite true that his +reputation <i>may</i> +have been ill-founded, that d'Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume <i>may</i> +have +been deluded, or <i>may</i> <a name="Page_170"></a>have been bribed, +into admitting him to their +friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such +hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of +Diderot's guilt that we <i>must</i> believe them? Mrs. Macdonald +declares +that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her +garbled and concocted manuscripts. If there is indeed no explanation of +these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald +puts forward—that they were the outcome of a false and malicious +conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau—then we must admit that +she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations +as +to Diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. But, before +we +come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other +possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we +sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every +loophole of escape!</p> +<p>It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay +manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. +Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, +owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the +events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which +will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least +interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the +<i>Mémoires</i>, so far from being historically accurate, were +in reality +full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely +imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, +almost +without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself +actually did describe them in his <i>Correspondance Littéraire</i>, +as +'l'ébauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays +emphasis upon +this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the +most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue +one. +But she has proved too much. The <i>Mémoires</i>, she says, are +a fiction; +therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why +should we <a name="Page_171"></a>not suppose that the writers were not +liars at all, but +simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as +well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a +narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own +experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of +events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, +fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the +actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had +finished her work—a work full of subtle observation and delightful +writing—she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism +to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been +moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chère Madame, is +a very +poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to +have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he +behaved at that time. <i>C'était un homme à faire peur</i>. +You have missed a +great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' +Whereupon they gave her their own impressions of Rousseau's conduct, +they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they +jotted down some notes for her guidance. She rewrote the story in +accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the +incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought +fit—for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ébauche d'un long +roman.' +If we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, +shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to +common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised +integrity +the meanest of frauds?</p> +<p>To follow Mrs. Macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of +her +argument would be a difficult and tedious task. The circumstances with +which she is principally concerned—the suspicions, the accusations, the +anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether +Madame d'Epinay was jealous of Madame d'Houdetot, whether +Thérèse told +fibs, whether, on the 14th of the month, <a name="Page_172"></a>Grimm +was grossly impertinent, +and whether, on the 15th, Rousseau was outrageously rude, whether +Rousseau revealed a secret to Diderot, which Diderot revealed to +Saint-Lambert, and whether, if Diderot revealed it, he believed that +Rousseau had revealed it before—these circumstances form, as Lord +Morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and Mrs. Macdonald +has +done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths +or +the horror of the dreams. Her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is +enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus +of +appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant +matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an +instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. +Without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns +for us in Mrs. Macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon +one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) +only very slightly—the question of the motives which could have induced +Grimm and Diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies.</p> +<p>It is, doubtless, conceivable that Grimm, who was Madame d'Epinay's +lover, was jealous of Rousseau, who was Madame d'Epinay's friend. We +know very little of Grimm's character, but what we do know seems to +show +that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a +close alliance with Madame d'Epinay may have seemed to him a necessary +step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined +not to rest until his most serious rival in Madame d'Epinay's +affections +was utterly cast out. He was probably prejudiced against Rousseau from +the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his +view +of Rousseau's character and acts. The violence of the abuse which Grimm +and the rest of the Encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable +Jean-Jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of +the case. Whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something +about <i>traître</i> and <i>mensonge</i> and <i>scélératesse</i>. +He is referred to as +often as not <a name="Page_173"></a>as if he were some dangerous kind +of wild beast. This was +Grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of +his character which Madame d'Epinay finally expressed in her book. The +important question is—did Grimm know that Rousseau was in reality an +honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in +order to drive him out of Madame d'Epinay's affections? The answer, I +think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. If Grimm had +known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which +he had supplied Madame d'Epinay, and which led to the alteration of her +<i>Mémoires</i>, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of +the +manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been +made. As it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying +the draft, and he did not do so. He came to Paris at the risk of his +life in 1791, and stayed there for four months, with the object, +according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the +Empress Catherine, or, according to Mrs. Macdonald's account, of having +the rough draft of the <i>Mémoires</i> copied out by his +secretary. Whatever +his object, it is certain that the copy—that from which ultimately the +<i>Mémoires</i> were printed—was made either at that time, or +earlier; and +that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months +of his stay in Paris, from destroying the draft. Mrs. Macdonald's +explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. Grimm, she says, +must +have wished to get away from Paris 'without arousing suspicion by +destroying papers.' This is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would +have delighted that good knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Grimm had four +months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should +he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? There +can +be only one reply: Why <i>should</i> he?</p> +<p>If it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which +might +conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the +case +of Diderot presents difficulties <a name="Page_174"></a>which are +quite insurmountable. Mrs. +Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he +was tired of hearing Rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. +Surely Mrs. Macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such +an argument is a little too 'psychological.' The truth is that Diderot +had nothing to gain by attacking Rousseau. He was not, like Grimm, in +love with Madame d'Epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win +for himself a position in the Parisian world. His acquaintance with +Madame d'Epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were +from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. +In fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing Rousseau +was +that he believed Rousseau deserved abuse. Whether he was right in +believing so is a very different question. Most readers, at the present +day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet +place +in the perspective of Time, would, I think, agree that Diderot and the +rest of the Encyclopaedists were mistaken. As we see him now, in that +long vista, Rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a +distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, +above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his +contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was +modern. Among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth +century, he belonged to another world—to the new world of +self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy +and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of +Nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. Who +can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? Who +can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he +seemed, to the pupils of Voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? +'Cet homme est un forcené!' Diderot exclaims. 'Je tâche en +vain de faire +de la poésie, mais cet homme me revient tout à travers +mon travail; il +me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais à côté de +moi un damné: il est +damné, cela est sûr. <a name="Page_175"></a>... J'avoue +que je n'ai jamais éprouvé un trouble +d'âme si terrible que celui que j'ai ... Que je ne revoie plus +cet +homme-là, il me ferait croire au diable et à l'enfer. Si +je suis jamais +forcé de retourner chez lui, je suis sûr que je +frémirai tout le long du +chemin: j'avais la fièvre en revenant ... On entendait ses cris +jusqu'au +bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... Les poètes ont bien fait de +mettre +un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En +vérité, la main me +tremble.' Every word of that is stamped with sincerity; Diderot was +writing from his heart. But he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' +across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of +what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and +hell, but between the old world and the new.</p> +<p>1907.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>Jean Jacques Rousseau: a New Criticism</i>, by Frederika +Macdonald. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall. 1906.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_POETRY_OF_BLAKE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_179"></a>THE +POETRY OF BLAKE<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><small><a + style="font-weight: normal;" href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a></small></h2> +<br> +<p>The new edition of Blake's poetical works, published by the +Clarendon +Press, will be welcomed by every lover of English poetry. The volume is +worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been +produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to +perpetuate. Blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his +editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the +present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the +case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh +inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result +of +accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's +text +has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so +habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming +permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since +the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent +admiration of the poet. 'It is not a little bewildering,' says Mr. +Sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic +extolling Blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of +lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the <i>Songs of Experience</i>, +while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than +seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and +important changes of meaning.' This is Procrustes admiring the +exquisite +<a name="Page_180"></a>proportions of his victim. As one observes the +countless instances +accumulated in Mr. Sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to +which the free and spontaneous expression of Blake's genius has been +subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where +he +speaks of the beautiful garden in which—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Priests in black gowns were walking their +rounds,<br> +</span><span>And binding with briers my joys and desires;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that Blake's prophetic +vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' +most of his future editors. Perhaps, though, if Blake's prescience had +extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; +and +we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial +efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. The present +edition, however, amply compensates for the past. Mr. Sampson gives us, +in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so +printed +as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and +nothing more. At the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he +has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the +variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; +and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through +the +labyrinth of Blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those +passages in the <i>Prophetic Books</i>, which throw light upon the +obscurities of the poems. The most important Blake document—the +Rossetti MS.—has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the +owner, Mr. W.A. White, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no +common measure; and the long-lost Pickering MS.—the sole authority for +some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems—was, with deserved +good fortune, discovered by Mr. Sampson in time for collation in the +present edition. Thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has +not +been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the +hand +of Blake. Mr. Sampson's minute and <a name="Page_181"></a>ungrudging +care, his high critical +acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of +the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make +his edition a noble and splendid monument of English scholarship. It +will be long indeed before the poems of Blake cease to afford matter +for +fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe +to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will +henceforward remain unchanged. There will be no room for further +editing. The work has been done by Mr. Sampson, once and for all.</p> +<p>In the case of Blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly +important, for more than one reason. Many of his effects depend upon +subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily +lost in reproduction. 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary +version of one of his most celebrated lines. But in Blake's original +engraving the words appear thus—'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'; and who +can fail to perceive the difference? Even more remarkable is the change +which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of +one +of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And what shoulder, and what art,<br> +</span><span>Could twist the sinews of thy heart?<br> +</span><span>And when thy heart began to beat,<br> +</span><span>What dread hand? and what dread feet?<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>So Blake engraved the verse; and, as Mr. Sampson points out,'the +terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in +the +'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:—'What dread hand and what +dread feet?' It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery +of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present +edition.</p> +<p>But these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of +Blake's +poetry are not—important as they are—the only justification for a +scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was +not guided by the <a name="Page_182"></a>ordinarily accepted rules of +writing; he allowed +himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, +with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of +his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. +Thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own +making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. They are the +rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries +of an Unknown God; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox +incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate +afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with +advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven +in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor +is +this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has +been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop +there. The emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably +from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from +corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a +penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be +adduced as one instance—out of the enormous number which fill Mr. +Sampson's notes—of the dangers of editorial laxity.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I told my love, I told my love,<br> +</span><span class="i2">I told her all my heart;<br> +</span><span>Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,<br> +</span><span class="i2">Ah! she doth depart.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>This is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented +with +an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' But their +work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their +version +of the last four lines of the poem is as follows:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Soon after she was gone from me,<br> +</span><span class="i2">A traveller came by,<br> +</span><span>Silently, invisibly:<br> +</span><span class="i2">He took her with a sigh.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_183"></a>Reference to the MS., however, shows that the +last line had been struck +out by Blake, and another substituted in its place—a line which is now +printed for the first time by Mr. Sampson. So that the true reading of +the verse is:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Soon as she was gone from me,<br> +</span><span class="i2">A traveller came by,<br> +</span><span>Silently, invisibly—<br> +</span><span class="i2">O! was no deny.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>After these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to +Rossetti +and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the +poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their +concoction—'Love's Secret'—a title which there is no reason to suppose +had ever entered the poet's mind.</p> +<p>Besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little +poem +is an admirable instance of Blake's most persistent quality—his +triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. His most +characteristic +passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, +that +the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of +'inspiration.' Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, in his interesting +Introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such +attributions of peculiar powers to Blake, or indeed to any other poet. +'No man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' But +even +if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there +are degrees of inspiration; if Mr. F's Aunt was a woman of genius, what +are we to say of Hamlet? And Blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, +stands very high indeed. If one could strike an average among poets, it +would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, +Blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the +street. All poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making +one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'What made him think of +that?' With Blake, one is asking the question all the time.</p> +<p><a name="Page_184"></a>Blake's originality of manner was not, as has +sometimes been the case, +a cloak for platitude. What he has to say belongs no less distinctly to +a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. In +English literature, as Sir Walter Raleigh observes, he 'stands outside +the regular line of succession.' All that he had in common with the +great leaders of the Romantic Movement was an abhorrence of the +conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the +eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that +exaltation of Nature—the 'Vegetable Universe,' as he called it—from +which sprang the pantheism of Wordsworth and the paganism of Keats. +'Nature is the work of the Devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the Devil is +in us as far as we are Nature.' There was no part of the sensible world +which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. Even the +'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and +strong'; they were 'writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,' and destined +to +vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the Everlasting Gospel.</p> +<p>There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming +and +splendid lyrist, as the author of <i>Infant Joy</i>, and <i>The Tyger</i>, +and the +rest of the <i>Songs of Innocence and Experience</i>. These poems show +but +faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the +Rossetti and Pickering MSS., the presence of a hidden and symbolic +meaning in Blake's words becomes obvious enough—a meaning which +receives its fullest expression in the <i>Prophetic Books</i>. It was +only +natural that the extraordinary nature of Blake's utterance in these +latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an +inspired idiot—a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. +That belief, made finally impossible by Mr. Swinburne's elaborate +Essay, +is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and +indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of Time, which left +Blake for so long in the Paradise of Fools, is now about to place him +among the Prophets. Anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and +Blake's writings, according <a name="Page_185"></a>to Sir Walter +Raleigh, contain a complete +exposition of its doctrines. The same critic asserts that Blake was +'one +of the most consistent of English poets and thinkers.' This is high +praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. It is one +thing to give Blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in +the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large +mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could +never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. It is quite +another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a +consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be +ordinarily +attributed to a system of philosophy. Does Sir Walter mean to assert +that Blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? It is a little +difficult +to discover. Referring, in his Introduction, to Blake's abusive notes +on +Bacon's <i>Essays</i>, he speaks of—</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>The sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men +indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position when +his gods fall out among themselves. His case [Sir Walter wittily adds] +is not much unlike that of Terah, the father of Abraham, who (if the +legend be true) was a dealer in idols among the Chaldees, and, coming +home to his shop one day, after a brief absence, found that the idols +had quarrelled, and the biggest of them had smashed the rest to atoms. +Blake is a dangerous idol for any man to keep in his shop.</p> +</div> +<p>We wonder very much whether he is kept in Sir Walter Raleigh's.</p> +<p>It seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which +would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for +Blake. His treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very +far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are +liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'Plato,' said +Blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. +There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' And +this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'Satan's empire is the +empire of nothing'; there is no such <a name="Page_186"></a>thing as +evil—it is a mere +'negation.' And the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate +between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely +'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' Such was one of +the most fundamental of Blake's doctrines; but it requires only a +superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their +whole +tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. Every page he +wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings +raised +in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists +never surpassed. His epigrams on Reynolds are masterpieces of virulent +abuse; the punishment which he devised for Klopstock—his impersonation +of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'—is unprintable; as for those +who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they +'crucify Christ with the head downwards.' The contradiction is indeed +glaring. 'There is no such thing as wickedness,' Blake says in effect, +'and you are wicked if you think there is.' If it is true that evil +does +not exist, all Blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on +the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if +everything, in fact, is <i>not</i> good in God's eyes—then why not say +so? +Really Blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.'</p> +<p>But of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. To judge him +according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal +whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. In +fact, to Blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible +phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the +business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. +Reason is the 'Spectre' of Blake's mythology, that Spectre, which, he +says,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Around me night and day<br> +</span><span>Like a wild beast guards my way.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'Emanation,' +or +imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the +universe. Ever since the day when, in <a name="Page_187"></a>his +childhood, Blake had seen +God's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the +only reality and the only good. He beheld the things of this world 'not +with, but through, the eye':</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey,<br> +</span><span>With my outward, a Thistle across my way.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that Blake +yielded +the allegiance of his spirit. His attitude towards reason was the +attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. He never +could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'Spectre'; struggle as +he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the +ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if +argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued +to +what he worked in. As in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been +locked into a crystal cabinet—the world of the senses and of reason—a +gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had +danced so merrily before.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I strove to seize the inmost Form<br> +</span><span>With ardour fierce and hands of flame,<br> +</span><span>But burst the Crystal Cabinet,<br> +</span><span>And like a Weeping Babe became—<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>A weeping Babe upon the wild....<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>To be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the +impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the +same time. But Blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. +He would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying Christ +with the head downwards.</p> +<p>Besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious +objection to +Blake's mysticism—and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. +The mystic's creed—even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic +beauty of Blake's verse—comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of +its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and +<a name="Page_188"></a>almost cruel. The sacrifices which it demands +are too vast, in spite of +the divinity of what it has to offer. What shall it profit a man, one +is +tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? +The mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. The +following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of +inspiration which he never surpassed, Blake's conception of that ideal:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And throughout all Eternity<br> +</span><span>I forgive you, you forgive me.<br> +</span><span>As our dear Redeemer said:<br> +</span><span>'This the Wine, & this the Bread.'<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for +instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would +have subjected such lines as these. His criticism would have been +irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter +at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of +Blake's +words. But that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it +is difficult to doubt. Charles Lamb, perhaps, might have made it; +incidentally, indeed, he has. 'Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary +walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the +delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful +glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent +vanities, and jests, and <i>irony itself</i>'—do these things form no +part +of your Eternity?</p> +<p>The truth is plain: Blake was an intellectual drunkard. His words +come +down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated +heights. His spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, +it stumbled in the gutter of Felpham. His lips brought forth, in the +same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the <i>Auguries of +Innocence</i> +and the epigrams on Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was in no condition to chop +logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. In the +imaginary +portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can +see +him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the +abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head <a + name="Page_189"></a>thrown +back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his +rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we +gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are +almost tempted to go and do likewise.</p> +<p>But it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that Blake deserves +the +highest honours and the most enduring fame. In spite of his hatred of +the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and +spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of +Heaven than the works of man. They have, besides, the two most obvious +characteristics of Nature—loveliness and power. In some of his lyrics +there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a +child, +to be unconscious of itself. In his poem of <i>The Birds</i>—to +mention, out +of many, perhaps a less known instance—it is not the poet that one +hears, it is the birds themselves.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>O thou summer's harmony,<br> +</span><span>I have lived and mourned for thee;<br> +</span><span>Each day I mourn along the wood,<br> +</span><span>And night hath heard my sorrows loud.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In his other mood—the mood of elemental force—Blake produces effects +which are unique in literature. His mastery of the mysterious +suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>He who torments the Chafer's Sprite<br> +</span><span>Weaves a Bower in endless Night.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! And, with the +aid +of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to +produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, +and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his +words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>The Guests are scattered thro' the land,<br> +</span><span>For the Eye altering alters all;<br> +</span><span>The Senses roll themselves in fear,<br> +</span><span>And the flat Earth becomes a Ball;<br> +</span><a name="Page_190"></a><span>The Stars, Sun, Moon, all shrink +away,<br> +</span><span>A desart vast without a bound,<br> +</span><span>And nothing left to eat or drink,<br> +</span><span>And a dark desart all around.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And sometimes Blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and +infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin +mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to +predict +the annihilation of worlds:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>On the shadows of the Moon,<br> +</span><span>Climbing through Night's highest noon:<br> +</span><span>In Time's Ocean falling, drowned:<br> +</span><span>In Aged Ignorance profound,<br> +</span><span>Holy and cold, I clipp'd the Wings<br> +</span><span>Of all Sublunary Things:<br> +</span><span>But when once I did descry<br> +</span><span>The Immortal Man that cannot Die,<br> +</span><span>Thro' evening shades I haste away<br> +</span><span>To close the Labours of my Day.<br> +</span><span>The Door of Death I open found,<br> +</span><span>And the Worm Weaving in the Ground;<br> +</span><span>Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb;<br> +</span><span>Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb:<br> +</span><span>Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife,<br> +</span><span>And weeping over the Web of Life.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our +weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of +ordinary +converse, are enough. For Blake's words will always be strangers on +this +earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own +Gods:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">above Time's troubled fountains,<br> +</span><span>On the great Atlantic Mountains,<br> +</span><span>In my Golden House on high.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>They belong to the language of Los and Rahab and Enitharmon; and +their +mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the Sunflower's desire.</p> +<p>1906.</p> +<p style="font-weight: bold;">NOTES:</p> +<a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a> +<div class="note"> +<p> <i>The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim +text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with +variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces.</i> By John +Sampson, Librarian in the University of Liverpool. Oxford: At the +Clarendon Press, 1905. +</p> +<p><i>The Lyrical Poems of William Blake.</i> Text by John Sampson, +with an +Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905.</p> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="THE_LAST_ELIZABETHAN"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_193"></a>THE +LAST ELIZABETHAN</h2> +<p>The shrine of Poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this +should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. The cult is too +mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no +turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be +fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of +worshippers, and to pass on. Yet, if Apollo were to come down (after +the +manner of deities) and put questions—must we suppose to the +Laureate?—as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of +escaping wrath and destruction? Let us hope for the best; and perhaps, +if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be +to +watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which +Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many +among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, +indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this +extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is +his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition +whatever. If his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one +or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current +anthologies. But Beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest +upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it +rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank +verse. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the +sixteenth. His proper place was among that noble band of Elizabethans, +whose strong and splendid spirit gave to England, in one miraculous +generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has +known. <a name="Page_194"></a>If Charles Lamb had discovered his +tragedies among the folios of +the British Museum, and had given extracts from them in the <i>Specimens +of Dramatic Poets</i>, Beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to +us +now as those of Marlowe and Webster, Fletcher and Ford. As it happened, +however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had +wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. It is +to very little purpose that Mr. Ramsay Colles, his latest editor, +assures us that 'Beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from +Shelley to Browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to +us a passage in <i>Death's Jest Book</i> which anticipates the +doctrines of +<i>The Descent of Man.</i> For Beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with +his +contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such +after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. We must +take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover +and +appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">He hath skill in language;<br> +</span><span>And knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit,<br> +</span><span>A palm with winged imagination in it,<br> +</span><span>Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave;<br> +</span><span>And on them hangs a lamp of magic science<br> +</span><span>In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts<br> +</span><span>Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>If the neglect suffered by Beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in +more +ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has +never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. For one reader who +cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing +there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the +history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the +character of Beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, +mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers +to circulating libraries. Yet only one account of his career has ever +been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect +as +it is, has long <a name="Page_195"></a>been out of print. It was +supplemented some years ago +by Mr. Gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important +circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of Beddoes' +letters. The main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have +been put together by Mr. Ramsay Colles, in his introduction to the new +edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost +complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of +Beddoes' existence—full as those years certainly were of interest and +even excitement. Nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that +strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all.</p> +<p>Readers of Miss Edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger +sister +Anne, married a distinguished Clifton physician, Dr. Thomas Beddoes. +Their eldest son, born in 1803, was named Thomas Lovell, after his +father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of <i>The Brides' +Tragedy</i> and <i>Death's Jest Book</i>. Dr. Beddoes was a remarkable +man, +endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare +independence of character. His scientific attainments were recognised +by +the University of Oxford, where he held the post of Lecturer in +Chemistry, until the time of the French Revolution, when he was obliged +to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity +of his liberal opinions. He then settled at Clifton as a physician, +established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics +and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose +merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents +which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, +if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously +suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a +striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. +Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's +inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less +remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. In both cases, +this +quality was coupled <a name="Page_196"></a>with a corresponding +eccentricity of conduct, which +occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something +very near insanity. Many stories are related of the queer behaviour of +Dr. Beddoes. One day he astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing +at +a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it +was +East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual +kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves. More +extraordinary +were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering +cows +to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that +they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' It is easy to imagine the +delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an +invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of <i>Harpagus</i> +and +<i>The Oviparous Tailor</i>. But 'little Tom,' as Miss Edgeworth calls +him, +was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for +Dr. Beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six +years old.</p> +<p>The genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a +rule, +one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous +world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid +than +the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a +distinguished +martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On +the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been +a +dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining +account +of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school +reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though +his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests were devoted not +so +much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. +Cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had +understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years +before he went to Charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading +which he chiefly delighted in was the Elizabethan drama. 'He liked +acting,' says Mr. Bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, <a + name="Page_197"></a>and used to give +apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly +Kean +and Macready. Though his voice was harsh and his enunciation +offensively +conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, +that +I was always glad to listen: even when I was pressed into the service +as +his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of +curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. +One play in particular, Marlowe's <i>Tragedy of Dr. Faustus</i>, +excited my +admiration in this way; and a liking for the old English drama, which I +still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' But +Beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; +when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material +himself. A locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock +on his bookcase; Beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man +appeared +he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, +his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which +was +interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal +torments. Such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the +locksmith, according to Mr. Bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and +execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his +work.'</p> +<p>Besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, Beddoes' school +compositions included a novel in the style of Fielding (which has +unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an Elizabethan tragedy, +and much miscellaneous verse. In 1820 he left Charterhouse, and went to +Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in the following year, while still a +freshman, he published his first volume, <i>The Improvisatore</i>, a +series +of short narratives in verse. The book had been written in part while +he +was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. It contains no trace of +the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the +sentiment, to use his own expression, 'Moorish.' Indeed, the only +interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that +the singular pre-occupa<a name="Page_198"></a>tion which eventually +dominated Beddoes' mind +had, even in these early days, made its appearance. The book is full of +death. The poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old +men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning +into mouldering heaps of corruption. The boy, with his elaborate +exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' +flesh creep. But the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, +when +Beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very +much +ashamed of his first publication. So eager was he to destroy every +trace +of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of +his friends. The story goes that he amused himself by visiting their +libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the +precious +volume, they found the pages gone.</p> +<p>Beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next +publication, +<i>The Brides' Tragedy</i>, which appeared in 1822. In a single bound, +he had +reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. The line +which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry +itself—that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no +one can explain—Beddoes had not yet crossed. But he had gone as far as +it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, +and he was still in his twentieth year. Many passages in <i>The +Brides' +Tragedy</i> seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which +will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has +come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, +whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered +such words as these:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye,<br> +</span><span>When first it darkened with immortal life<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or a line of such intense imaginative force as this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I've huddled her into the wormy earth;<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_199"></a><span>The day is in its +shroud while yet an infant;<br> +</span><span>And Night with giant strides stalks o'er the world,<br> +</span><span>Like a swart Cyclops, on its hideous front<br> +</span><span>One round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The play was written on the Elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is +disfigured by Beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is +weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the +motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part +curiously remote from the realities of life. Yet, though the merit of +the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in +it that, while Beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless +possessed one important dramatic faculty—the power of creating detached +scenes of interest and beauty. The scene in which the half-crazed +Leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead +daughter +lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the +highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of +pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and +absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel,<br> +</span><span>Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye';<br> +</span><span>Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure<br> +</span><span>She has the welcome news of some good fortune,<br> +</span><span>And hoards the telling till her father comes;<br> +</span><span>... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then;<br> +</span><span>Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me,<br> +</span><span>I must be very angry till you speak.<br> +</span><span>Now this is silly; some of these young boys<br> +</span><span>Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport.<br> +</span><span>'Tis very like her. I could make this image<br> +</span><span>Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head:<br> +</span><span>'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face<br> +</span><span>Falls on my neck.—Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed!<br> +</span><span>I know it all—don't tell me.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, +such +as Webster himself might have been proud to write.</p> +<p><a name="Page_200"></a><i>The Brides' Tragedy</i> was well received +by critics; and a laudatory +notice of Beddoes in the <i>Edinburgh</i>, written by Bryan Waller +Procter—better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry +Cornwall—led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The +connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that +Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his +friends—Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In +the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months, +and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of +his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It +was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, +even to the most fortunate, once and once only—when youth, and hope, +and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and +opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of <i>The +Brides' +Tragedy</i> had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the +harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall +wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' +poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. +'His +poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: +more +than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished +act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, +and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, +but +filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination +had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right +or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these +very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each +started into form,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Like the red outline of beginning Adam,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply +cut +into their one observer's mind. The fine verse just quoted is the sole +remnant, indelibly stamped on the <a name="Page_201"></a>editor's +memory, of one of these +extinct creations.' Fragments survive of at least four dramas, +projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this +time. Beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing +forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">Creep not nor climb,<br> +</span><span>As they who place their topmost of sublime<br> +</span><span>On some peak of this planet, pitifully.<br> +</span><span>Dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly<br> +</span><span>Until you meet the gods!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Eighteen months after his Southampton visit, Beddoes took his degree +at +Oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action +which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. He determined to +take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established +himself, in 1825, at the University at Göttingen. It is very +clear, +however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. He +took with him to Germany the beginnings of a new play—'a very +Gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which I have a jewel of a +name—DEATH'S JEST-BOOK; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read +it'; and, during his four years at Göttingen, he devoted most of +his +leisure to the completion of this work. He was young; he was rich; he +was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that +he +could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he +settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious +occupation +of his life. But, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in +the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not +only +a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might +not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. +Engulfed among the students of Göttingen, England and English ways +of +life, and even English poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem Anbeter der +seligen Gottheiten der Musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to Kelsall, 'was +Unterhaltendes kann der Liebhaber <a name="Page_202"></a>von Knochen, +der fleissige Botaniker +und Phisiolog mittheilen?' In 1830 he was still hesitating between the +two alternatives. 'I sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to +devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in +science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with +him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, +directed towards widely different ends. While he was still in this +state +of mind, a new interest took possession of him—an interest which worked +havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: +he +became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time +beginning to agitate Europe. The details of his adventures are +unhappily +lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a +few scanty references in his rare letters to English friends; but it is +certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous +one. +He was turned out of Würzburg by 'that ingenious Jackanapes,' the +King +of Bavaria; he was an intimate friend of Hegetschweiler, one of the +leaders of liberalism in Switzerland; and he was present in Zurich when +a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half +armed +with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the +liberal government.' In the tumult Hegetschweiler was killed, and +Beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. During the +following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over +Germany and Switzerland, at Berlin, at Baden, at Giessen, a strange +solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling +lampoons upon the King of Prussia, translating Grainger's <i>Spinal +Cord</i> +into German, and Schoenlein's <i>Diseases of Europeans</i> into +English, +exploring Pilatus and the Titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly +lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his +'Gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, +and +giving it—as had been his wont for the last twenty years—just one more +touch before he sent it to the press. He appeared in England once or +twice, and in <a name="Page_203"></a>1846 made a stay of several +months, visiting the Procters +in London, and going down to Southampton to be with Kelsall once again. +Eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his +bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep +depression. He shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their +country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the Procters by starting +out one evening to set fire to Drury Lane Theatre with a lighted +five-pound note. After this last visit to England, his history becomes +even more obscure than before. It is known that in 1847 he was in +Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a +young baker called Degen—'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of +age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and +of +a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following +year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the +theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in +the +part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the +friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest +gloom. +'Il a été misérable,' said the waiter at the +Cigogne Hotel, where he was +staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted a deep wound +in +his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. He +was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, +until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. The +operation was successful, Beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, +Degen came back to Basel. It seemed as if all were going well; for the +poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his +bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian +journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can +tell? Was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove +him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to +obtain there a phial of deadly poison? On the evening of that day—the +26th of January, 1849—Dr. Ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, +to find Beddoes lying insensible upon <a name="Page_204"></a>the bed. +He never recovered +consciousness, and died that night. Upon his breast was found a pencil +note, addressed to one of his English friends. 'My dear Philips,' it +began, 'I am food for what I am good for—worms.' A few testamentary +wishes followed. Kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and—'W. Beddoes +must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet, 1847 growth, to drink +my death in ... I ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome +document concluded, 'a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg, +and that a bad one. Buy for Dr. Ecklin one of Reade's best +stomach-pumps.' It was the last of his additions to Death's Jest Book, +and the most <i>macabre</i> of all.</p> +<p>Kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary +care. +The manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. There were three +distinct +drafts of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>, each with variations of its own; +and from +these Kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared +in +1850. In the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical +works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope +and power of Beddoes' genius. They contain reprints of <i>The Brides' +Tragedy</i> and <i>Death's Jest Book</i>, together with two unfinished +tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the +poems are preceded by Kelsall's memoir of his friend. Of these rare and +valuable volumes the Muses' Library edition is almost an exact reprint, +except that it omits the memoir and revives <i>The Improvisatore</i>. +Only +one other edition of Beddoes exists—the limited one brought out by Mr. +Gosse in 1890, and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. +Mr. Gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those +already published by Kelsall; he made public for the first time the +true +story of Beddoes' suicide, which Kelsall had concealed; and, in 1893, +he +followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of Beddoes' letters. +It +is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of +Beddoes owe so much as to Mr. Gosse. <a name="Page_205"></a>He has +supplied most important +materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the +lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of +the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos—<i>The +Old Ghost</i>—and one of the most singular examples of his vein of +grotesque and ominous humour—<i>The Oviparous Tailor</i>. Yet it may be +doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are +traces in Beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still +come to light. What has happened, one would like to know, to <i>The +Ivory +Gate</i>, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which +Beddoes +talked of publishing in 1837? Only a few fine stanzas from it have ever +appeared. And, as Mr. Gosse himself tells us, the variations in <i>Death's +Jest Book</i> alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition +of +that work—'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of +the matter—'if the interest in Beddoes should continue to grow.'</p> +<p>'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the +drama +must be a bold, trampling fellow—no creeper into worm-holes—no reviver +even—however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words +occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by +critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an +instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they +preach. But the truth is that Beddoes was not a 'creeper into +worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. +Everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and +elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his +spirit. We have Kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his +composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in +his +letters and in the history of his life—records of a 'bold, trampling +fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry +itself. For the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped +unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. His mature blank verse +is perfect. <a name="Page_206"></a>It is not an artificial concoction +galvanized into the +semblance of life; it simply lives. And, with Beddoes, maturity was +precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult +and +dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. Blank verse is like the +Djin in the Arabian Nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, +or the most powerful of slaves. If you have not the magic secret, it +will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change +them +into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a +flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. +Beddoes had mastered the 'Open, Sesame' at an age when most poets are +still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. In his twenty-second +year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as +easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. He wishes to compare, for +instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single +eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison +is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast +multiplicity of objects. There could be no better exercise for a young +verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then +to examine these lines by Beddoes—lines where simplicity and splendour +have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>How glorious to live! Even in one thought<br> +</span><span>The wisdom of past times to fit together,<br> +</span><span>And from the luminous minds of many men<br> +</span><span>Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye,<br> +</span><span>Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets<br> +</span><span>Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered<br> +</span><span>Into one ray.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the +diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—that art +by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to +combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, +impossible to do more than touch upon this side—the technical side—of +Beddoes' <a name="Page_207"></a>genius. But it may be noticed that in +his mastery of +phrasing—as in so much besides—he was a true Elizabethan. The great +artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a +dead +thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an +eighteenth-century dramatist—Addison, for instance—to understand how +right they were.</p> +<p>Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which +had +already begun to show itself in <i>The Brides' Tragedy</i>, reached +its full +development in his subsequent work. The opening act of <i>The Second +Brother</i>—the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies—is a +striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way +that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not +one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next +brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after +years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar—to find his younger +brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay +debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the +duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and +extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While +Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, +Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended +by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. +'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught<br> +</span><span>Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute +his +brother.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. Insolent beggar!<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Marcello</i>. Prince! But we must shake +hands.<br> +</span><span>Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent,<br> +</span><span>Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown<br> +</span><span>Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks<br> +</span><span>Of two close planets, catching in the air:<br> +</span><span>You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer,<br> +</span><a name="Page_208"></a><span>Wearing a crown of gods; I, the +vast top<br> +</span><span>Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark,<br> +</span><span>With nothing reigning on my desolate head<br> +</span><span>But an old spirit of a murdered god,<br> +</span><span>Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Aye, Prince, you have a brother—<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. The Duke—he'll scourge you.<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Marcello</i>. Nay, <i>the second</i>, sir,<br> +</span><span>Who, like an envious river, flows between<br> +</span><span>Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne....<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span><i>Orazio</i>. Stood he before me there,<br> +</span><span>By you, in you, as like as you're unlike,<br> +</span><span>Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old,<br> +</span><span>And many years nearer than him to Death,<br> +</span><span>The falling brilliancy of whose white sword<br> +</span><span>Your ancient locks so silverly reflect,<br> +</span><span>I would deny, outswear, and overreach,<br> +</span><span>And pass him with contempt, as I do you.<br> +</span><span>Jove! How we waste the stars: set on, my friends.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish +down the darkened street:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Strike, you myrtle-crownèd boys,<br> +</span><span>Ivied maidens, strike together!...<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>and Marcello is left alone:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">I went forth<br> +</span><span>Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes<br> +</span><span>His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer,<br> +</span><span>And like its horrible return was mine,<br> +</span><span>To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat,<br> +</span><span>Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love,<br> +</span><span>And take a heart of venom: let me make<br> +</span><span>A staircase of the frightened breasts of men,<br> +</span><span>And climb into a lonely happiness!<br> +</span><span>And thou, who only art alone as I,<br> +</span><span>Great solitary god of that one sun,<br> +</span><span>I charge thee, by the likeness of our state,<br> +</span><a name="Page_209"></a><span>Undo these human veins that tie me +close<br> +</span><span>To other men, and let your servant griefs<br> +</span><span>Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in<br> +</span><span>Salt scorn and steaming hate!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that +the +dukedom is his. The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes' +inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed +end. The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with +vivid +situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes +away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a +thousand streams. It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was +embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too +easily, +and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his +imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. His conception of +Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he +appears in the opening scene. But Beddoes could not leave him there; he +must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once +brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. The +interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio's +character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with +his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and +interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn +becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. But, by +this time, what has happened to the second brother? It is easy to +believe that Beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than +finish an old one. But it is not so certain that his method was quite +as +inexcusable as his critics assert. To the reader, doubtless, his faulty +construction is glaring enough; but Beddoes wrote his plays to be +acted, +as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I +think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess +that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be +very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of +impertinence, as long as one chooses to write <a name="Page_210"></a>in +the form of a play, +and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything +striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely upon the stage +that such faults of construction as those which disfigure Beddoes' +tragedies matter least. An audience, whose attention is held and +delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid +speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a +whole, is worthy of the separate parts. It would be foolish, in the +present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to +wish +for the public performance of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>; but it is +impossible +not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of +that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility +more thin than air.' Then, and then only, shall we be able to take the +true measure of Beddoes' genius.</p> +<p>Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of +construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the +common +realities of existence. Not only is the subject-matter of the greater +part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves +seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the +strange, and the unreal. They have no healthy activity; or, if they +have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are +all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting +the attributes of Death. The central idea of <i>Death's Jest Book</i>—the +resurrection of a ghost—fails to be truly effective, because it is +difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest +of the characters. The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of +Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to +ponder, +and agonise, and dream:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>And yet how palely, with what faded lips<br> +</span><span>Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune!<br> +</span><span>Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter<br> +</span><span>Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost,<br> +</span><span>Arisen out of hoary centuries<br> +</span><span>Where none can speak his language.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_211"></a>Orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome +with the same feelings:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Methinks, these fellows, with their ready +jests,<br> +</span><span>Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike<br> +</span><span>Marriage or death.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>And his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole +atmosphere of Beddoes' tragedies:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Voices were heard, most loud, which no man +owned:<br> +</span><span>There were more shadows too than there were men;<br> +</span><span>And all the air more dark and thick than night<br> +</span><span>Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more<br> +</span><span>Than living breaths.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, +for +guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and +things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be +called a 'criticism of life.' If a poet must be a critic of life, +Beddoes was certainly no poet. He belongs to the class of writers of +which, in English literature, Spenser, Keats, and Milton are the +dominant figures—the writers who are great merely because of their art. +Sir James Stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that +Milton might have put all that he had to say in <i>Paradise Lost</i> +into a +prose pamphlet of two or three pages. But who cares about what Milton +had to say? It is his way of saying it that matters; it is his +expression. Take away the expression from the <i>Satires</i> of Pope, +or from +<i>The Excursion</i>, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will +leave +behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from +<i>Hyperion</i>, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the +better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than +a +rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the +other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression +that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many +modulations, +of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. +Playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as +this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><a name="Page_212"></a><span>Just now a beam of joy +hung on his eyelash;<br> +</span><span>But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye,<br> +</span><span>Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings<br> +</span><span>Into a darkening hole.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as +this:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">I begin to hear<br> +</span><span>Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing<br> +</span><span>Of waves, where time into Eternity<br> +</span><span>Falls over ruined worlds.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>So fair a creature! of such charms compact<br> +</span><span>As nature stints elsewhere: which you may find<br> +</span><span>Under the tender eyelid of a serpent,<br> +</span><span>Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose,<br> +</span><span>By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see,<br> +</span><span>Like water from a crystal overfilled,<br> +</span><span>Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave<br> +</span><span>Her fair sides to the ground.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">My love was much;<br> +</span><span>My life but an inhabitant of his.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">I should not say<br> +</span><span>How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow,<br> +</span><span>On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm<br> +</span><span>And soft at evening: so the little flower<br> +</span><span>Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water<br> +</span><span>Close to the golden welcome of its breast,<br> +</span><span>Delighting in the touch of that which led<br> +</span><span>The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops<br> +</span><span>Tritons and lions of the sea were warring,<br> +</span><span>And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood,<br> +</span><span>Of their own inmates; others were of ice,<br> +</span><a name="Page_213"></a><span>And some had islands rooted in +their waves,<br> +</span><span>Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds,<br> +</span><span>And showers tumbling on their tumbling self,<br> +</span><span>And every sea of every ruined star<br> +</span><span>Was but a drop in the world-melting flood.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>He can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the +hectic, +dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>... What shall I do? I speak all wrong,<br> +</span><span>And lose a soul-full of delicious thought<br> +</span><span>By talking. Hush! Let's drink each other up<br> +</span><span>By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I,<br> +</span><span>My heavenly wife?...<br> +</span><span>I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second<br> +</span><span>By thy cheek's change.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>In that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can +almost +hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'Never!' exclaims the duke to his son +Torrismond:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>There lies no grain of sand between<br> +</span><span>My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence,<br> +</span><span>Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb<br> +</span><span>Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron,<br> +</span><span>Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire!<br> +</span><span>And may this intervening earth be snow,<br> +</span><span>And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna,<br> +</span><span>Plunging me, through it all, into the core,<br> +</span><span>Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds,<br> +</span><span>If I do not—O, but he is my son!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Is not that tremendous? But, to find Beddoes in his most +characteristic +mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the +woof of mortality. One must wander with him through the pages of +<i>Death's Jest Book</i>, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution +of +reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn +that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask—'Are the ghosts +eaves-dropping?'—one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' Among +the ruins of his Gothic <a name="Page_214"></a>cathedral, on whose +cloister walls the Dance of +Death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of +existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">Whose tumultuous waves<br> +</span><span>Are heaped, contending ghosts,<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>one may understand how it is that</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful<br> +</span><span>To man than Life.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Lingering there, one may watch the Deaths come down from their +cloister, +and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque +contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may +sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of Death.</p> +<p>In private intercourse Beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. +His +mind was like one of those Gothic cathedrals of which he was so +fond—mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less +real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and +immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with +grinning gargoyles. His conversation, Kelsall tells us, was full of +humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or +affectation. He loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and +carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. His +letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his +verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had +produced his school-boy novel in the style of Fielding. He was a man +whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so +eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, +and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: +not +the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, +Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who +forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a +grave, +and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. <a name="Page_215"></a>His +tragedy, like +Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will—a will so strong as +to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak +man to be decided—there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, +who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately +Beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so +rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality +beyond price. 'I might have been, among other things, a good poet,' +were +his last words. 'Among other things'! Aye, there's the rub. But, in +spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. Perhaps for +him, +after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high +nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of +death? There is a thought constantly recurring throughout his +writings—in his childish as in his most mature work—the thought of the +beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. He had +visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' +of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over +the soul. 'Let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his +earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' And, in <i>Death's +Jest Book</i>, Sibylla has the same thoughts:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">O Death! I am thy friend,<br> +</span><span>I struggle not with thee, I love thy state:<br> +</span><span>Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now;<br> +</span><span>And let me pass praying away into thee,<br> +</span><span>As twilight still does into starry night.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>Did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at +last +for the one thing stranger than all these—the experience of it? It is +easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at +the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual +dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had +recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, +perhaps, came crowding back upon him—thoughts of the futility of life, +and the supremacy of death and the <a name="Page_216"></a>mystical +whirlpool of the unknown, +and the long quietude of the grave. In the end, Death had grown to be +something more than Death to him—it was, mysteriously and +transcendentally, Love as well.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature +tells,<br> +</span><span>When laughing waters close o'er drowning men;<br> +</span><span>When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells;<br> +</span><span>When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken<br> +</span><span>Of those who seek a cure for long despair<br> +</span><span>Will learn ...<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>What learning was it that rewarded him? What ghostly knowledge of +eternal love?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>If there are ghosts to raise,<br> +</span><span class="i2">What shall I call,<br> +</span><span>Out of hell's murky haze,<br> +</span><span class="i2">Heaven's blue pall?<br> +</span><span>—Raise my loved long-lost boy<br> +</span><span>To lead me to his joy.—<br> +</span><span class="i2">There are no ghosts to raise;<br> +</span><span class="i2">Out of death lead no ways;<br> +</span><span class="i4">Vain is the call.<br> +</span></div> +<div class="stanza"><span>—Know'st thou not ghosts to sue?<br> +</span><span class="i2">No love thou hast.<br> +</span><span>Else lie, as I will do,<br> +</span><span class="i2">And breathe thy last.<br> +</span><span>So out of Life's fresh crown<br> +</span><span>Fall like a rose-leaf down.<br> +</span><span class="i2">Thus are the ghosts to woo;<br> +</span><span class="i2">Thus are all dreams made true,<br> +</span><span class="i4">Ever to last!<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>1907.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="HENRI_BEYLE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_219"></a>HENRI +BEYLE</h2> +<br> +<p>In the whole of French literature it would be difficult to point to +a +figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to +English readers as Henri Beyle. Most of us are, no doubt, fairly +familiar with his pseudonym of 'Stendhal'; some of us have read <i>Le +Rouge et Le Noir</i> and <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i>; but how many +of us have +any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment +appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete +edition, +every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with +enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary +periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and +appreciation? The eminent critic, M. André Gide, when asked +lately to +name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of +France, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one +or other of the novels of Stendhal, his only difficulty was in making +his choice among these; and he finally decided upon <i>La Chartreuse +de +Parme</i>. According to this high authority, Henri Beyle was +indisputably +the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the French language, yet +on this side of the Channel we have hardly more than heard of him! Nor +is it merely as a writer that Beyle is admired in France. As a man, he +seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a +singular devotion. There are 'Beylistes,' or 'Stendhaliens,' who dwell +with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend +with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who +discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal +friendship, and register his opinions with <a name="Page_220"></a>a +zeal which is hardly less +than sectarian. But indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his +French devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own +indifference. Beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, +most +of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the French character. This +does not mean that he was a typical Frenchman; far from it. He did not, +like Voltaire or Hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius +vibrated in response. He has never been, it is unlikely that he ever +will be, a popular writer. His literary reputation in France has been +confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. +'On me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers 1880'; and the 'Beylistes' +point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost +divine +prescience of the great man. But in truth Beyle was always read by the +<i>élite</i> of French critics and writers—'the happy few,' as +he used to +call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic +admirers. During his lifetime Balzac, in an enormous eulogy of <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i>, paid him one of the most magnificent +compliments +ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. In the next +generation Taine declared himself his disciple; a little later—'vers +1880,' in fact—we find Zola describing him as 'notre père +à tous,' and +M. Bourget followed with elaborate incense. To-day we have writers of +such different tendencies as M. Barrès and M. Gide acclaiming +him as a +supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'Beylistes.' Yet, +at +the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to +trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. It is the opinion +of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of French life. Thus +Sainte-Beuve, in two characteristic 'Lundis,' poured a great deal of +very tepid water upon Balzac's flaming panegyric. Then Flaubert—'vers +1880,' too—confessed that he could see very little in Stendhal. And, +only a few years ago, M. Chuquet, of the Institute, took the trouble to +compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail +all the known facts concerning the life and <a name="Page_221"></a>writings +of a man whom he +forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. +These discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd +differences of taste? How are we to reconcile the admiration of Balzac +with the dislike of Flaubert, the raptures of M. Bourget and M. +Barrès +with the sniffs of Sainte-Beuve and M. Chuquet of the Institute? The +explanation seems to be that Beyle occupies a position in France +analogous to that of Shelley in England. Shelley is not a national +hero, +not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an Englishman, but +for the opposite reason—because he possessed so many of them in an +extreme degree. The idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the +unconventionality which give Shakespeare, Nelson, and Dr. Johnson their +place in our pantheon—all these were Shelley's, but they were his in +too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will +never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be +Englishmen +unable to appreciate him at all. Such, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>—and in +this +case the proviso is a very large one—is the position of Beyle in +France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French +bean +he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French +French writer—too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and +so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet +this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some +attention. +An understanding of this very Gallic individual might give us a new +insight into the whole strange race. And besides, the curious creature +is worth looking at for his own sake too.</p> +<p>But, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the +dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. Even his +most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true +nature of his achievements. Balzac thought of him as an artist, Taine +was captivated by his conception of history, M. Bourget adores him as a +psychologist, M. Barrès lays stress upon his 'sentiment +d'honneur,' <a name="Page_222"></a>and +the 'Beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. Certainly very +few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly +and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as Henri Beyle. The +circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity +of +his genius. He was born in 1783, when the <i>ancien régime</i> +was still in +full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the +Napoleonic +wars; he lived to see the Bourbon reaction, the Romantic revival, the +revolution of 1830, and the establishment of Louis Philippe; and when +he +died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way +through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world +and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, +preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His +grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner +of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile +'mélangé de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror +came, two +representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the +result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty +others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the Republic, and +confined to his house. At the age of sixteen Beyle arrived in Paris, +just after the <i>coup d'état</i> of the 18th Brumaire had made +Bonaparte +First Consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin +Daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the +organisation of Napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure +moments—for apparently he had leisure moments—were devoted to the +composition of idylls in the style of Tibullus and to an enormous +correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. It +was +as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that Beyle spent nearly +the whole of the next fifteen years of his life—in Paris, in Italy, in +Germany, in Russia—wherever the whirling tempest of the Napoleonic +policy might happen to carry him. His actual military experience was +considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his +friends to understand it <a name="Page_223"></a>had been. For hardly +more than a year, during +the Italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: +the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat +department. +The descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his +adventures +at Marengo, at Jéna, at Wagram, or at the crossing of the +Niémen have +been shown by M. Chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. +Beyle was present at only one great battle—Bautzen. 'Nous voyons fort +bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi à +trois +heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est à dire +rien.' He +was, however, at Moscow in 1812, and he accompanied the army through +the +horrors of the retreat. When the conflagration had broken out in the +city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound +copy of the <i>Facéties</i> of Voltaire; the book helped to +divert his mind +as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that +followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who +could smile over Akakia and Pompignan in such a situation, one day he +left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow.</p> +<p>The fall of Napoleon threw Beyle out of employment, and the period +of +his literary activity began. His books were not successful; his fortune +gradually dwindled; and he drifted in Paris and Italy, and even in +England, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide +sometimes in his head. But in 1830 the tide of his fortunes turned. The +revolution of July, by putting his friends into power, brought him a +competence in the shape of an Italian consulate; and in the same year +he +gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of <i>Le +Rouge +et Le Noir</i>. The rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of +his +official duties at Civita Vecchia, alternating with periods of +leave—one of them lasted for three years—spent in Paris among his +friends, of whom the most distinguished was Prosper +Mérimée. In 1839 +appeared his last published work—<i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i>; and +three +years later he died suddenly in Paris. <a name="Page_224"></a>His +epitaph, composed by himself +with the utmost care, was as follows:</p> +<div style="font-weight: bold;" class="blkquot"> +<p style="text-align: center;">QUI GIACE<br> +ARRIGO BEYLE MILANESE<br> +VISSE, SCRISSE, AMO.</p> +</div> +<p>The words, read rightly, indicate many things—his adoration of Italy +and Milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society +and +the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to +literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of +his +experience—in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated +manhood, in his calm old age—there had never been a moment when he was +not in love.</p> +<p>Beyle's work falls into two distinct groups—the first consisting of +his +novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include +several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism +and +travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of +the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; +and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is +promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition +which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of +Beyle's +writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly +artistic. It was as a novelist that Beyle first gained his celebrity, +and it is still as a novelist—or rather as the author of <i>Le Rouge +et +Le Noir</i> and <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i> (for an earlier work, <i>Armance</i>, +some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out +of account)—that he is most widely known to-day. These two remarkable +works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which +they were composed. It was in the full flood of the Romantic revival, +that marvellous hour in the history of French literature when the +tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth +of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of +suddenly +burst upon the view. It was <a name="Page_225"></a>the hour of Hugo, +Vigny, Musset, Gautier, +Balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric +passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse +towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity +and the manifold comprehension of life. But, if we turn to the +contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a +succession +of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact +narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the +eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the +perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his +grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It +is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment with +a +<i>brochure</i> attacking Racine at the expense of Shakespeare; but +this was +merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent +in his nature; and in reality the whole Romantic movement meant nothing +to him. There is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend +between him and Hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a +couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. No +wonder! But Beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was +hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. As +for Chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like +poison. He used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point +of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a +phrase in <i>Atala</i>—'la cime indéterminée des +forêts'—was not +intolerable. Probably he was romancing (M. Chuquet says so); but at any +rate the story sums up symbolically Beyle's attitude towards his art. +To +him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'—the emphatic phrase, the +picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm—was anathema. The charm that +such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose +thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth +century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an +artificial neatness about <a name="Page_226"></a>the form which +imposed itself upon the +substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the +perfect style, and that was the <i>Code Napoléon</i>; for there +alone +everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of +what +was to be said. A statement of law can have no place for irrelevant +beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it +must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be +seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. Beyle declared that +he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the Code every +morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' This again was for long +supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers +among the MSS. at Grenoble have discovered page after page copied out +from the Code in Beyle's handwriting. No doubt, for that wayward lover +of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what <i>he</i> +took quite seriously.</p> +<p>This attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an +official +document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole +tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and +intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of +mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between +his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of +materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, +the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps Balzac's +greatest discovery, Beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. Such +matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no +small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. +In the earlier chapters of <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i>, for instance, +he is +concerned with almost the same subject as Balzac in the opening of <i>Les +Illusions Perdues</i>—the position of a young man in a provincial town, +brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the +leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a +woman +of refinement. But while in Balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete +<a name="Page_227"></a>vision of provincial life down to the last +pimple on the nose of the +lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal +problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his +genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of +a +surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. In fact, +Beyle's method is the classical method—the method of selection, of +omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central +impression of supreme reality. Zola criticises him for disregarding 'le +milieu.'</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Il y a [he says] un épisode célèbre dans 'Le +Rouge et Le Noir,' la scène où Julien, assis un soir +à côté de Mme. de Rénal, sous les branches +noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la main, pendant +qu'elle cause avec Mme. Derville. C'est un petit drame muet d'une +grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analysé merveilleusement les +états d'âme de ses deux personnages. Or, le milieu +n'apparaît pas une seule fois. Nous pourrions être +n'importe où dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scène +resterait la même pourvu qu'il fit noir ... Donnez +l'épisode à un écrivain pour qui les milieux +existent, et dans la défaite de cette femme, il fera entrer la +nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptés molles. +Et cet écrivain sera dans la vérité, son tableau +sera plus complet.</p> +</div> +<p>More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? Zola, with +his +statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell +a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. +He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol +'nuit,' +to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. Everybody +knows all about the night's accessories—'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses +voluptés molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once +in a +way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! And Beyle is perpetually +evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'Comme il insiste +peu!' as M. Gide exclaims. Perhaps the best test of a man's +intelligence +is his capacity for making a summary. Beyle knew this, and his novels +are <a name="Page_228"></a>full of passages which read like nothing so +much as extraordinarily +able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost.</p> +<p>It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye +for +detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was +of +the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling +vividness, when he wished. But he very rarely did wish: it was apt to +involve a tiresome insistence. In his narratives he is like a brilliant +talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, +taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here +and +there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too +obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and +taking care above all things never to force the note. His famous +description of the Battle of Waterloo in <i>La Chartreuse de Parme</i> +is +certainly the finest example of this side of his art. Here he produces +an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with +unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the +loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its +insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses +and +indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his +own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero—a young Italian +impelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a +volunteer +on the eve of the battle—go through the great day in such a state of +vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that +he +really <i>was</i> at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial +and +unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by +two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot +from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he +crosses +and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks +brandy with a <i>vivandière</i>, gallops over a field covered +with dying men, +has an indefinite skirmish in a wood—and it is over. At one moment, +having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his +horse to splash into a <a name="Page_229"></a>stream, thereby covering +one of the generals +with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good +specimen of Beyle's narrative style:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouvé les +généraux tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla +redoubler; ce fut à peine s'il entendit le +général, par lui si bien mouillé, qui criait +à son oreille:</p> +<p> Où as-tu pris ce cheval?</p> +<p> Fabrice était tellement troublé, qu'il +répondit en Italien: <i>l'ho comprato poco fa</i>. (Je viens de +l'acheter à l'instant.)</p> +<p> Que dis-tu? lui cria le général.</p> +<p> Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne +put lui répondre. Nous avouerons que notre héros +était fort peu héros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne +venait chez lui qu'en seconde ligne; il était surtout +scandalisé de ce bruit qui lui faisait mal aux oreilles. +L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait une grande pièce de terre +labourée, située au delà du canal, et ce champ +était jonché de cadavres.</p> +</div> +<p>How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a +reticence in +explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial +expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed +that +'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in +conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, +of +hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness +has +produced?</p> +<p>It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and +intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is +describing, for instance, the development of Julien Sorel's mind in <i>Le +Rouge et Le Noir</i>, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant +with +its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the +whirling vortex of life—then we seem to be witnessing not so much the +presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. The +procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the +inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the +demonstration is complete. Here the influence <a name="Page_230"></a>of +the eighteenth century +is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of +syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of +Helvétius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its +austerest form—'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables +in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative +style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of the <i>Code Civil</i>.</p> +<p>If this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and +brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the +French genius in an extreme degree, Beyle's position in literature +would +present very little difficulty. He would take his place at once as a +late—an abnormally late—product of the eighteenth century. But he was +not that. In his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the +veins of Voltaire. It was the virus of modern life—that new +sensibility, that new passionateness, which Rousseau had first made +known to the world, and which had won its way over Europe behind the +thunder of Napoleon's artillery. Beyle had passed his youth within +earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the +echo of it. It was in vain that he studied Condillac and modelled his +style on the Code; in vain that he sang the praises of <i>la lo-gique</i>, +shrugged his shoulders at the Romantics, and turned the cold eye of a +scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained +essentially a man of feeling. His unending series of <i>grandes +passions</i> +was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to +the Fine Arts. Though his taste in music and painting was the taste of +his time—the literary and sentimental taste of the age of Rossini and +Canova—he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a +kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. +The +'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into Italy he +heard at Novara the <i>Matrimonio Segreto</i> of Cimarosa, marked an +epoch in +his life. He adored Mozart: 'I can imagine nothing more distasteful to +me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile <a name="Page_231"></a>walk through +the mud; but I would +take one at this moment if I knew that I should hear a good performance +of <i>Don Giovanni</i> at the end of it.' The Virgins of Guido Reni +sent him +into ecstasies and the Goddesses of Correggio into raptures. In short, +as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le Beau' in whatever +form +he found it. <i>Le Beau!</i> The phrase is characteristic of the +peculiar +species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical +man of the world. His whole vision of life was coloured by it. His +sense +of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'—his +immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act +or character—an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics +and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic +reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is +surprising, +because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and +enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of +a +schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? Beyle, +for +instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of +himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'Il +respecta un seul homme: Napoléon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he +must +have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his +unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, +and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double +nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, +as +it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint.</p> +<p>In his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for +what is best and what is worst. When the two forces work in unison the +result is sometimes of extraordinary value—a product of a kind which it +would be difficult to parallel in any other author. An eye of icy gaze +is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love +are recorded in the language of Euclid. The image of the surgeon +inevitably suggests itself—the hand with the <a name="Page_232"></a>iron +nerve and the swift +knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. It is the intensity +of +Beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that +makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of +adventure or all the marvels of high romance. The passage in <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i> describing Count Mosca's jealousy has this +quality, +which appears even more clearly in the chapters of <i>Le Rouge et Le +Noir</i> +concerning Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. Here Beyle has a +subject after his own heart. The loves of the peasant youth and the +aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, +and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each +other—these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' +which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. The +climax +is reached when Mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws +herself into the arms of Julien, who forces himself to make no response:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort imposé par la politique +était pénible. Je ne dois pas même me permettre de +presser contre mon coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me +méprise, ou elle me maltraite. Quel affreux caractère!</p> +<p> Et en maudissant le caractère de Mathilde, il l'en aimait +cent fois plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine.</p> +<p> L'impassible froideur de Julien redoubla le malheur de Mademoiselle +de la Mole. Elle était loin d'avoir le sang-froid +nécessaire pour chercher à deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il +sentait pour elle en cet instant. Elle ne put se résoudre +à le regarder; elle tremblait de rencontrer l'expression du +mépris.</p> +<p> Assise sur le divan de la bibliothèque, immobile et la +tête tournée du côté opposé à +Julien, elle était en proie aux plus vives douleurs que +l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire éprouver à une +âme humaine. Dans quelle atroce démarche elle venait de +tomber!</p> +<p> Il m'était réservé, malheureuse que je suis! +de voir repoussées les avances les plus indécentes! Et +repoussées par qui? ajoutait l'orgueil fou de douleur, +repoussées par un domestique de mon père.</p> +<p> C'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle à haute voix.</p> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_233"></a>At that moment she suddenly sees some +unopened letters addressed to +Julien by another woman.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>—Ainsi, s'écria-t-elle hors d'elle-même, non seulement +vous êtes bien avec elle, mais encore vous la méprisez. +Vous, un homme de rien, mépriser Madame la Maréchale de +Fervaques!</p> +<p> —Ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant à ses +genoux, méprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus +vivre privée de ton amour. Et elle tomba tout à fait +évanouie.</p> +<p> —La voilà donc, cette orgueilleuse, à mes pieds! se +dit Julien.</p> +</div> +<p>Such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the +concentrated essence of Beyle's genius, and which, in its combination +of +high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim +comparison with the great dialogues of Corneille.</p> +<p>'Je fais tous les efforts possibles pour être <i>sec</i>,' he +says of +himself. 'Je veux imposer silence à mon coeur, qui croit avoir +beaucoup +à dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir écrit qu'un +soupir, quand je +crois avoir noté une vérité.' Often he succeeds, +but not always. At +times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages +with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his +sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in +an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot +keep +up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his +imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the +end +they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. When, in <i>La +Chartreuse de Parme</i>, Fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first +action is +to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured +by +a cut in the face; and Beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by +it. In the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the +brilliant, worldly, sceptical Duchesse de Sanseverina, and then, not +quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the +reigning Prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. This +really makes her perfect. But the most striking example of Beyle's +<a name="Page_234"></a>inability to resist the temptation of +sacrificing his head to his heart +is in the conclusion of <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i>, where Julien, to +be +revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down +into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. Not +only +is Beyle entranced by the <i>bravura</i> of this senseless piece of +brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial +observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero +the +blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of Julien's execution, +even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic +style: 'Jamais cette tête n'avait été aussi +poétique qu'au moment où +elle allait tomber.' Just as Beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an +extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he +expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally +characteristic quality of his compatriots—their instinctive +responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in +particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily +unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by +the +'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades +of +Napoleon, which animated the armies of France to victory, pieces of +nauseous clap-trap. And just now it is this side—to us the obviously +weak side—of Beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with French +critics. To judge from M. Barrès, writing dithyrambically of +Beyle's +'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. The +sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this +side of the Channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too!</p> +<p>The view of Beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen +with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. It is to these +that his most modern admirers devote their main attention—particularly +to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly +characteristic of their author, and—whatever the subject may be, from a +guide to Rome to a life of Napoleon—one gathers in them, scattered up +and down through their pages, a curious, <a name="Page_235"></a>dimly +adumbrated +philosophy—an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view—<i>le +Beylisme</i>. It is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality +that +their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. An +apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his +reflections upon Love. The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of +analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of +being a parody of <i>L'Esprit des Lois</i>, is yet full of +originality, of +lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have +written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so +stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But +here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is +interesting—one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of +La Bruyère's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred +pages of +disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as +one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless +and +problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any +exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in +spite of his <i>lo-gique</i>, ever to have framed a coherent +philosophy; it +is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, +and +quick visions of flying thoughts. M. Barrès says that what lies +at the +bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles +énergies.' But +there are many kinds of 'belles énergies,' and some of them +certainly do +not fit into the framework of 'le Beylisme.' 'Quand je suis +arrêté par +des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande +colère contre le gouvernement et le curé de l'endroit. +Quand au voleur, +il me plaît, s'il est énergique, car il m'amuse.' It was +the energy of +self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not +interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at +times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an +egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. +The +'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was no +respectable +epicureanism; it had about it a touch of <a name="Page_236"></a>the +fanatical. There was +anarchy in it—a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above +all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. Writing +his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on +the +joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at +Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI. His father +announced it:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>—C'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont +assassiné.</p> +<p> Je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai +éprouvé en ma vie. Le lecteur pensera peut-être que +je suis cruel, mais tel j'étais à 5 X 2, tel je suis +à 10 X 5 + 2 ... Je puis dire que l'approbation des êtres, +que je regarde comme faibles, m'est absolument indifférente.</p> +</div> +<p>These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are +constantly +recurring in his books. He is always discharging his shafts against +some +established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred +for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities—the Roman +Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly +hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, +and whose account of the seminary in <i>Le Rouge et Le Noir</i> is one +of the +most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of +the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a +prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern +thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of +Nietzsche. His love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, +his scorn of the Christian virtues, his admiration of the Italians of +the Renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the +herd—these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on +Rossini and the Coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past +and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a +surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of Zarathustra. The creator of +the Duchesse de Sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the +transvaluation of all values. <a name="Page_237"></a>Characteristically +enough, the appearance +of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces +in +European society—Goethe and the Austrian police. It is clear that +Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was +something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance +in +his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal,' he observed to +Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so. He is extremely free and +extremely impertinent, and ... I recommend you to buy all his books.' +As +for the Austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. Beyle's +book of travel, <i>Rome, Naples et Florence</i>, was, they decided, +pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was +hunted out of Milan in consequence.</p> +<p>It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private +life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices +were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have +committed an 'espagnolisme.' Perhaps his worst sin was that of +plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely +'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied +several choice extracts culled from the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. On +this +occasion he was particularly delighted, since the <i>Edinburgh</i>, in +reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the +very +passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer +should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not +inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his +love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, +so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be +found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, +capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, +covering +his papers with false names and anagrams—for the police, he said, were +on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and +less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was +he registered the fact—upon his braces. <a name="Page_238"></a>He +dreamed and drifted a great +deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, +wrote +the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up +his +mind whether Napoleon after all <i>was</i> the only being he +respected; +no—there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at +Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime +parfaite, +me fait songer à ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes +rêveries et me +fait venir des idées excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me +dissimuler que j'ai le malheur <i>of being too great an admirer of +Lady +L....</i>' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui +souvent encore remplissent ma tête à l'âge de <i>fifty-two</i>.' +He wondered +whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat +scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the +fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until +at +last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M. +Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing +to +perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough +to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the +satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen +by +the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or +the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since +the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more +cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was +never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late +at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be +very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he +said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, où la +conversation est +gaie, anecdotique, et où l'on prend du punch léger +à minuit et demie, +est l'endroit du monde où je me trouve le mieux.'</p> +<p>And in such a Paradise of Frenchmen we may leave Henri Beyle.</p> +<p>1914</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="LADY_HESTER_STANHOPE"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_241"></a>LADY +HESTER STANHOPE</h2> +<br> +<p>The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its +transmigrations +through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under +whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak +upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger—the rigid symbol of an +indomitable <i>hauteur</i>. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final +stage. +The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; +the +hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady +Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a +nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some +eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the +air.</p> +<p>Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the +child +of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, +which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate +results. +There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing +families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly +ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century +earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this +tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished +suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit +was +still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate.</p> +<p>She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl +Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the +first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the +House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings—'damned aristocratical +nonsense'—from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, <a + name="Page_242"></a>Chatham's +daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years +old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her +stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen +Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of +a +tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped +from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her +grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later, +Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his +death in 1806.</p> +<p>Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid +power, +were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the +movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her +uncle's +household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not +beautiful, she was fascinating—very tall, with a very fair and clear +complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful +expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those +days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you +saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was +devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was +devoted, too—but in a more dangerous fashion—to the intoxicating +Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which +she +carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something +overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. +Lord +Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could +never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her +distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to +Russia; +she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling +everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there +were +rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to +<i>afficher</i>, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the +slightest +provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a +terrible and unexpected catastrophe. <a name="Page_243"></a>Pitt died. +And Lady Hester +suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in +Montague Square on a pension of £1200 a year.</p> +<p>She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip +continued +to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was +announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was +whispered that Canning was 'le régnant'—that he was with her +'not only +all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became +attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry +him—as she seems to have asserted many years later—is doubtful; his +letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly +warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on +his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it +was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from +London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set +sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his +regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England.</p> +<p>There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought +of a +lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she +moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in +England—at last even in Europe—grew distasteful to her; as late as +1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or +three +English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private +physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly +and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She +was +conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. +After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered +that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted +accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by +Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to +visit +Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the +winter <a name="Page_244"></a>of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a +violent storm sprang up; the +whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a +bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty +hours. +Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in +safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's +career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping +raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman—a dress which she never +afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization.</p> +<p>She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her +appearance in +Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by +the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she +wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, +and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in +gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the +inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, +rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she +turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her +travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on +horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled +burnous. +Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she +absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through +various and dreadful sufferings—shipwreck and starvation, rats and +black-beetles unspeakable—but she retained her equanimity. Whatever +her Ladyship might think fit to be, <i>she</i> was an Englishwoman to +the +last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr.</p> +<p>Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most +fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in +man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was +begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. +'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the +<a name="Page_245"></a>city unveiled at midday. The population were +thunderstruck; but at last +their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was +hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out +before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not +satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious +and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins +of +Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever +seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she +preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs, +who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her +courage, +enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their +company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild +enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple +crowned +her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee +of +Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily +declined.</p> +<p>The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the +year +1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere +as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from +town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she +herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was +uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West—must she return to it? +The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable—but could +she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was +suddenly +struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne +in +upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the +slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and +took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she +dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began +excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden +treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having <a name="Page_246"></a>unearthed +nothing but +an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she +ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to +her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up +Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained +until her death, more than twenty years later.</p> +<p>Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her +wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her +existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was +sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great +mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying +courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a +rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with +the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one +the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, +through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was +revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over +the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence +brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar +grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature +of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely +the +tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of +£20 a +year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled +imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been +transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself +believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a +French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the +punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester +actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems +probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady +Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her +terrible neighbour, <a name="Page_247"></a>the Emir Beshyr, she +maintained an undaunted front. +She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as +physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might +have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe +admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain +is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared +and +loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, +became +at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she +awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter +Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred +horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last +triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an +Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go +there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her +own people.'</p> +<p>Her expenses were immense—not only for herself but for others, for +she +poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and +was +swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants +pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of +terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her +habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up +all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who +alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having +withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a +poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and +there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on—talk that scaled +the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an +abolished past—stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations +against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire—mingled +phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and +speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and +lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the <a + name="Page_248"></a>unaccountable +figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the +tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be +robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she +talked +on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that +the time was coming when she should talk no more?</p> +<p>Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of +her +brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends, +except Lord Hardwicke—with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose +kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the +English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and +harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled +her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable +disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, +filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of +it +all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady +regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours +together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household +before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more +and more involved—grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the +faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her +affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful, +miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten +the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from +the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the +payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious +missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of +Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return +to Europe, and he—how could he have done it?—obeyed her. Her health +was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, +absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her—we know +no more. She had vowed never again to <a name="Page_249"></a>pass +through the gate of her +house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden—that beautiful garden +which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and +its bowers—and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her +servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in +the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her +bed—inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air.</p> +<p>1919.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="MR_CREEVEY"></a> +<h2><a name="Page_253"></a>MR. CREEVEY</h2> +<br> +<p>Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone +knows, +she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt +to +be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she +is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have +provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances +she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run +round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good +lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her +drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. +They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists +of +the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose +function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events +and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is +Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio, +with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is +measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and +the little wretch did his job very well.</p> +<p>It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of +the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round +belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was +educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years +of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a +habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. +In +1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life—a member of +Parliament, a familiar figure in high <a name="Page_254"></a>society, +an insatiable gossip +with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place +he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the +greater part of his life his income was less than £200 a year. +But those +were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they +were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and +splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, +penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into +Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the +country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole +political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of +abuses, +he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and +ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was +relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but +Mrs. +Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, +and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence—without a house, +without servants, without property of any sort—wandering from country +mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at +last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with +a +pleasant little post which brought him in about £600 a year. +Apart from +these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was +static—static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always +on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; +but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by +no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round +into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he +would +gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the +wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was +before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an +observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his +tongue, and then—for so the Fates had decided—with his pen. He wrote +easily, spicily, <a name="Page_255"></a>and persistently; he had a +favourite stepdaughter, +with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have +preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of +course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's +exhilarating <i>pas de chat</i>.</p> +<p>Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There +are +no great names in his vocabulary—only nicknames: George III. is 'Old +Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell +'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is +sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old +Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog +along on £40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of +the great +Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his +scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his +own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course—Canning was all +perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual +confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious +and +hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne +was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' +'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them—they were either knaves or +imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides +passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership +of +the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man.</p> +<p>Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or +other, it +was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick +of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, +at +Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical +moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during +Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the +Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; +one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. +Blücher +and I have lost <a name="Page_256"></a>30,000 men. It has been a +damned nice thing—the +nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't +think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the +Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, +and +without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at +other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject. +'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he +speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not +ashamed to walk into the room with him.' </p> +<p>When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was +inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in +the +front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call +her Majesty, are characteristic:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown open, +and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance and +manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe she was as +much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is therefore with +much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest resemblance I can +recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy which you used to call +Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another toy of a rabbit or a cat, +whose tail you squeeze under its body, and then out it jumps in half a +minute off the ground into the air. The first of these toys you must +suppose to represent the person of the Queen; the latter the manner by +which she popped all at once into the House, made a <i>duck</i> at the +throne, another to the Peers, and a concluding jump into the chair +which was placed for her. Her dress was black figured gauze, with a +good deal of trimming, lace, &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly +episcopal; a handsome white veil, so thick as to make it very difficult +to me, who was as near to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back +for variety and inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few +straggling ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their +appearance were not her Majesty's own property.</p> +</div> +<p>Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the +presence of Royalty.</p> +<p>But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the <a + name="Page_257"></a>main stream of +his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat +pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself +extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest +during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose +hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable <i>verve</i>. 'This +house,' he +says at Raby, 'is itself <i>by far</i> the most magnificent and unique +in +several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of +anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in +one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of +the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At +Knowsley +'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height +that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are +two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles +over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about +the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground +floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow +furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which +cost £4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest +yellow +satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and +there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and +the +doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a +succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants +stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient +Ports. Wine +had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it +was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous +living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon +him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect. +Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a +little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for +a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain—except, to be sure, at King +Jog's. There, while the host was <a name="Page_258"></a>guzzling, the +guests starved. This was +too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for +breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as +could be,' fairly lost his temper.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell +me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he replied in +the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I turned to +Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the fuss and jaw of +the thing, I would leave the room and the house this instant'; and +dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He hears every word you say': +to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It was a regular scene.</p> +</div> +<p>A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding +himself +in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a +piece—excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat +butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., +wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.'</p> +<p>It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six +Acts, +of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed, +could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious +of the existence—of the possibility—of any mode of living other than +his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, +broiled +bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a +part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and +the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; +only +once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, +something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The +occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes:</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is <i>insane.</i> +He quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in +support of this infernal nuisance—the loco-motive Monster, carrying <i>eighty +tons</i> of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke and sulphur, coming +thro' every man's grounds between Manchester and Liverpool.</p> +</div> +<p><a name="Page_259"></a>His perturbation grew. He attended the +committee assiduously, but in +spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The +loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led +the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May +31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the +Monster.</p> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>Well—this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we had +a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters of the +Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us.</p> +</div> +<p>With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities +of +which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having +12 +oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.'</p> +<p>Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he +discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his +silk +ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed +to +increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr. +Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how +useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night +in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in +the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a +certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are +endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the +pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one +wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue +indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But +it could not be.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"><span>Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame;<br> +</span><span>Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons.<br> +</span></div> +</div> +<p>It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should +catch +a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, <a name="Page_260"></a>laughing, +eating, and +showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the +piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that +was +preparing for very different characters, and with a very different +style +of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey.</p> +<p>1919.</p> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="INDEX"></a> +<h2>INDEX</h2> +Algarotti, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a + href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +Arouet. <i>See</i> 'Voltaire'<br> +<br> +Bailey, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a + href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, +<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, +<a href="#Page_22">22</a><br> +Balzac, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a + href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a + href="#Page_227">227</a><br> +Barrès, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, +<a href="#Page_234">234</a><br> +Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Beddoes, Thos. Lovell, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_216">216</a><br> +Beethoven, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Berkeley, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Bernhardt, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br> +Bernières, Madame de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a + href="#Page_107">107</a><br> +Bernstorff, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Berry, Miss, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Beshyr, Emir, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Bessborough, Lady, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Bevan, Mr. C.D., <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Beyle, Henri, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Blake, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a + href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_190">190</a><br> +Blücher, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Boileau, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Bolingbroke, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a + href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Bonaparte, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Boswell, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br> +Boufflers, Comtesse de, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Boufflers, Marquise de, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Bourget, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Brandes, Dr., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br> +Brink, Mr. Ten, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +Broome, Major, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Brougham, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a><br> +Buffon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +Burke, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Butler, Bishop, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +<br> +Canning, George, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, +<a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Canning, Stratford, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Caraccioli, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Carlyle, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a + href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br> +Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br> +Carteret, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Castlereagh, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Cellini, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Chasot, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br> +Chateaubriand, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Châtelet, Madame du, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a + href="#Page_141">141</a>-<a href="#Page_143">143</a><br> +Chatham, Lady, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Chatham, Lord, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br> +Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Choiseul, Duc de, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br> +Choiseul, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, +<a href="#Page_86">86</a><br> +Chuquet, M., <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, +<a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Cicero, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br> +Cimarosa, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Claude, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br> +Coleridge, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a + href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Colles, Mr. Ramsay, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br> +Collins, Anthony, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Collins, Churton, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, +<a href="#Page_103">103</a><br> +Condillac, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Congreve, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Conti, Prince de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br> +Corneille, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br> +Correggio, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br> +Cowley, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Creevey, Mr., <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_260">260</a><br> +<br> +D'Alembert, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a + href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a + href="#Page_166">166</a><br> +Dante, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +d'Argens, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +d'Argental, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Darget, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Daru, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Davy, Sir Humphry, <a href="#Page_195">195</a><br> +Deffand, Madame du, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, +<a href="#Page_97">97</a><br> +Degen, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br> +d'Egmont, Madame, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Denham, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Denis, Madame, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br> +d'Epinay, Madame, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a + href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a><br> +Descartes, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br> +Desnoiresterres <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br> +Devonshire, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +d'Houdetot, Madame, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br> +Diderot, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a + href="#Page_175">175</a><br> +Diogenes, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Donne, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Dowden, Prof., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a + href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br> +Dryden, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a + href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Durham, Lord, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Ecklin, Dr., <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br> +Edgeworth, Miss, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br> +Euler, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +<br> +Falkener, Everard, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br> +Fielding, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br> +Flaubert, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Fleury, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br> +Fontenelle, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Foulet, M. Lucien, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, +<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br> +Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> +Fry, Mrs., <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a + href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Furnivall, Dr., <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +<br> +Gautier, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Gay, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br> +George III, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Gibbon, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a + href="#Page_80">80</a><br> +Gide, M. André, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a + href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br> +Goethe, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Gollancz, Sir I., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a><br> +Goncourts, De, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br> +Gosse, Mr., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a + href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a + href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br> +Gramont, Madame de, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br> +Granville, Lord, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Gray, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Grey, Lord, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Grimm, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a><br> +<br> +Hardwicke, Lord, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br> +Hegetschweiler, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br> +Helvétius, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Hénault, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Herrick, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> +Higginson, Edward, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br> +Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a + href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Hill, Mr., <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Hume, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a + href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a + href="#Page_169">169</a><br> +Huskisson, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Ingres, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br> +<br> +Johnson, Dr., <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a + href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a + href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a + href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Jordan, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br> +Jourdain, Mr., <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +<br> +Keats, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Kelsall, Thomas Forbes, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a + href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a + href="#Page_209">209</a><br> +Klopstock, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br> +Koenig, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +<br> +La Beaumelle, <a href="#Page_154">154</a><br> +Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, +<a href="#Page_194">194</a><br> +Lambton, <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br> +La Mettrie, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a + href="#Page_158">158</a><br> +Lanson, M., <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br> +Latimer, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br> +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br> +Lee, Sir Sidney, <a href="#Page_43">43</a><br> +Leibnitz, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br> +Lemaître, M., <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a + href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br> +Lemaur, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, +<a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a + href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br> +Locke, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a + href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a + href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Louis Philippe, <a href="#Page_222">222</a><br> +Louis XIV., <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br> +Lulli, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Luxembourg, Maréchale de, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a + href="#Page_83">83</a><br> +<br> +Macaulay, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br> +Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, <a + href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a + href="#Page_173">173</a><br> +Maine, Duchesse du, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Malherbe, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br> +Marlborough, Duke of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +Marlowe, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br> +Massillon, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Matignon, Marquis de, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Maupertuis, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a + href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a + href="#Page_161">161</a><br> +Mehemet Ali, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br> +Mérimée, Prosper, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br> +Meryon, Dr., <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, +<a href="#Page_248">248</a><br> +Middleton, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Milton, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a + href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Mirepoix, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br> +Mirepoix, Maréchale de, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +Molière, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br> +Moncrif, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br> +Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br> +Montespan, Madame de, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br> +Montesquieu, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a + href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Moore, Sir John, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br> +Morley, Lord, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, +<a href="#Page_172">172</a><br> +Moses, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br> +Mozart, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Musset, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +<br> +Napoleon, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a + href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a + href="#Page_238">238</a><br> +Necker, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Nelson, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, +<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br> +<br> +Pascal, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br> +Pater, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br> +Peterborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br> +Pitt, William, the younger, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a + href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br> +Plato, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br> +Pöllnitz, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br> +Pompadour, Madame de, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br> +Pont-de-Veyle, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Pope, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a + href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a + href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Prie, Madame de, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, +<a href="#Page_96">96</a><br> +Prior, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Proctor, Bryan Waller, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a + href="#Page_203">203</a><br> +Puffendorf, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br> +<br> +Quinault, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +<br> +Racine, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a + href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>-<a + href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a + href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, +<a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br> +Regent, the Prince, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +Reni, Guido, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br> +Reynolds, Sir Joshua, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, +<a href="#Page_188">188</a><br> +Richardson, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br> +Richelieu, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br> +Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier de, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a + href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br> +Rossetti, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Rousseau, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a + href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a><br> +Rubens, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> +Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +<br> +Sainte-Beuve, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a + href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a + href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br> +Saint-Lambert, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br> +Saint-Simon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a + href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Sampson, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_183">183</a><br> +Sanadon, Mlle., <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br> +Shaftesbury, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br> +Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a + href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>-<a + href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a + href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a + href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Shelley, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br> +Sheridan, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><br> +Sophocles, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br> +Spenser, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Stanhope, Lady Hester, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a href="#Page_249">249</a><br> +'Stendhal.' <i>See</i> Beyle, Henri<br> +Stephen, Sir James, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br> +Sully, Duc de, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br> +Swift, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a + href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Swinburne, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> +<br> +Taine, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a><br> +Thévenart, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br> +Thomson, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br> +Tindal, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Toland, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Tolstoi, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br> +Toynbee, Mrs. Paget, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a>, +<a href="#Page_75">75</a><br> +Turgot, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br> +<br> +Velasquez, <a href="#Page_34">34</a><br> +Vigny, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br> +Virgil, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br> +Voltaire, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a + href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a + href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>-<a + href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>-<a + href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a + href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a + href="#Page_188">188</a><br> +<br> +Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, +<a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a + href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, +<a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_80">80</a>, +<a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a + href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a + href="#Page_106">106</a><br> +Webster, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br> +Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br> +White, W.A., <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br> +Winckelmann, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br> +Wolf, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br> +Wollaston, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Woolston, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br> +Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a + href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a><br> +Würtemberg, Duke of, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br> +<br> +Yonge, Miss, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br> +Young, Dr., <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br> +<br> +Zola, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a + href="#Page_228">228</a><br> +<br> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12478-h.htm or 12478-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/4/7/12478/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Books and Characters + French and English + +Author: Lytton Strachey + +Release Date: May 30, 2004 [EBook #12478] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +BOOKS & CHARACTERS + +FRENCH & ENGLISH + +_By_ + +LYTTON STRACHEY + + +LONDON + +First published May 1922 + + + + +TO JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES + + + + +_The following papers are reprinted by kind permission of the Editors +of the Independent Review, the New Quarterly, the Athenaeum, and the +Edinburgh Review._ + +_The 'Dialogue' is now printed for the first time, from a manuscript, +apparently in the handwriting of Voltaire and belonging to his English +period_. + + + + +CONTENTS + +RACINE 3 +SIR THOMAS BROWNE 27 +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD 41 +THE LIVES OF THE POETS 59 +MADAME DU DEFFAND 67 +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND 93 +A DIALOGUE 115 +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES 121 +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT 137 +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR 165 +THE POETRY OF BLAKE 179 +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN 193 +HENRI BEYLE 219 +LADY HESTER STANHOPE 241 +MR. CREEVEY 253 +INDEX 261 + + + + +RACINE + + +When Ingres painted his vast 'Apotheosis of Homer,' he represented, +grouped round the central throne, all the great poets of the ancient and +modern worlds, with a single exception--Shakespeare. After some +persuasion, he relented so far as to introduce into his picture a _part_ +of that offensive personage; and English visitors at the Louvre can now +see, to their disgust or their amusement, the truncated image of rather +less than half of the author of _King Lear_ just appearing at the +extreme edge of the enormous canvas. French taste, let us hope, has +changed since the days of Ingres; Shakespeare would doubtless now be +advanced--though perhaps chiefly from a sense of duty--to the very steps +of the central throne. But if an English painter were to choose a +similar subject, how would he treat the master who stands acknowledged +as the most characteristic representative of the literature of France? +Would Racine find a place in the picture at all? Or, if he did, would +more of him be visible than the last curl of his full-bottomed wig, +whisking away into the outer darkness? + +There is something inexplicable about the intensity of national tastes +and the violence of national differences. If, as in the good old days, I +could boldly believe a Frenchman to be an inferior creature, while he, +as simply, wrote me down a savage, there would be an easy end of the +matter. But alas! _nous avons change tout cela_. Now we are each of us +obliged to recognise that the other has a full share of intelligence, +ability, and taste; that the accident of our having been born on +different sides of the Channel is no ground for supposing either that I +am a brute or that he is a ninny. But, in that case, how does it happen +that while on one side of that 'span of waters' Racine is despised and +Shakespeare is worshipped, on the other, Shakespeare is tolerated and +Racine is adored? The perplexing question was recently emphasised and +illustrated in a singular way. Mr. John Bailey, in a volume of essays +entitled 'The Claims of French Poetry,' discussed the qualities of +Racine at some length, placed him, not without contumely, among the +second rank of writers, and drew the conclusion that, though indeed the +merits of French poetry are many and great, it is not among the pages of +Racine that they are to be found. Within a few months of the appearance +of Mr. Bailey's book, the distinguished French writer and brilliant +critic, M. Lemaitre, published a series of lectures on Racine, in which +the highest note of unqualified panegyric sounded uninterruptedly from +beginning to end. The contrast is remarkable, and the conflicting +criticisms seem to represent, on the whole, the views of the cultivated +classes in the two countries. And it is worthy of note that neither of +these critics pays any heed, either explicitly or by implication, to the +opinions of the other. They are totally at variance, but they argue +along lines so different and so remote that they never come into +collision. Mr. Bailey, with the utmost sang-froid, sweeps on one side +the whole of the literary tradition of France. It is as if a French +critic were to assert that Shakespeare, the Elizabethans, and the +romantic poets of the nineteenth century were all negligible, and that +England's really valuable contribution to the poetry of the world was to +be found among the writings of Dryden and Pope. M. Lemaitre, on the +other hand, seems sublimely unconscious that any such views as Mr. +Bailey's could possibly exist. Nothing shows more clearly Racine's +supreme dominion over his countrymen than the fact that M. Lemaitre +never questions it for a moment, and tacitly assumes on every page of +his book that his only duty is to illustrate and amplify a greatness +already recognised by all. Indeed, after reading M. Lemaitre's book, one +begins to understand more clearly why it is that English critics find it +difficult to appreciate to the full the literature of France. It is no +paradox to say that that country is as insular as our own. When we find +so eminent a critic as M. Lemaitre observing that Racine 'a vraiment +"acheve" et porte a son point supreme de perfection _la tragedie_, cette +etonnante forme d'art, et qui est bien de chez nous: car on la trouve +peu chez les Anglais,' is it surprising that we should hastily jump to +the conclusion that the canons and the principles of a criticism of this +kind will not repay, and perhaps do not deserve, any careful +consideration? Certainly they are not calculated to spare the +susceptibilities of Englishmen. And, after all, this is only natural; a +French critic addresses a French audience; like a Rabbi in a synagogue, +he has no need to argue and no wish to convert. Perhaps, too, whether he +willed or no, he could do very little to the purpose; for the +difficulties which beset an Englishman in his endeavours to appreciate a +writer such as Racine are precisely of the kind which a Frenchman is +least able either to dispel or even to understand. The object of this +essay is, first, to face these difficulties, with the aid of Mr. +Bailey's paper, which sums up in an able and interesting way the average +English view of the matter; and, in the second place, to communicate to +the English reader a sense of the true significance and the immense +value of Racine's work. Whether the attempt succeed or fail, some +important general questions of literary doctrine will have been +discussed; and, in addition, at least an effort will have been made to +vindicate a great reputation. For, to a lover of Racine, the fact that +English critics of Mr. Bailey's calibre can write of him as they do, +brings a feeling not only of entire disagreement, but of almost personal +distress. Strange as it may seem to those who have been accustomed to +think of that great artist merely as a type of the frigid pomposity of +an antiquated age, his music, to ears that are attuned to hear it, comes +fraught with a poignancy of loveliness whose peculiar quality is shared +by no other poetry in the world. To have grown familiar with the voice +of Racine, to have realised once and for all its intensity, its beauty, +and its depth, is to have learnt a new happiness, to have discovered +something exquisite and splendid, to have enlarged the glorious +boundaries of art. For such benefits as these who would not be grateful? +Who would not seek to make them known to others, that they too may +enjoy, and render thanks? + +M. Lemaitre, starting out, like a native of the mountains, from a point +which can only be reached by English explorers after a long journey and +a severe climb, devotes by far the greater part of his book to a series +of brilliant psychological studies of Racine's characters. He leaves on +one side almost altogether the questions connected both with Racine's +dramatic construction, and with his style; and these are the very +questions by which English readers are most perplexed, and which they +are most anxious to discuss. His style in particular--using the word in +its widest sense--forms the subject of the principal part of Mr. +Bailey's essay; it is upon this count that the real force of Mr. +Bailey's impeachment depends; and, indeed, it is obvious that no poet +can be admired or understood by those who quarrel with the whole fabric +of his writing and condemn the very principles of his art. Before, +however, discussing this, the true crux of the question, it may be well +to consider briefly another matter which deserves attention, because the +English reader is apt to find in it a stumbling-block at the very outset +of his inquiry. Coming to Racine with Shakespeare and the rest of the +Elizabethans warm in his memory, it is only to be expected that he +should be struck with a chilling sense of emptiness and unreality. After +the colour, the moving multiplicity, the imaginative luxury of our early +tragedies, which seem to have been moulded out of the very stuff of life +and to have been built up with the varied and generous structure of +Nature herself, the Frenchman's dramas, with their rigid uniformity of +setting, their endless duologues, their immense harangues, their +spectral confidants, their strict exclusion of all visible action, give +one at first the same sort of impression as a pretentious +pseudo-classical summer-house appearing suddenly at the end of a vista, +after one has been rambling through an open forest. 'La scene est a +Buthrote, ville d'Epire, dans une salle du palais de Pyrrhus'--could +anything be more discouraging than such an announcement? Here is nothing +for the imagination to feed on, nothing to raise expectation, no +wondrous vision of 'blasted heaths,' or the 'seaboard of Bohemia'; here +is only a hypothetical drawing-room conjured out of the void for five +acts, simply in order that the persons of the drama may have a place to +meet in and make their speeches. The 'three unities' and the rest of the +'rules' are a burden which the English reader finds himself quite +unaccustomed to carry; he grows impatient of them; and, if he is a +critic, he points out the futility and the unreasonableness of those +antiquated conventions. Even Mr. Bailey, who, curiously enough, believes +that Racine 'stumbled, as it were, half by accident into great +advantages' by using them, speaks of the 'discredit' into which 'the +once famous unities' have now fallen, and declares that 'the unities of +time and place are of no importance in themselves.' So far as critics +are concerned this may be true; but critics are apt to forget that plays +can exist somewhere else than in books, and a very small acquaintance +with contemporary drama is enough to show that, upon the stage at any +rate, the unities, so far from having fallen into discredit, are now in +effect triumphant. For what is the principle which underlies and +justifies the unities of time and place? Surely it is not, as Mr. Bailey +would have us believe, that of the 'unity of action or interest,' for it +is clear that every good drama, whatever its plan of construction, must +possess a single dominating interest, and that it may happen--as in +_Antony and Cleopatra_, for instance--that the very essence of this +interest lies in the accumulation of an immense variety of local +activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true +justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the +conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis--the vision, +thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final +catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the +views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only +the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it +was the effect; they traced, with elaborate and abounding detail, the +rise, the growth, the decline, and the ruin of great causes and great +persons; and the result was a series of masterpieces unparalleled in the +literature of the world. But, for good or evil, these methods have +become obsolete, and to-day our drama seems to be developing along +totally different lines. It is playing the part, more and more +consistently, of the bull's-eye lantern; it is concerned with the +crisis, and nothing but the crisis; and, in proportion as its field is +narrowed and its vision intensified, the unities of time and place come +more and more completely into play. Thus, from the point of view of +form, it is true to say that it has been the drama of Racine rather than +that of Shakespeare that has survived. Plays of the type of _Macbeth_ +have been superseded by plays of the type of _Britannicus_. +_Britannicus_, no less than _Macbeth_, is the tragedy of a criminal; but +it shows us, instead of the gradual history of the temptation and the +fall, followed by the fatal march of consequences, nothing but the +precise psychological moment in which the first irrevocable step is +taken, and the criminal is made. The method of _Macbeth_ has been, as it +were, absorbed by that of the modern novel; the method of _Britannicus_ +still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more rigorously +and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his +attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of +importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the +English reader--the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the +absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action--was no more +than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, and +for doing away with every side issue and every chance of distraction. +His dramas must be read as one looks at an airy, delicate statue, +supported by artificial props, whose only importance lies in the fact +that without them the statue itself would break in pieces and fall to +the ground. Approached in this light, even the 'salle du palais de +Pyrrhus' begins to have a meaning. We come to realise that, if it is +nothing else, it is at least the meeting-ground of great passions, the +invisible framework for one of those noble conflicts which 'make one +little room an everywhere.' It will show us no views, no spectacles, it +will give us no sense of atmosphere or of imaginative romance; but it +will allow us to be present at the climax of a tragedy, to follow the +closing struggle of high destinies, and to witness the final agony of +human hearts. + +It is remarkable that Mr. Bailey, while seeming to approve of the +classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him +for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical +form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in +the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of +human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects which +Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the +range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction +of a small group of persons at the culminating height of its intensity; +and it is as irrational to complain of his failure to introduce into his +compositions 'the whole pell-mell of human existence' as it would be to +find fault with a Mozart quartet for not containing the orchestration of +Wagner. But it is a little difficult to make certain of the precise +nature of Mr. Bailey's criticism. When he speaks of Racine's vision not +including 'the whole of life,' when he declares that Racine cannot be +reckoned as one of the 'world-poets,' he seems to be taking somewhat +different ground and discussing a more general question. All truly great +poets, he asserts, have 'a wide view of humanity,' 'a large view of +life'--a profound sense, in short, of the relations between man and the +universe; and, since Racine is without this quality, his claim to true +poetic greatness must be denied. But, even upon the supposition that +this view of Racine's philosophical outlook is the true one--and, in its +most important sense, I believe that it is not--does Mr. Bailey's +conclusion really follow? Is it possible to test a poet's greatness by +the largeness of his 'view of life'? How wide, one would like to know, +was Milton's 'view of humanity'? And, though Wordsworth's sense of the +position of man in the universe was far more profound than Dante's, who +will venture to assert that he was the greater poet? The truth is that +we have struck here upon a principle which lies at the root, not only of +Mr. Bailey's criticism of Racine, but of an entire critical method--the +method which attempts to define the essential elements of poetry in +general, and then proceeds to ask of any particular poem whether it +possesses these elements, and to judge it accordingly. How often this +method has been employed, and how often it has proved disastrously +fallacious! For, after all, art is not a superior kind of chemistry, +amenable to the rules of scientific induction. Its component parts +cannot be classified and tested, and there is a spark within it which +defies foreknowledge. When Matthew Arnold declared that the value of a +new poem might be gauged by comparing it with the greatest passages in +the acknowledged masterpieces of literature, he was falling into this +very error; for who could tell that the poem in question was not itself +a masterpiece, living by the light of an unknown beauty, and a law unto +itself? It is the business of the poet to break rules and to baffle +expectation; and all the masterpieces in the world cannot make a +precedent. Thus Mr. Bailey's attempts to discover, by quotations from +Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Goethe, the qualities without which no poet +can be great, and his condemnation of Racine because he is without them, +is a fallacy in criticism. There is only one way to judge a poet, as +Wordsworth, with that paradoxical sobriety so characteristic of him, has +pointed out--and that is, by loving him. But Mr. Bailey, with regard to +Racine at any rate, has not followed the advice of Wordsworth. Let us +look a little more closely into the nature of his attack. + +'L'epithete rare,' said the De Goncourts,'voila la marque de +l'ecrivain.' Mr. Bailey quotes the sentence with approval, observing +that if, with Sainte-Beuve, we extend the phrase to 'le mot rare,' we +have at once one of those invaluable touch-stones with which we may test +the merit of poetry. And doubtless most English readers would be +inclined to agree with Mr. Bailey, for it so happens that our own +literature is one in which rarity of style, pushed often to the verge of +extravagance, reigns supreme. Owing mainly, no doubt, to the double +origin of our language, with its strange and violent contrasts between +the highly-coloured crudity of the Saxon words and the ambiguous +splendour of the Latin vocabulary; owing partly, perhaps, to a national +taste for the intensely imaginative, and partly, too, to the vast and +penetrating influence of those grand masters of bizarrerie--the Hebrew +Prophets--our poetry, our prose, and our whole conception of the art of +writing have fallen under the dominion of the emphatic, the +extraordinary, and the bold. No one in his senses would regret this, for +it has given our literature all its most characteristic glories, and, of +course, in Shakespeare, with whom expression is stretched to the +bursting point, the national style finds at once its consummate example +and its final justification. But the result is that we have grown so +unused to other kinds of poetical beauty, that we have now come to +believe, with Mr. Bailey, that poetry apart from 'le mot rare' is an +impossibility. The beauties of restraint, of clarity, of refinement, and +of precision we pass by unheeding; we can see nothing there but coldness +and uniformity; and we go back with eagerness to the fling and the +bravado that we love so well. It is as if we had become so accustomed to +looking at boxers, wrestlers, and gladiators that the sight of an +exquisite minuet produced no effect on us; the ordered dance strikes us +as a monotony, for we are blind to the subtle delicacies of the dancers, +which are fraught with such significance to the practised eye. But let +us be patient, and let us look again. + + Ariane ma soeur, de quel amour blessee, + Vous mourutes aux bords ou vous futes laissee. + +Here, certainly, are no 'mots rares'; here is nothing to catch the mind +or dazzle the understanding; here is only the most ordinary vocabulary, +plainly set forth. But is there not an enchantment? Is there not a +vision? Is there not a flow of lovely sound whose beauty grows upon the +ear, and dwells exquisitely within the memory? Racine's triumph is +precisely this--that he brings about, by what are apparently the +simplest means, effects which other poets must strain every nerve to +produce. The narrowness of his vocabulary is in fact nothing but a proof +of his amazing art. In the following passage, for instance, what a sense +of dignity and melancholy and power is conveyed by the commonest words! + + Enfin j'ouvre les yeux, et je me fais justice: + C'est faire a vos beautes un triste sacrifice + Que de vous presenter, madame, avec ma foi, + Tout l'age et le malheur que je traine avec moi. + Jusqu'ici la fortune et la victoire memes + Cachaient mes cheveux blancs sous trente diademes. + Mais ce temps-la n'est plus: je regnais; et je fuis: + Mes ans se sont accrus; mes honneurs sont detruits. + +Is that wonderful 'trente' an 'epithete rare'? Never, surely, before or +since, was a simple numeral put to such a use--to conjure up so +triumphantly such mysterious grandeurs! But these are subtleties which +pass unnoticed by those who have been accustomed to the violent appeals +of the great romantic poets. As Sainte-Beuve says, in a fine comparison +between Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is +like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At +first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'eclatante verite pittoresque du +grand maitre flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste francais qu'un ton assez +uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pale et douce lumiere. Mais qu'on +approche de plus pres et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines +vont eclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce +tissu profond et serre; on ne peut plus en detacher ses yeux.' + +Similarly when Mr. Bailey, turning from the vocabulary to more general +questions of style, declares that there is no 'element of fine +surprise' in Racine, no trace of the 'daring metaphors and similes of +Pindar and the Greek choruses--the reply is that he would find what he +wants if he only knew where to look for it. 'Who will forget,' he says, +'the comparison of the Atreidae to the eagles wheeling over their empty +nest, of war to the money-changer whose gold dust is that of human +bodies, of Helen to the lion's whelps?... Everyone knows these. Who will +match them among the formal elegances of Racine?' And it is true that +when Racine wished to create a great effect he did not adopt the +romantic method; he did not chase his ideas through the four quarters of +the universe to catch them at last upon the verge of the inane; and +anyone who hopes to come upon 'fine surprises' of this kind in his pages +will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the +daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out +of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus +many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration +of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in +the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon the mind. + + C'etait pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit. + +The sentence is like a cavern whose mouth a careless traveller might +pass by, but which opens out, to the true explorer, into vista after +vista of strange recesses rich with inexhaustible gold. But, sometimes, +the phrase, compact as dynamite, explodes upon one with an immediate and +terrific force-- + + C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee! + +A few 'formal elegances' of this kind are surely worth having. + +But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognise the +beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack of +extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis +and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of +his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic--its +suppression of detail. The great majority of poets--and especially of +English poets--produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of +details--details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty +or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details +Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words +which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our +minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been +accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of +significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more +marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few +expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate +reality. When Shakespeare wishes to describe a silent night he does so +with a single stroke of detail--'not a mouse stirring'! And Virgil adds +touch upon touch of exquisite minutiae: + + Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, + Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis + Rura tenent, etc. + +Racine's way is different, but is it less masterly? + + Mais tout dort, et l'armee, et les vents, et Neptune. + +What a flat and feeble set of expressions! is the Englishman's first +thought--with the conventional 'Neptune,' and the vague 'armee,' and the +commonplace 'vents.' And he forgets to notice the total impression which +these words produce--the atmosphere of darkness and emptiness and +vastness and ominous hush. + +It is particularly in regard to Racine's treatment of nature that this +generalised style creates misunderstandings. 'Is he so much as aware,' +exclaims Mr. Bailey, 'that the sun rises and sets in a glory of colour, +that the wind plays deliciously on human cheeks, that the human ear will +never have enough of the music of the sea? He might have written every +page of his work without so much as looking out of the window of his +study.' The accusation gains support from the fact that Racine rarely +describes the processes of nature by means of pictorial detail; that, we +know, was not his plan. But he is constantly, with his subtle art, +suggesting them. In this line, for instance, he calls up, without a word +of definite description, the vision of a sudden and brilliant sunrise: + + Deja le jour plus grand nous frappe et nous eclaire. + +And how varied and beautiful are his impressions of the sea! He can give +us the desolation of a calm: + + La rame inutile + Fatigua vainement une mer immobile; + +or the agitated movements of a great fleet of galleys: + + Voyez tout l'Hellespont blanchissant sous nos rames; + +or he can fill his verses with the disorder and the fury of a storm: + + Quoi! pour noyer les Grecs et leurs mille vaisseaux, + Mer, tu n'ouvriras pas des abymes nouveaux! + Quoi! lorsque les chassant du port qui les recele, + L'Aulide aura vomi leur flotte criminelle, + Les vents, les memes vents, si longtemps accuses, + Ne te couvriront pas de ses vaisseaux brises! + +And then, in a single line, he can evoke the radiant spectacle of a +triumphant flotilla riding the dancing waves: + + Prets a vous recevoir mes vaisseaux vous attendent; + Et du pied de l'autel vous y pouvez monter, + Souveraine des mers qui vous doivent porter. + +The art of subtle suggestion could hardly go further than in this line, +where the alliterating v's, the mute e's, and the placing of the long +syllables combine so wonderfully to produce the required effect. + +But it is not only suggestions of nature that readers like Mr. Bailey +are unable to find in Racine--they miss in him no less suggestions of +the mysterious and the infinite. No doubt this is partly due to our +English habit of associating these qualities with expressions which are +complex and unfamiliar. When we come across the mysterious accent of +fatality and remote terror in a single perfectly simple phrase-- + + La fille de Minos et de Pasiphae + +we are apt not to hear that it is there. But there is another +reason--the craving, which has seized upon our poetry and our criticism +ever since the triumph of Wordsworth and Coleridge at the beginning of +the last century, for metaphysical stimulants. It would be easy to +prolong the discussion of this matter far beyond the boundaries of +'sublunary debate,' but it is sufficient to point out that Mr. Bailey's +criticism of Racine affords an excellent example of the fatal effects of +this obsession. His pages are full of references to 'infinity' and 'the +unseen' and 'eternity' and 'a mystery brooding over a mystery' and 'the +key to the secret of life'; and it is only natural that he should find +in these watchwords one of those tests of poetic greatness of which he +is so fond. The fallaciousness of such views as these becomes obvious +when we remember the plain fact that there is not a trace of this kind +of mystery or of these 'feelings after the key to the secret of life,' +in _Paradise Lost_, and that _Paradise Lost_ is one of the greatest +poems in the world. But Milton is sacrosanct in England; no theory, +however mistaken, can shake that stupendous name, and the damage which +may be wrought by a vicious system of criticism only becomes evident in +its treatment of writers like Racine, whom it can attack with impunity +and apparent success. There is no 'mystery' in Racine--that is to say, +there are no metaphysical speculations in him, no suggestions of the +transcendental, no hints as to the ultimate nature of reality and the +constitution of the world; and so away with him, a creature of mere +rhetoric and ingenuities, to the outer limbo! But if, instead of asking +what a writer is without, we try to discover simply what he is, will not +our results be more worthy of our trouble? And in fact, if we once put +out of our heads our longings for the mystery of metaphysical +suggestion, the more we examine Racine, the more clearly we shall +discern in him another kind of mystery, whose presence may eventually +console us for the loss of the first--the mystery of the mind of man. +This indeed is the framework of his poetry, and to speak of it +adequately would demand a wider scope than that of an essay; for how +much might be written of that strange and moving background, dark with +the profundity of passion and glowing with the beauty of the sublime, +wherefrom the great personages of his tragedies--Hermione and +Mithridate, Roxane and Agrippine, Athalie and Phedre--seem to emerge for +a moment towards us, whereon they breathe and suffer, and among whose +depths they vanish for ever from our sight! Look where we will, we shall +find among his pages the traces of an inward mystery and the obscure +infinities of the heart. + + Nous avons su toujours nous aimer et nous taire. + +The line is a summary of the romance and the anguish of two lives. That +is all affection; and this all desire-- + + J'aimais jusqu'a ses pleurs que je faisais couler. + +Or let us listen to the voice of Phedre, when she learns that Hippolyte +and Aricie love one another: + + Les a-t-on vus souvent se parler, se chercher? + Dans le fond des forets alloient-ils se cacher? + Helas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence; + Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence; + Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux; + Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins pour eux. + +This last line--written, let us remember, by a frigidly ingenious +rhetorician, who had never looked out of his study-window--does it not +seem to mingle, in a trance of absolute simplicity, the peerless beauty +of a Claude with the misery and ruin of a great soul? + +It is, perhaps, as a psychologist that Racine has achieved his most +remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a +critic as M. Lemaitre has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume +to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's +portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality +with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending +more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the +combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing knowledge, and +his unerring fidelity to truth. M. Lemaitre, in fact, goes so far as to +describe Racine as a supreme realist, while other writers have found in +him the essence of the modern spirit. These are vague phrases, no doubt, +but they imply a very definite point of view; and it is curious to +compare with it our English conception of Racine as a stiff and pompous +kind of dancing-master, utterly out of date and infinitely cold. And +there is a similar disagreement over his style. Mr. Bailey is never +tired of asserting that Racine's style is rhetorical, artificial, and +monotonous; while M. Lemaitre speaks of it as 'nu et familier,' and +Sainte-Beuve says 'il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes,' The +explanation of these contradictions is to be found in the fact that the +two critics are considering different parts of the poet's work. When +Racine is most himself, when he is seizing upon a state of mind and +depicting it with all its twistings and vibrations, he writes with a +directness which is indeed naked, and his sentences, refined to the +utmost point of significance, flash out like swords, stroke upon stroke, +swift, certain, irresistible. This is how Agrippine, in the fury of her +tottering ambition, bursts out to Burrhus, the tutor of her son: + + Pretendez-vous longtemps me cacher l'empereur? + Ne le verrai-je plus qu'a titre d'importune? + Ai-je donc eleve si haut votre fortune + Pour mettre une barriere entre mon fils et moi? + Ne l'osez-vous laisser un moment sur sa foi? + Entre Seneque et vous disputez-vous la gloire + A qui m'effacera plus tot de sa memoire? + Vous l'ai-je confie pour en faire un ingrat, + Pour etre, sous son nom, les maitres de l'etat? + Certes, plus je medite, et moins je me figure + Que vous m'osiez compter pour votre creature; + Vous, dont j'ai pu laisser vieillir l'ambition + Dans les honneurs obscurs de quelque legion; + Et moi, qui sur le trone ai suivi mes ancetres, + Moi, fille, femme, soeur, et mere de vos maitres! + +When we come upon a passage like this we know, so to speak, that the +hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on +other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, +artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of +high-sounding words and elaborate inversions. + + Jamais l'aimable soeur des cruels Pallantides + Trempa-t-elle aux complots de ses freres perfides. + +That is Racine's way of saying that Aricie did not join in her brothers' +conspiracy. He will describe an incriminating letter as 'De sa trahison +ce gage trop sincere.' It is obvious that this kind of expression has +within it the germs of the 'noble' style of the eighteenth-century +tragedians, one of whom, finding himself obliged to mention a dog, got +out of the difficulty by referring to--'De la fidelite le respectable +appui.' This is the side of Racine's writing that puzzles and disgusts +Mr. Bailey. But there is a meaning in it, after all. Every art is based +upon a selection, and the art of Racine selected the things of the +spirit for the material of its work. The things of sense--physical +objects and details, and all the necessary but insignificant facts that +go to make up the machinery of existence--these must be kept out of the +picture at all hazards. To have called a spade a spade would have ruined +the whole effect; spades must never be mentioned, or, at the worst, they +must be dimly referred to as agricultural implements, so that the entire +attention may be fixed upon the central and dominating features of the +composition--the spiritual states of the characters--which, laid bare +with uncompromising force and supreme precision, may thus indelibly +imprint themselves upon the mind. To condemn Racine on the score of his +ambiguities and his pomposities is to complain of the hastily dashed-in +column and curtain in the background of a portrait, and not to mention +the face. Sometimes indeed his art seems to rise superior to its own +conditions, endowing even the dross and refuse of what it works in with +a wonderful significance. Thus when the Sultana, Roxane, discovers her +lover's treachery, her mind flies immediately to thoughts of revenge and +death, and she exclaims-- + + Ah! je respire enfin, et ma joie est extreme + Que le traitre une fois se soit trahi lui-meme. + Libre des soins cruels ou j'allais m'engager, + Ma tranquille fureur n'a plus qu'a se venger. + Qu'il meure. Vengeons-nous. Courez. Qu'on le saisisse! + Que la main des muets s'arme pour son supplice; + Qu'ils viennent preparer ces noeuds infortunes + Par qui de ses pareils les jours sont termines. + +To have called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and +Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in +such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. +She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches the extremity of +virulent resolution; and then her mind begins to waver, and she finally +orders the execution of the man she loves, in a contorted agony of +speech. + +But, as a rule, Racine's characters speak out most clearly when they are +most moved, so that their words, at the height of passion, have an +intensity of directness unknown in actual life. In such moments, the +phrases that leap to their lips quiver and glow with the compressed +significance of character and situation; the 'Qui te l'a dit?' of +Hermione, the 'Sortez' of Roxane, the 'Je vais a Rome' of Mithridate, +the 'Dieu des Juifs, tu l'emportes!' of Athalie--who can forget these +things, these wondrous microcosms of tragedy? Very different is the +Shakespearean method. There, as passion rises, expression becomes more +and more poetical and vague. Image flows into image, thought into +thought, until at last the state of mind is revealed, inform and +molten, driving darkly through a vast storm of words. Such revelations, +no doubt, come closer to reality than the poignant epigrams of Racine. +In life, men's minds are not sharpened, they are diffused, by emotion; +and the utterance which best represents them is fluctuating and +agglomerated rather than compact and defined. But Racine's aim was less +to reflect the actual current of the human spirit than to seize upon its +inmost being and to give expression to that. One might be tempted to say +that his art represents the sublimed essence of reality, save that, +after all, reality has no degrees. Who can affirm that the wild +ambiguities of our hearts and the gross impediments of our physical +existence are less real than the most pointed of our feelings and +'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'? + +It would be nearer the truth to rank Racine among the idealists. The +world of his creation is not a copy of our own; it is a heightened and +rarefied extension of it; moving, in triumph and in beauty, through 'an +ampler ether, a diviner air.' It is a world where the hesitations and +the pettinesses and the squalors of this earth have been fired out; a +world where ugliness is a forgotten name, and lust itself has grown +ethereal; where anguish has become a grace and death a glory, and love +the beginning and the end of all. It is, too, the world of a poet, so +that we reach it, not through melody nor through vision, but through the +poet's sweet articulation--through verse. Upon English ears the rhymed +couplets of Racine sound strangely; and how many besides Mr. Bailey have +dubbed his alexandrines 'monotonous'! But to his lovers, to those who +have found their way into the secret places of his art, his lines are +impregnated with a peculiar beauty, and the last perfection of style. +Over them, the most insignificant of his verses can throw a deep +enchantment, like the faintest wavings of a magician's wand. 'A-t-on vu +de ma part le roi de Comagene?'--How is it that words of such slight +import should hold such thrilling music? Oh! they are Racine's words. +And, as to his rhymes, they seem perhaps, to the true worshipper, the +final crown of his art. Mr. Bailey tells us that the couplet is only fit +for satire. Has he forgotten _Lamia_? And he asks, 'How is it that we +read Pope's _Satires_ and Dryden's, and Johnson's with enthusiasm still, +while we never touch _Irene_, and rarely the _Conquest of Granada_?' +Perhaps the answer is that if we cannot get rid of our _a priori_ +theories, even the fiery art of Dryden's drama may remain dead to us, +and that, if we touched _Irene_ even once, we should find it was in +blank verse. But Dryden himself has spoken memorably upon rhyme. +Discussing the imputed unnaturalness of the rhymed 'repartee' he says: +'Suppose we acknowledge it: how comes this confederacy to be more +displeasing to you than in a dance which is well contrived? You see +there the united design of many persons to make up one figure; ... the +confederacy is plain amongst them, for chance could never produce +anything so beautiful; and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your +sight ... 'Tis an art which appears; but it appears only like the +shadowings of painture, which, being to cause the rounding of it, cannot +be absent; but while that is considered, they are lost: so while we +attend to the other beauties of the matter, the care and labour of the +rhyme is carried from us, or at least drowned in its own sweetness, as +bees are sometimes buried in their honey.' In this exquisite passage +Dryden seems to have come near, though not quite to have hit, the +central argument for rhyme--its power of creating a beautiful +atmosphere, in which what is expressed may be caught away from the +associations of common life and harmoniously enshrined. For Racine, with +his prepossessions of sublimity and perfection, some such barrier +between his universe and reality was involved in the very nature of his +art. His rhyme is like the still clear water of a lake, through which we +can see, mysteriously separated from us and changed and beautified, the +forms of his imagination, 'quivering within the wave's intenser day.' +And truly not seldom are they 'so sweet, the sense faints picturing +them'! + + Oui, prince, je languis, je brule pour Thesee ... + Il avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage, + Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage, + Lorsque de notre Crete il traversa les flots, + Digne sujet des voeux des filles de Minos. + Que faisiez-vous alors? Pourquoi, sans Hippolyte, + Des heros de la Grece assembla-t-il l'elite? + Pourquoi, trop jeune encor, ne putes-vous alors + Entrer dans le vaisseau qui le mit sur nos bords? + Par vous aurait peri le monstre de la Crete, + Malgre tous les detours de sa vaste retraite: + Pour en developper l'embarras incertain + Ma soeur du fil fatal eut arme votre main. + Mais non: dans ce dessein je l'aurais devancee; + L'amour m'en eut d'abord inspire la pensee; + C'est moi, prince, c'est moi dont l'utile secours + Vous eut du labyrinthe enseigne les detours. + Que de soins m'eut coutes cette tete charmante! + +It is difficult to 'place' Racine among the poets. He has affinities +with many; but likenesses to few. To balance him rigorously against any +other--to ask whether he is better or worse than Shelley or than +Virgil--is to attempt impossibilities; but there is one fact which is +too often forgotten in comparing his work with that of other poets--with +Virgil's for instance--Racine wrote for the stage. Virgil's poetry is +intended to be read, Racine's to be declaimed; and it is only in the +theatre that one can experience to the full the potency of his art. In a +sense we can know him in our library, just as we can hear the music of +Mozart with silent eyes. But, when the strings begin, when the whole +volume of that divine harmony engulfs us, how differently then we +understand and feel! And so, at the theatre, before one of those high +tragedies, whose interpretation has taxed to the utmost ten generations +of the greatest actresses of France, we realise, with the shock of a new +emotion, what we had but half-felt before. To hear the words of Phedre +spoken by the mouth of Bernhardt, to watch, in the culminating horror of +crime and of remorse, of jealousy, of rage, of desire, and of despair, +all the dark forces of destiny crowd down upon that great spirit, when +the heavens and the earth reject her, and Hell opens, and the terriffic +urn of Minos thunders and crashes to the ground--that indeed is to come +close to immortality, to plunge shuddering through infinite abysses, and +to look, if only for a moment, upon eternal light. + +1908. + + + + +SIR THOMAS BROWNE + +The life of Sir Thomas Browne does not afford much scope for the +biographer. Everyone knows that Browne was a physician who lived at +Norwich in the seventeenth century; and, so far as regards what one must +call, for want of a better term, his 'life,' that is a sufficient +summary of all there is to know. It is obvious that, with such scanty +and unexciting materials, no biographer can say very much about what Sir +Thomas Browne did; it is quite easy, however, to expatiate about what he +wrote. He dug deeply into so many subjects, he touched lightly upon so +many more, that his works offer innumerable openings for those +half-conversational digressions and excursions of which perhaps the +pleasantest kind of criticism is composed. + +Mr. Gosse, in his volume on Sir Thomas Browne in the 'English Men of +Letters' Series, has evidently taken this view of his subject. He has +not attempted to treat it with any great profundity or elaboration; he +has simply gone 'about it and about.' The result is a book so full of +entertainment, of discrimination, of quiet humour, and of literary tact, +that no reader could have the heart to bring up against it the +obvious--though surely irrelevant--truth, that the general impression +which it leaves upon the mind is in the nature of a composite +presentment, in which the features of Sir Thomas have become somehow +indissolubly blended with those of his biographer. It would be rash +indeed to attempt to improve upon Mr. Gosse's example; after his +luminous and suggestive chapters on Browne's life at Norwich, on the +_Vulgar Errors_, and on the self-revelations in the _Religio Medici_, +there seems to be no room for further comment. One can only admire in +silence, and hand on the volume to one's neighbour. + +There is, however, one side of Browne's work upon which it may be worth +while to dwell at somewhat greater length. Mr. Gosse, who has so much to +say on such a variety of topics, has unfortunately limited to a very +small number of pages his considerations upon what is, after all, the +most important thing about the author of _Urn Burial_ and _The Garden of +Cyrus_--his style. Mr. Gosse himself confesses that it is chiefly as a +master of literary form that Browne deserves to be remembered. Why then +does he tell us so little about his literary form, and so much about his +family, and his religion, and his scientific opinions, and his porridge, +and who fished up the _murex_? + +Nor is it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of +Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his +book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. +Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In +spite of what appears to be a genuine delight in Browne's most splendid +and characteristic passages, Mr. Gosse cannot help protesting somewhat +acrimoniously against that very method of writing whose effects he is so +ready to admire. In practice, he approves; in theory, he condemns. He +ranks the _Hydriotaphia_ among the gems of English literature; and the +prose style of which it is the consummate expression he denounces as +fundamentally wrong. The contradiction is obvious; but there can be +little doubt that, though Browne has, as it were, extorted a personal +homage, Mr. Gosse's real sympathies lie on the other side. His remarks +upon Browne's effect upon eighteenth-century prose show clearly enough +the true bent of his opinions; and they show, too, how completely +misleading a preconceived theory may be. + +The study of Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Gosse says, 'encouraged Johnson, and +with him a whole school of rhetorical writers in the eighteenth century, +to avoid circumlocution by the invention of superfluous words, learned +but pedantic, in which darkness was concentrated without being +dispelled.' Such is Mr. Gosse's account of the influence of Browne and +Johnson upon the later eighteenth-century writers of prose. But to +dismiss Johnson's influence as something altogether deplorable, is +surely to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he +brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the +pre-Johnsonian prose style--the style which Dryden first established and +Swift brought to perfection--are obvious enough. Its advantages are +those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are +unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of the +second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, or of Bishop +Butler, suffers, in spite of its clarity and vigour, from grave defects. +It is very flat and very loose; it has no formal beauty, no elegance, no +balance, no trace of the deliberation of art. Johnson, there can be no +doubt, determined to remedy these evils by giving a new mould to the +texture of English prose; and he went back for a model to Sir Thomas +Browne. Now, as Mr. Gosse himself observes, Browne stands out in a +remarkable way from among the great mass of his contemporaries and +predecessors, by virtue of his highly developed artistic consciousness. +He was, says Mr. Gosse, 'never carried away. His effects are closely +studied, they are the result of forethought and anxious contrivance'; +and no one can doubt the truth or the significance of this dictum who +compares, let us say, the last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ with +any page in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_. The peculiarities of Browne's +style--the studied pomp of its latinisms, its wealth of allusion, its +tendency towards sonorous antithesis--culminated in his last, though not +his best, work, the _Christian Morals_, which almost reads like an +elaborate and magnificent parody of the Book of Proverbs. With the +_Christian Morals_ to guide him, Dr. Johnson set about the +transformation of the prose of his time. He decorated, he pruned, he +balanced; he hung garlands, he draped robes; and he ended by converting +the Doric order of Swift into the Corinthian order of Gibbon. Is it +quite just to describe this process as one by which 'a whole school of +rhetorical writers' was encouraged 'to avoid circumlocution' by the +invention 'of superfluous words,' when it was this very process that +gave us the peculiar savour of polished ease which characterises nearly +all the important prose of the last half of the eighteenth century--that +of Johnson himself, of Hume, of Reynolds, of Horace Walpole--which can +be traced even in Burke, and which fills the pages of Gibbon? It is, +indeed, a curious reflection, but one which is amply justified by the +facts, that the _Decline and Fall_ could not have been precisely what it +is, had Sir Thomas Browne never written the _Christian Morals_. + +That Johnson and his disciples had no inkling of the inner spirit of the +writer to whose outward form they owed so much, has been pointed out by +Mr. Gosse, who adds that Browne's 'genuine merits were rediscovered and +asserted by Coleridge and Lamb.' But we have already observed that Mr. +Gosse's own assertion of these merits lies a little open to question. +His view seems to be, in fact, the precise antithesis of Dr. Johnson's; +he swallows the spirit of Browne's writing, and strains at the form. +Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the +terminology of late Latin writers,' he used 'adjectives of classical +extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural,' he forgot that it +is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not +studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of +Latin and Greek.' He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism,' when he +meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; +and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of +Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging."' Attacks +of this kind--attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's +style--are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who +holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with +the subject as to make argument all but impossible. To the true Browne +enthusiast, indeed, there is something almost shocking about the state +of mind which would exchange 'pensile' for 'hanging,' and 'asperous' +for 'rough,' and would do away with 'digladiation' and 'quodlibetically' +altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between those +who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. There +is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the +more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had +better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the +jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast, +a spectacle of curious self-contradiction. + +If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no +attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be +valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms +without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary +part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a +mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might +never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been +a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that +classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which +interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated +man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that if +he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only +legitimate ones, the _Hydriotaphia_ would have been as free from words +of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little +reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken this +view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered +all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts, +is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are +full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this +the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be +written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A +striking phrase from the _Christian Morals_ will suffice to show the +deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:--'the +areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If Browne had thought the +Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to use +it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The +truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which +would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery and +secrecy which he intended to produce; and so he used it. He did not +choose his words according to rule, but according to the effect which he +wished them to have. Thus, when he wished to suggest an extreme contrast +between simplicity and pomp, we find him using Saxon words in direct +antithesis to classical ones. In the last sentence of _Urn Burial_, we +are told that the true believer, when he is to be buried, is 'as content +with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus.' How could Browne have produced +the remarkable sense of contrast which this short phrase conveys, if his +vocabulary had been limited, in accordance with a linguistic theory, to +words of a single stock? + +There is, of course, no doubt that Browne's vocabulary is +extraordinarily classical. Why is this? The reason is not far to seek. +In his most characteristic moments he was almost entirely occupied with +thoughts and emotions which can, owing to their very nature, only be +expressed in Latinistic language. The state of mind which he wished to +produce in his readers was nearly always a complicated one: they were to +be impressed and elevated by a multiplicity of suggestions and a sense +of mystery and awe. 'Let thy thoughts,' he says himself, 'be of things +which have not entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long +past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium of the +stars, and consider the vast expanse beyond them. Let intellectual tubes +give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a +glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things, which thoughts but +tenderly touch.' Browne had, in fact, as Dr. Johnson puts it, 'uncommon +sentiments'; and how was he to express them unless by a language of +pomp, of allusion, and of elaborate rhythm? Not only is the Saxon form +of speech devoid of splendour and suggestiveness; its simplicity is +still further emphasised by a spondaic rhythm which seems to produce (by +some mysterious rhythmic law) an atmosphere of ordinary life, where, +though the pathetic may be present, there is no place for the complex or +the remote. To understand how unsuitable such conditions would be for +the highly subtle and rarefied art of Sir Thomas Browne, it is only +necessary to compare one of his periods with a typical passage of Saxon +prose. + + Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same + down at Doctor Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this + manner: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We + shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as + I trust shall never be put out.' + +Nothing could be better adapted to the meaning and sentiment of this +passage than the limpid, even flow of its rhythm. But who could conceive +of such a rhythm being ever applicable to the meaning and sentiment of +these sentences from the _Hydriotaphia_? + + To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, + and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our + expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to + our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting + part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; + and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, + are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and + cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which + maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. + +Here the long, rolling, almost turgid clauses, with their enormous Latin +substantives, seem to carry the reader forward through an immense +succession of ages, until at last, with a sudden change of the rhythm, +the whole of recorded time crumbles and vanishes before his eyes. The +entire effect depends upon the employment of a rhythmical complexity and +subtlety which is utterly alien to Saxon prose. It would be foolish to +claim a superiority for either of the two styles; it would be still +more foolish to suppose that the effects of one might be produced by +means of the other. + +Wealth of rhythmical elaboration was not the only benefit which a highly +Latinised vocabulary conferred on Browne. Without it, he would never +have been able to achieve those splendid strokes of stylistic _bravura_, +which were evidently so dear to his nature, and occur so constantly in +his finest passages. The precise quality cannot be easily described, but +is impossible to mistake; and the pleasure which it produces seems to be +curiously analogous to that given by a piece of magnificent brushwork in +a Rubens or a Velasquez. Browne's 'brushwork' is certainly unequalled in +English literature, except by the very greatest masters of sophisticated +art, such as Pope and Shakespeare; it is the inspiration of sheer +technique. Such expressions as: 'to subsist in bones and be but +pyramidally extant'--'sad and sepulchral pitchers which have no joyful +voices'--'predicament of chimaeras'--'the irregularities of vain glory, +and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity'--are examples of this +consummate mastery of language, examples which, with a multitude of +others, singly deserve whole hours of delicious gustation, whole days of +absorbed and exquisite worship. It is pleasant to start out for a long +walk with such a splendid phrase upon one's lips as: 'According to the +ordainer of order and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to +go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the +inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that one +begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to +have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English. + +One other function performed by Browne's latinisms must be mentioned, +because it is closely connected with the most essential and peculiar of +the qualities which distinguish his method of writing. Certain classical +words, partly owing to their allusiveness, partly owing to their sound, +possess a remarkable flavour which is totally absent from those of Saxon +derivation. Such a word, for instance, as 'pyramidally,' gives one at +once an immediate sense of something mysterious, something +extraordinary, and, at the same time, something almost grotesque. And +this subtle blending of mystery and queerness characterises not only +Browne's choice of words, but his choice of feelings and of thoughts. +The grotesque side of his art, indeed, was apparently all that was +visible to the critics of a few generations back, who admired him simply +and solely for what they called his 'quaintness'; while Mr. Gosse has +flown to the opposite extreme, and will not allow Browne any sense of +humour at all. The confusion no doubt arises merely from a difference in +the point of view. Mr. Gosse, regarding Browne's most important and +general effects, rightly fails to detect anything funny in them. The +Early Victorians, however, missed the broad outlines, and were +altogether taken up with the obvious grotesqueness of the details. When +they found Browne asserting that 'Cato seemed to dote upon Cabbage,' or +embroidering an entire paragraph upon the subject of 'Pyrrhus his Toe,' +they could not help smiling; and surely they were quite right. Browne, +like an impressionist painter, produced his pictures by means of a +multitude of details which, if one looks at them in themselves, are +discordant, and extraordinary, and even absurd. + +There can be little doubt that this strongly marked taste for curious +details was one of the symptoms of the scientific bent of his mind. For +Browne was scientific just up to the point where the examination of +detail ends, and its coordination begins. He knew little or nothing of +general laws; but his interest in isolated phenomena was intense. And +the more singular the phenomena, the more he was attracted. He was +always ready to begin some strange inquiry. He cannot help wondering: +'Whether great-ear'd persons have short necks, long feet, and loose +bellies?' 'Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,' he notes in his commonplace +book, 'wanted not the advice of the best physicians; yet how warrantable +his practice was, to take his repast in the night, and scarce anything +but treacle in the day, may admit of great doubt.' To inquire thus is, +perhaps, to inquire too curiously; yet such inquiries are the stuff of +which great scientific theories are made. Browne, however, used his love +of details for another purpose: he co-ordinated them, not into a +scientific theory, but into a work of art. His method was one which, to +be successful, demanded a self-confidence, an imagination, and a +technical power, possessed by only the very greatest artists. Everyone +knows Pascal's overwhelming sentence:--'Le silence eternel de ces +espaces infinis m'effraie.' It is overwhelming, obviously and +immediately; it, so to speak, knocks one down. Browne's ultimate object +was to create some such tremendous effect as that, by no knock-down +blow, but by a multitude of delicate, subtle, and suggestive touches, by +an elaborate evocation of memories and half-hidden things, by a +mysterious combination of pompous images and odd unexpected trifles +drawn together from the ends of the earth and the four quarters of +heaven. His success gives him a place beside Webster and Blake, on one +of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, +Browne's peak is--or so at least it seems from the plains below--more +difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road skirts +the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one is +merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He +who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star +to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, +and tossed forever in the Paradise of Fools. + +Browne produced his greatest work late in life; for there is nothing in +the _Religio Medici_ which reaches the same level of excellence as the +last paragraphs of _The Garden of Cyrus_ and the last chapter of _Urn +Burial_. A long and calm experience of life seems, indeed, to be the +background from which his most amazing sentences start out into being. +His strangest phantasies are rich with the spoils of the real world. His +art matured with himself; and who but the most expert of artists could +have produced this perfect sentence in _The Garden of Cyrus_, so well +known, and yet so impossible not to quote? + + Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in + sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with + delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly + with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose. + +This is Browne in his most exquisite mood. For his most characteristic, +one must go to the concluding pages of _Urn Burial_, where, from the +astonishing sentence beginning--'Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's +hell'--to the end of the book, the very quintessence of his work is to +be found. The subject--mortality in its most generalised aspect--has +brought out Browne's highest powers; and all the resources of his +art--elaboration of rhythm, brilliance of phrase, wealth and variety of +suggestion, pomp and splendour of imagination--are accumulated in every +paragraph. To crown all, he has scattered through these few pages a +multitude of proper names, most of them gorgeous in sound, and each of +them carrying its own strange freight of reminiscences and allusions +from the unknown depths of the past. As one reads, an extraordinary +procession of persons seems to pass before one's eyes--Moses, +Archimedes, Achilles, Job, Hector and Charles the Fifth, Cardan and +Alaric, Gordianus, and Pilate, and Homer, and Cambyses, and the +Canaanitish woman. Among them, one visionary figure flits with a +mysterious pre-eminence, flickering over every page, like a familiar and +ghostly flame. It is Methuselah; and, in Browne's scheme, the remote, +almost infinite, and almost ridiculous patriarch is--who can doubt?--the +only possible centre and symbol of all the rest. But it would be vain to +dwell further upon this wonderful and famous chapter, except to note the +extraordinary sublimity and serenity of its general tone. Browne never +states in so many words what his own feelings towards the universe +actually are. He speaks of everything but that; and yet, with triumphant +art, he manages to convey into our minds an indelible impression of the +vast and comprehensive grandeur of his soul. + +It is interesting--or at least amusing--to consider what are the most +appropriate places in which different authors should be read. Pope is +doubtless at his best in the midst of a formal garden, Herrick in an +orchard, and Shelley in a boat at sea. Sir Thomas Browne demands, +perhaps, a more exotic atmosphere. One could read him floating down the +Euphrates, or past the shores of Arabia; and it would be pleasant to +open the _Vulgar Errors_ in Constantinople, or to get by heart a chapter +of the _Christian Morals_ between the paws of a Sphinx. In England, the +most fitting background for his strange ornament must surely be some +habitation consecrated to learning, some University which still smells +of antiquity and has learnt the habit of repose. The present writer, at +any rate, can bear witness to the splendid echo of Browne's syllables +amid learned and ancient walls; for he has known, he believes, few +happier moments than those in which he has rolled the periods of the +_Hydriotaphia_ out to the darkness and the nightingales through the +studious cloisters of Trinity. + +But, after all, who can doubt that it is at Oxford that Browne himself +would choose to linger? May we not guess that he breathed in there, in +his boyhood, some part of that mysterious and charming spirit which +pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in +the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep +beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid +that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, +the circumference of the Sheldonian. + +1906. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE'S FINAL PERIOD + + +The whole of the modern criticism of Shakespeare has been fundamentally +affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, +for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, or +at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a +coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that _The Tempest_ was +written before _Romeo and 'Juliet_; that _Henry VI._ was produced in +succession to _Henry V._; or that _Antony and Cleopatra_ followed close +upon the heels of _Julius Caesar_. Such theories were sent to limbo for +ever, when a study of those plays of whose date we have external +evidence revealed the fact that, as Shakespeare's life advanced, a +corresponding development took place in the metrical structure of his +verse. The establishment of metrical tests, by which the approximate +position and date of any play can be readily ascertained, at once +followed; chaos gave way to order; and, for the first time, critics +became able to judge, not only of the individual works, but of the whole +succession of the works of Shakespeare. + +Upon this firm foundation modern writers have been only too eager to +build. It was apparent that the Plays, arranged in chronological order, +showed something more than a mere development in the technique of +verse--a development, that is to say, in the general treatment of +characters and subjects, and in the sort of feelings which those +characters and subjects were intended to arouse; and from this it was +easy to draw conclusions as to the development of the mind of +Shakespeare itself. Such conclusions have, in fact, been constantly +drawn. But it must be noted that they all rest upon the tacit +assumption, that the character of any given drama is, in fact, a true +index to the state of mind of the dramatist composing it. The validity +of this assumption has never been proved; it has never been shown, for +instance, why we should suppose a writer of farces to be habitually +merry; or whether we are really justified in concluding, from the fact +that Shakespeare wrote nothing but tragedies for six years, that, during +that period, more than at any other, he was deeply absorbed in the awful +problems of human existence. It is not, however, the purpose of this +essay to consider the question of what are the relations between the +artist and his art; for it will assume the truth of the generally +accepted view, that the character of the one can be inferred from that +of the other. What it will attempt to discuss is whether, upon this +hypothesis, the most important part of the ordinary doctrine of +Shakespeare's mental development is justifiable. + +What, then, is the ordinary doctrine? Dr. Furnivall states it as +follows: + + Shakespeare's course is thus shown to have run from the amorousness + and fun of youth, through the strong patriotism of early manhood, + to the wrestlings with the dark problems that beset the man of + middle age, to the gloom which weighed on Shakespeare (as on so + many men) in later life, when, though outwardly successful, the + world seemed all against him, and his mind dwelt with sympathy on + scenes of faithlessness of friends, treachery of relations and + subjects, ingratitude of children, scorn of his kind; till at last, + in his Stratford home again, peace came to him, Miranda and Perdita + in their lovely freshness and charm greeted him, and he was laid by + his quiet Avon side. + +And the same writer goes on to quote with approval Professor Dowden's + + likening of Shakespeare to a ship, beaten and storm-tossed, but yet + entering harbour with sails full-set, to anchor in peace. + +Such, in fact, is the general opinion of modern writers upon +Shakespeare; after a happy youth and a gloomy middle age he reached at +last--it is the universal opinion--a state of quiet serenity in which he +died. Professor Dowden's book on 'Shakespeare's Mind and Art' gives the +most popular expression to this view, a view which is also held by Mr. +Ten Brink, by Sir I. Gollancz, and, to a great extent, by Dr. Brandes. +Professor Dowden, indeed, has gone so far as to label this final period +with the appellation of 'On the Heights,' in opposition to the preceding +one, which, he says, was passed 'In the Depths.' Sir Sidney Lee, too, +seems to find, in the Plays at least, if not in Shakespeare's mind, the +orthodox succession of gaiety, of tragedy, and of the serenity of +meditative romance. + +Now it is clear that the most important part of this version of +Shakespeare's mental history is the end of it. That he did eventually +attain to a state of calm content, that he did, in fact, die happy--it +is this that gives colour and interest to the whole theory. For some +reason or another, the end of a man's life seems naturally to afford the +light by which the rest of it should be read; last thoughts do appear in +some strange way to be really best and truest; and this is particularly +the case when they fit in nicely with the rest of the story, and are, +perhaps, just what one likes to think oneself. If it be true that +Shakespeare, to quote Professor Dowden, 'did at last attain to the +serene self-possession which he had sought with such persistent effort'; +that, in the words of Dr. Furnivall, 'forgiven and forgiving, full of +the highest wisdom and peace, at one with family and friends and foes, +in harmony with Avon's flow and Stratford's level meads, Shakespeare +closed his life on earth'--we have obtained a piece of knowledge which +is both interesting and pleasant. But if it be not true, if, on the +contrary, it can be shown that something very different was actually the +case, then will it not follow that we must not only reverse our judgment +as to this particular point, but also readjust our view of the whole +drift and bearing of Shakespeare's 'inner life'? + +The group of works which has given rise to this theory of ultimate +serenity was probably entirely composed after Shakespeare's final +retirement from London, and his establishment at New Place. It consists +of three plays--_Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_--and +three fragments--the Shakespearean parts of _Pericles, Henry VIII._, +and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. All these plays and portions of plays form +a distinct group; they resemble each other in a multitude of ways, and +they differ in a multitude of ways from nearly all Shakespeare's +previous work. + +One other complete play, however, and one other fragment, do resemble in +some degree these works of the final period; for, immediately preceding +them in date, they show clear traces of the beginnings of the new +method, and they are themselves curiously different from the plays they +immediately succeed--that great series of tragedies which began with +_Hamlet_ in 1601 and ended in 1608 with _Antony and Cleopatra_. In the +latter year, indeed, Shakespeare's entire method underwent an +astonishing change. For six years he had been persistently occupied with +a kind of writing which he had himself not only invented but brought to +the highest point of excellence--the tragedy of character. Every one of +his masterpieces has for its theme the action of tragic situation upon +character; and, without those stupendous creations in character, his +greatest tragedies would obviously have lost the precise thing that has +made them what they are. Yet, after _Antony and Cleopatra_ Shakespeare +deliberately turned his back upon the dramatic methods of all his past +career. There seems no reason why he should not have continued, year +after year, to produce _Othellos, Hamlets_, and _Macbeths_; instead, he +turned over a new leaf, and wrote _Coriolanus_. + +_Coriolanus_ is certainly a remarkable, and perhaps an intolerable play: +remarkable, because it shows the sudden first appearance of the +Shakespeare of the final period; intolerable, because it is impossible +to forget how much better it might have been. The subject is thick with +situations; the conflicts of patriotism and pride, the effects of sudden +disgrace following upon the very height of fortune, the struggles +between family affection on the one hand and every interest of revenge +and egotism on the other--these would have made a tragic and tremendous +setting for some character worthy to rank with Shakespeare's best. But +it pleased him to ignore completely all these opportunities; and, in the +play he has given us, the situations, mutilated and degraded, serve +merely as miserable props for the gorgeous clothing of his rhetoric. For +rhetoric, enormously magnificent and extraordinarily elaborate, is the +beginning and the middle and the end of _Coriolanus_. The hero is not a +human being at all; he is the statue of a demi-god cast in bronze, which +roars its perfect periods, to use a phrase of Sir Walter Raleigh's, +through a melodious megaphone. The vigour of the presentment is, it is +true, amazing; but it is a presentment of decoration, not of life. So +far and so quickly had Shakespeare already wandered from the subtleties +of _Cleopatra_. The transformation is indeed astonishing; one wonders, +as one beholds it, what will happen next. + +At about the same time, some of the scenes in _Timon of Athens_ were in +all probability composed: scenes which resemble _Coriolanus_ in their +lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it +in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of +foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably +unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if +draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of +furious ejaculation, this splendid storm of nastiness, Shakespeare, we +are confidently told, passed in a moment to tranquillity and joy, to +blue skies, to young ladies, and to general forgiveness. + + From 1604 to 1610 [says Professor Dowden] a show of tragic figures, + like the kings who passed before Macbeth, filled the vision of + Shakespeare; until at last the desperate image of Timon rose before + him; when, as though unable to endure or to conceive a more + lamentable ruin of man, he turned for relief to the pastoral loves + of Prince Florizel and Perdita; and as soon as the tone of his mind + was restored, gave expression to its ultimate mood of grave + serenity in _The Tempest_, and so ended. + +This is a pretty picture, but is it true? It may, indeed, be admitted at +once that Prince Florizel and Perdita are charming creatures, that +Prospero is 'grave,' and that Hermione is more or less 'serene'; but why +is it that, in our consideration of the later plays, the whole of our +attention must always be fixed upon these particular characters? Modern +critics, in their eagerness to appraise everything that is beautiful and +good at its proper value, seem to have entirely forgotten that there is +another side to the medal; and they have omitted to point out that these +plays contain a series of portraits of peculiar infamy, whose wickedness +finds expression in language of extraordinary force. Coming fresh from +their pages to the pages of _Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale_, and _The +Tempest_, one is astonished and perplexed. How is it possible to fit +into their scheme of roses and maidens that 'Italian fiend' the 'yellow +Iachimo,' or Cloten, that 'thing too bad for bad report,' or the 'crafty +devil,' his mother, or Leontes, or Caliban, or Trinculo? To omit these +figures of discord and evil from our consideration, to banish them +comfortably to the background of the stage, while Autolycus and Miranda +dance before the footlights, is surely a fallacy in proportion; for the +presentment of the one group of persons is every whit as distinct and +vigorous as that of the other. Nowhere, indeed, is Shakespeare's +violence of expression more constantly displayed than in the 'gentle +utterances' of his last period; it is here that one finds Paulina, in a +torrent of indignation as far from 'grave serenity' as it is from +'pastoral love,' exclaiming to Leontes: + + What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? + What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling + In leads or oils? what old or newer torture + Must I receive, whose every word deserves + To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny, + Together working with thy jealousies, + Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle + For girls of nine, O! think what they have done, + And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all + Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. + That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; + That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant + And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much + Thou would'st have poison'd good Camillo's honour, + To have him kill a king; poor trespasses, + More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon + The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter + To be or none or little; though a devil + Would have shed water out of fire ere done't. + Nor is't directly laid to thee, the death + Of the young prince, whose honourable thoughts, + Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart + That could conceive a gross and foolish sire + Blemished his gracious dam. + +Nowhere are the poet's metaphors more nakedly material; nowhere does he +verge more often upon a sort of brutality of phrase, a cruel coarseness. +Iachimo tells us how: + + The cloyed will, + That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub + Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb, + Longs after for the garbage. + +and talks of: + + an eye + Base and unlustrous as the smoky light + That's fed with stinking tallow. + +'The south fog rot him!' Cloten bursts out to Imogen, cursing her +husband in an access of hideous rage. + +What traces do such passages as these show of 'serene self-possession,' +of 'the highest wisdom and peace,' or of 'meditative romance'? English +critics, overcome by the idea of Shakespeare's ultimate tranquillity, +have generally denied to him the authorship of the brothel scenes in +_Pericles_ but these scenes are entirely of a piece with the grossnesses +of _The Winter's Tale_ and _Cymbeline_. + + Is there no way for men to be, but women + Must be half-workers? + +says Posthumus when he hears of Imogen's guilt. + + We are all bastards; + And that most venerable man, which I + Did call my father, was I know not where + When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools + Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed + The Dian of that time; so doth my wife + The nonpareil of this--O vengeance, vengeance! + Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained + And prayed me, oft, forbearance; did it with + A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't + Might well have warmed old Saturn, that I thought her + As chaste as unsunned snow--O, all the devils!-- + This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,--was't not? + Or less,--at first: perchance he spoke not; but, + Like a full-acorned boar, a German one, + Cried, oh! and mounted: found no opposition + But what he looked for should oppose, and she + Should from encounter guard. + +And Leontes, in a similar situation, expresses himself in images no less +to the point. + + There have been, + Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, + And many a man there is, even at this present, + Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm, + That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence + And his pond fished by his next neighbour, by + Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't, + Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened, + As mine, against their will. Should all despair + That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind + Would hang themselves. Physic for't there's none; + It is a bawdy planet, that will strike + Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, + From east, west, north and south: be it concluded, + No barricade for a belly, know't; + It will let in and out the enemy + With bag and baggage: many thousand on's + Have the disease, and feel't not. + +It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to agree +with Professor Dowden's dictum: 'In these latest plays the beautiful +pathetic light is always present.' + +But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been so +completely led astray? Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be +found in many other plays of Shakespeare. Ophelia is charming, Brutus is +grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that _Hamlet_, and +_Julius Caesar_, and _King Lear_ give expression to the same mood of +high tranquillity which is betrayed by _Cymbeline, The Tempest_, and +_The Winter's Tale_? 'Certainly not,' reply the orthodox writers, 'for +you must distinguish. The plays of the last period are not tragedies; +they all end happily'--'in scenes,' says Sir I. Gollancz, 'of +forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.' Virtue, in fact, is not only +virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more? + +But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of +Shakespeare's plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty +triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of +horror and of gloom. For, in _Measure for Measure_ Isabella is no whit +less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as +complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of _Measure +for Measure_ was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What is +it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in +one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes +matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is +rewarded or not? + +The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. _Measure for Measure_ is, +like nearly every play of Shakespeare's before _Coriolanus_, essentially +realistic. The characters are real men and women; and what happens to +them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and +women in actual life. Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their +wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible +enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just as +we regret the real sufferings of our friends. But, in the plays of the +final period, all this has changed; we are no longer in the real world, +but in a world of enchantment, of mystery, of wonder, a world of +shifting visions, a world of hopeless anachronisms, a world in which +anything may happen next. The pretences of reality are indeed usually +preserved, but only the pretences. Cymbeline is supposed to be the king +of a real Britain, and the real Augustus is supposed to demand tribute +of him; but these are the reasons which his queen, in solemn audience +with the Roman ambassador, urges to induce her husband to declare for +war: + + Remember, sir, my liege, + The Kings your ancestors, together with + The natural bravery of your isle, which stands + As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in + With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, + With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, + But suck them up to the topmast. A kind of conquest + Caesar made here; but made not here his brag + Of 'Came, and saw, and overcame'; with shame-- + The first that ever touched him--he was carried + From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-- + Poor ignorant baubles!--on our terrible seas, + Like egg-shells moved upon the surges, crack'd + As easily 'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof + The famed Cassibelan, who was once at point-- + O giglot fortune!--to master Caesar's sword, + Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright + And Britons strut with courage. + +It comes with something of a shock to remember that this medley of +poetry, bombast, and myth will eventually reach the ears of no other +person than the Octavius of _Antony and Cleopatra_; and the contrast is +the more remarkable when one recalls the brilliant scene of negotiation +and diplomacy in the latter play, which passes between Octavius, +Maecenas, and Agrippa on the one side, and Antony and Enobarbus on the +other, and results in the reconciliation of the rivals and the marriage +of Antony and Octavia. + +Thus strangely remote is the world of Shakespeare's latest period; and +it is peopled, this universe of his invention, with beings equally +unreal, with creatures either more or less than human, with fortunate +princes and wicked step-mothers, with goblins and spirits, with lost +princesses and insufferable kings. And of course, in this sort of fairy +land, it is an essential condition that everything shall end well; the +prince and princess are bound to marry and live happily ever afterwards, +or the whole story is unnecessary and absurd; and the villains and the +goblins must naturally repent and be forgiven. But it is clear that such +happy endings, such conventional closes to fantastic tales, cannot be +taken as evidences of serene tranquillity on the part of their maker; +they merely show that he knew, as well as anyone else, how such stories +ought to end. + +Yet there can be no doubt that it is this combination of charming +heroines and happy endings which has blinded the eyes of modern critics +to everything else. Iachimo, and Leontes, and even Caliban, are to be +left out of account, as if, because in the end they repent or are +forgiven, words need not be wasted on such reconciled and harmonious +fiends. It is true they are grotesque; it is true that such personages +never could have lived; but who, one would like to know, has ever met +Miranda, or become acquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia? In this +land of faery, is it right to neglect the goblins? In this world of +dreams, are we justified in ignoring the nightmares? Is it fair to say +that Shakespeare was in 'a gentle, lofty spirit, a peaceful, tranquil +mood,' when he was creating the Queen in _Cymbeline_, or writing the +first two acts of _The Winter's Tale_? + +Attention has never been sufficiently drawn to one other characteristic +of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and +Dr. Brandes--the singular carelessness with which great parts of them +were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the +_denouement_ of _Cymbeline_? And with what perversity is the great +pastoral scene in _The Winter's Tale_ interspersed with long-winded +intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! For these blemishes are unlike +the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier +plays; they are not, like them, interesting or delightful in themselves; +they are usually merely necessary to explain the action, and they are +sometimes purely irrelevant. One is, it cannot be denied, often bored, +and occasionally irritated, by Polixenes and Camillo and Sebastian and +Gonzalo and Belarius; these personages have not even the life of ghosts; +they are hardly more than speaking names, that give patient utterance to +involution upon involution. What a contrast to the minor characters of +Shakespeare's earlier works! + +It is difficult to resist the conclusion that he was getting bored +himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, +bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams. He is +no longer interested, one often feels, in what happens, or who says +what, so long as he can find place for a faultless lyric, or a new, +unimagined rhythmical effect, or a grand and mystic speech. In this mood +he must have written his share in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, leaving the +plot and characters to Fletcher to deal with as he pleased, and +reserving to himself only the opportunities for pompous verse. In this +mood he must have broken off half-way through the tedious history of +_Henry VIII_.; and in this mood he must have completed, with all the +resources of his rhetoric, the miserable archaic fragment of _Pericles_. + +Is it not thus, then, that we should imagine him in the last years of +his life? Half enchanted by visions of beauty and loveliness, and half +bored to death; on the one side inspired by a soaring fancy to the +singing of ethereal songs, and on the other urged by a general disgust +to burst occasionally through his torpor into bitter and violent speech? +If we are to learn anything of his mind from his last works, it is +surely this. + +And such is the conclusion which is particularly forced upon us by a +consideration of the play which is in many ways most typical of +Shakespeare's later work, and the one which critics most consistently +point to as containing the very essence of his final benignity--_The +Tempest_. There can be no doubt that the peculiar characteristics which +distinguish _Cymbeline_ and _The Winter's Tale_ from the dramas of +Shakespeare's prime, are present here in a still greater degree. In _The +Tempest_, unreality has reached its apotheosis. Two of the principal +characters are frankly not human beings at all; and the whole action +passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which can +only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, +peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of +persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, +and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did +Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights than +in some of the speeches of Prospero, or his lyric art a purer beauty +than in the songs of Ariel; nor is it only in these ethereal regions +that the triumph of his language asserts itself. It finds as splendid a +vent in the curses of Caliban: + + All the infection that the sun sucks up + From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him + By inch-meal a disease! + +and in the similes of Trinculo: + + Yond' same black cloud, yond' huge one, looks like a foul + bombard that would shed his liquor. + +The _denouement_ itself, brought about by a preposterous piece of +machinery, and lost in a whirl of rhetoric, is hardly more than a peg +for fine writing. + + O, it is monstrous, monstrous! + Methought the billows spoke and told me of it; + The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, + That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced + The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass. + Therefore my son i' th' ooze is bedded, and + I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, + And with him there lie mudded. + +And this gorgeous phantasm of a repentance from the mouth of the pale +phantom Alonzo is a fitting climax to the whole fantastic play. + +A comparison naturally suggests itself, between what was perhaps the +last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first +gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points of +resemblance between _The Tempest_ and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, their +common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of +their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the +delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the +_verve_ of their vulgar comedy--these, of course, are obvious enough; +but it is the points of difference which really make the comparison +striking. One thing, at any rate, is certain about the wood near +Athens--it is full of life. The persons that haunt it--though most of +them are hardly more than children, and some of them are fairies, and +all of them are too agreeable to be true--are nevertheless substantial +creatures, whose loves and jokes and quarrels receive our thorough +sympathy; and the air they breathe--the lords and the ladies, no less +than the mechanics and the elves--is instinct with an exquisite +good-humour, which makes us as happy as the night is long. To turn from +Theseus and Titania and Bottom to the Enchanted Island, is to step out +of a country lane into a conservatory. The roses and the dandelions have +vanished before preposterous cactuses, and fascinating orchids too +delicate for the open air; and, in the artificial atmosphere, the gaiety +of youth has been replaced by the disillusionment of middle age. +Prospero is the central figure of _The Tempest_; and it has often been +wildly asserted that he is a portrait of the author--an embodiment of +that spirit of wise benevolence which is supposed to have thrown a halo +over Shakespeare's later life. But, on closer inspection, the portrait +seems to be as imaginary as the original. To an irreverent eye, the +ex-Duke of Milan would perhaps appear as an unpleasantly crusty +personage, in whom a twelve years' monopoly of the conversation had +developed an inordinate propensity for talking. These may have been the +sentiments of Ariel, safe at the Bermoothes; but to state them is to +risk at least ten years in the knotty entrails of an oak, and it is +sufficient to point out, that if Prospero is wise, he is also +self-opinionated and sour, that his gravity is often another name for +pedantic severity, and that there is no character in the play to whom, +during some part of it, he is not studiously disagreeable. But his +Milanese countrymen are not even disagreeable; they are simply dull. +'This is the silliest stuff that e'er I heard,' remarked Hippolyta of +Bottom's amateur theatricals; and one is tempted to wonder what she +would have said to the dreary puns and interminable conspiracies of +Alonzo, and Gonzalo, and Sebastian, and Antonio, and Adrian, and +Francisco, and other shipwrecked noblemen. At all events, there can be +little doubt that they would not have had the entree at Athens. + +The depth of the gulf between the two plays is, however, best measured +by a comparison of Caliban and his masters with Bottom and his +companions. The guileless group of English mechanics, whose sports are +interrupted by the mischief of Puck, offers a strange contrast to the +hideous trio of the 'jester,' the 'drunken butler,' and the 'savage and +deformed slave,' whose designs are thwarted by the magic of Ariel. +Bottom was the first of Shakespeare's masterpieces in characterisation, +Caliban was the last: and what a world of bitterness and horror lies +between them! The charming coxcomb it is easy to know and love; but the +'freckled whelp hag-born' moves us mysteriously to pity and to terror, +eluding us for ever in fearful allegories, and strange coils of +disgusted laughter and phantasmagorical tears. The physical vigour of +the presentment is often so remorseless as to shock us. 'I left them,' +says Ariel, speaking of Caliban and his crew: + + I' the filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, + There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake + O'erstunk their feet. + +But at other times the great half-human shape seems to swell like the +'Pan' of Victor Hugo, into something unimaginably vast. + + You taught me language, and my profit on't + Is, I know how to curse. + +Is this Caliban addressing Prospero, or Job addressing God? It may be +either; but it is not serene, nor benign, nor pastoral, nor 'On the +Heights.' + +1906. + + + + +THE LIVES OF THE POETS[1] + + +No one needs an excuse for re-opening the _Lives of the Poets_; the book +is too delightful. It is not, of course, as delightful as Boswell; but +who re-opens Boswell? Boswell is in another category; because, as every +one knows, when he has once been opened he can never be shut. But, on +its different level, the _Lives_ will always hold a firm and comfortable +place in our affections. After Boswell, it is the book which brings us +nearer than any other to the mind of Dr. Johnson. That is its primary +import. We do not go to it for information or for instruction, or that +our tastes may be improved, or that our sympathies may be widened; we go +to it to see what Dr. Johnson thought. Doubtless, during the process, we +are informed and instructed and improved in various ways; but these +benefits are incidental, like the invigoration which comes from a +mountain walk. It is not for the sake of the exercise that we set out; +but for the sake of the view. The view from the mountain which is Samuel +Johnson is so familiar, and has been so constantly analysed and admired, +that further description would be superfluous. It is sufficient for us +to recognise that he is a mountain, and to pay all the reverence that is +due. In one of Emerson's poems a mountain and a squirrel begin to +discuss each other's merits; and the squirrel comes to the triumphant +conclusion that he is very much the better of the two, since he can +crack a nut, while the mountain can do no such thing. The parallel is +close enough between this impudence and the attitude--implied, if not +expressed--of too much modern criticism towards the sort of +qualities--the easy, indolent power, the searching sense of actuality, +the combined command of sanity and paradox, the immovable independence +of thought--which went to the making of the _Lives of the Poets_. There +is only, perhaps, one flaw in the analogy: that, in this particular +instance, the mountain was able to crack nuts a great deal better than +any squirrel that ever lived. + +That the _Lives_ continue to be read, admired, and edited, is in itself +a high proof of the eminence of Johnson's intellect; because, as serious +criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far +removed from the futile. Johnson's aesthetic judgments are almost +invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality +to recommend them--except one: they are never right. That is an +unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up +for it, and that his wit has saved all. He has managed to be wrong so +cleverly, that nobody minds. When Gray, for instance, points the moral +to his poem on Walpole's cat with a reminder to the fair that all that +glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is 'of no relation to +the purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have +gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.' +Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously +true? But then, to use Johnson's own phrase, could anything be of less +'relation to the purpose'? It is his wit--and we are speaking, of +course, of wit in its widest sense--that has sanctified Johnson's +peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has +put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the reach +of time. + +For it is not only in particular details that Johnson's criticism fails +to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date. Our +judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, +but because our whole method of judging has changed. Thus, to the +historian of letters, the _Lives_ have a special interest, for they +afford a standing example of a great dead tradition--a tradition whose +characteristics throw more than one curious light upon the literary +feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves. Perhaps the +most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth +century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy. The +most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged +authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every +infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, +which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson +never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at +discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of +poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one +condition--that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry +were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of +arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets +themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to bow +to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that his +first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his +criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of +Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater +width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its +drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set of +errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this +was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, and +how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and +tastes--that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in +question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the +Johnsonian black cap. + +But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the _Lives of the +Poets_. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson might +have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the +masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded. +Whatever critical method he might have adopted, he still would have +been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our +minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion +of _Lycidas_ is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and +therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in _Comus_ he remarks: 'they are +harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He could +see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering +accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of +Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a +writer could be so absurd. Such preposterous judgments can only be +accounted for by inherent deficiencies of taste; Johnson had no ear, and +he had no imagination. These are, indeed, grievous disabilities in a +critic. What could have induced such a man, the impatient reader is +sometimes tempted to ask, to set himself up as a judge of poetry? + +The answer to the question is to be found in the remarkable change which +has come over our entire conception of poetry, since the time when +Johnson wrote. It has often been stated that the essential +characteristic of that great Romantic Movement which began at the end of +the eighteenth century, was the re-introduction of Nature into the +domain of poetry. Incidentally, it is curious to observe that nearly +every literary revolution has been hailed by its supporters as a return +to Nature. No less than the school of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the +school of Denham, of Dryden, and of Pope, proclaimed itself as the +champion of Nature; and there can be little doubt that Donne +himself--the father of all the conceits and elaborations of the +seventeenth century--wrote under the impulse of a Naturalistic reaction +against the conventional classicism of the Renaissance. Precisely the +same contradictions took place in France. Nature was the watchword of +Malherbe and of Boileau; and it was equally the watchword of Victor +Hugo. To judge by the successive proclamations of poets, the development +of literature offers a singular paradox. The further it goes back, the +more sophisticated it becomes; and it grows more and more natural as it +grows distant from the State of Nature. However this may be, it is at +least certain that the Romantic revival peculiarly deserves to be called +Naturalistic, because it succeeded in bringing into vogue the operations +of the external world--'the Vegetable Universe,' as Blake called it--as +subject-matter for poetry. But it would have done very little, if it had +done nothing more than this. Thomson, in the full meridian of the +eighteenth century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it would +be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a +fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more +than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation +of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of _The +Ancient Mariner_ is a landmark in the history of letters, not because of +its descriptions of natural objects, but because it swept into the +poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it +was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of _The +Ancient Mariner_; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which +suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and +imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because +they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be invoked. +But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord +Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was +nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was +disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have +expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else, +be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough. + +The new edition of the _Lives_, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for +publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon +Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished +Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and +appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to +shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific +conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr. +Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their +voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a +little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the +weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the +compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the +margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency. +The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like +edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes, +where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one +another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the +paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and, +as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the +Past, with the friendliness of a conversation. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 1: _Lives of the English Poets_. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. +Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, +1905.] + + + + +MADAME DU DEFFAND[2] + + +When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia, he ordered the +proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, about which there had been some +disagreement among the censors of the press, to be put into his +carriage, so that he might decide for himself what suppressions it might +be necessary to make. 'Je m'ennuie en route; je lirai ces volumes, et +j'ecrirai de Mayence ce qu'il y aura a faire.' The volumes thus chosen +to beguile the imperial leisure between Paris and Mayence contained the +famous correspondence of Madame du Deffand with Horace Walpole. By the +Emperor's command a few excisions were made, and the book--reprinted +from Miss Berry's original edition which had appeared two years earlier +in England--was published almost at once. The sensation in Paris was +immense; the excitement of the Russian campaign itself was half +forgotten; and for some time the blind old inhabitant of the Convent of +Saint Joseph held her own as a subject of conversation with the burning +of Moscow and the passage of the Berezina. We cannot wonder that this +was so. In the Parisian drawing-room of those days the letters of Madame +du Deffand must have exercised a double fascination--on the one hand as +a mine of gossip about numberless persons and events still familiar to +many a living memory, and, on the other, as a detailed and brilliant +record of a state of society which had already ceased to be actual and +become historical. The letters were hardly more than thirty years old; +but the world which they depicted in all its intensity and all its +singularity--the world of the old regime--had vanished for ever into +limbo. Between it and the eager readers of the First Empire a gulf was +fixed--a narrow gulf, but a deep one, still hot and sulphurous with the +volcanic fires of the Revolution. Since then a century has passed; the +gulf has widened; and the vision which these curious letters show us +to-day seems hardly less remote--from some points of view, indeed, even +more--than that which is revealed to us in the Memoirs of Cellini or the +correspondence of Cicero. Yet the vision is not simply one of a strange +and dead antiquity: there is a personal and human element in the letters +which gives them a more poignant interest, and brings them close to +ourselves. The soul of man is not subject to the rumour of periods; and +these pages, impregnated though they be with the abolished life of the +eighteenth century, can never be out of date. + +A fortunate chance enables us now, for the first time, to appreciate +them in their completeness. The late Mrs. Paget Toynbee, while preparing +her edition of Horace Walpole's letters, came upon the trace of the +original manuscripts, which had long lain hidden in obscurity in a +country house in Staffordshire. The publication of these manuscripts in +full, accompanied by notes and indexes in which Mrs. Toynbee's +well-known accuracy, industry, and tact are everywhere conspicuous, is +an event of no small importance to lovers of French literature. A great +mass of new and deeply interesting material makes its appearance. The +original edition produced by Miss Berry in 1810, from which all the +subsequent editions were reprinted with varying degrees of inaccuracy, +turns out to have contained nothing more than a comparatively small +fraction of the whole correspondence; of the 838 letters published by +Mrs. Toynbee, 485 are entirely new, and of the rest only 52 were printed +by Miss Berry in their entirety. Miss Berry's edition was, in fact, +simply a selection, and as a selection it deserves nothing but praise. +It skims the cream of the correspondence; and it faithfully preserves +the main outline of the story which the letters reveal. No doubt that +was enough for the readers of that generation; indeed, even for the more +exacting reader of to-day, there is something a little overwhelming in +the closely packed 2000 pages of Mrs. Toynbee's volumes. Enthusiasm +alone will undertake to grapple with them, but enthusiasm will be +rewarded. In place of the truthful summary of the earlier editions, we +have now the truth itself--the truth in all its subtle gradations, all +its long-drawn-out suspensions, all its intangible and irremediable +obscurities: it is the difference between a clear-cut drawing in +black-and-white and a finished painting in oils. Probably Miss Berry's +edition will still be preferred by the ordinary reader who wishes to +become acquainted with a celebrated figure in French literature; but +Mrs. Toynbee's will always be indispensable for the historical student, +and invaluable for anyone with the leisure, the patience, and the taste +for a detailed and elaborate examination of a singular adventure of the +heart. + +The Marquise du Deffand was perhaps the most typical representative of +that phase of civilisation which came into existence in Western Europe +during the early years of the eighteenth century, and reached its most +concentrated and characteristic form about the year 1750 in the +drawing-rooms of Paris. She was supremely a woman of her age; but it is +important to notice that her age was the first, and not the second, half +of the eighteenth century: it was the age of the Regent Orleans, +Fontenelle, and the young Voltaire; not that of Rousseau, the +'Encyclopaedia,' and the Patriarch of Ferney. It is true that her +letters to Walpole, to which her fame is mainly due, were written +between 1766 and 1780; but they are the letters of an old woman, and +they bear upon every page of them the traces of a mind to which the +whole movement of contemporary life was profoundly distasteful. The new +forces to which the eighteenth century gave birth in thought, in art, in +sentiment, in action--which for us form its peculiar interest and its +peculiar glory--were anathema to Madame du Deffand. In her letters to +Walpole, whenever she compares the present with the past her bitterness +becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs +indicibles aux operas de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de Thevenart et +de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me parait detestable: acteurs, +auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais +gout, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards +intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the +'Encyclopaedia' and the _Philosophes_ was the object of her particular +detestation. She saw Diderot once--and that was enough for both of them. +She could never understand why it was that M. de Voltaire would persist +in wasting his talent for writing over such a dreary subject as +religion. Turgot, she confessed, was an honest man, but he was also a +'sot animal.' His dismissal from office--that fatal act, which made the +French Revolution inevitable--delighted her: she concealed her feelings +from Walpole, who admired him, but she was outspoken enough to the +Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Le renvoi du Turgot me plait extremement,' she +wrote; 'tout me parait en bon train.' And then she added, more +prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurement, nous n'en resterons pas +la.' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their works was +in part a matter of personal pique--the result of her famous quarrel +with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert +and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly +ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a +deeply rooted spiritual antipathy than a mere vulgar struggle for +influence between two rival _salonnieres_. There are indications that, +even before it took place, the elder woman's friendship for d'Alembert +was giving way under the strain of her scorn for his advanced views and +her hatred of his proselytising cast of mind. 'Il y a de certains +articles,' she complained to Voltaire in 1763--a year before the final +estrangement--'qui sont devenus pour lui affaires de parti, et sur +lesquels je ne lui trouve pas le sens commun.' The truth is that +d'Alembert and his friends were moving, and Madame du Deffand was +standing still. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse simply precipitated and +intensified an inevitable rupture. She was the younger generation +knocking at the door. + +Madame du Deffand's generation had, indeed, very little in common with +that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met +together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de +Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come +into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and +licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and +bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a +fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's +mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, was a considerable time. Then +she became the intimate friend of Madame de Prie--the singular woman +who, for a moment, on the Regent's death, during the government of M. le +Duc, controlled the destinies of France, and who committed suicide when +that amusement was denied her. During her early middle age Madame du +Deffand was one of the principal figures in the palace of Sceaux, where +the Duchesse du Maine, the grand-daughter of the great Conde and the +daughter-in-law of Louis XIV., kept up for many years an almost royal +state among the most distinguished men and women of the time. It was at +Sceaux, with its endless succession of entertainments and +conversations--supper-parties and water-parties, concerts and masked +balls, plays in the little theatre and picnics under the great trees of +the park--that Madame du Deffand came to her maturity and established +her position as one of the leaders of the society in which she moved. +The nature of that society is plainly enough revealed in the letters and +the memoirs that have come down to us. The days of formal pomp and vast +representation had ended for ever when the 'Grand Monarque' was no +longer to be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the +glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern +life had not yet begun. It was an intermediate period, and the +comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and +intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity +and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since, +have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and +for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle years +of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those +days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found +all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however +fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of +the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a +society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that +there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms of +personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of the +eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was +expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree, +those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run +smoothly--the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of +delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation--with the result that +a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and +obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those +persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it +in an unequivocal way--by the tenacity with which they clung to the +scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they almost +refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have +been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the +furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire, +d'Argental, Moncrif, Henault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand +herself--all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived +to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities +unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young--at the age of +seventy-seven. Another contemporary, Richelieu, who was famous for his +adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within a +year of the opening of the States-General. More typical still of this +singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in +his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in +existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so. + +Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring +smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of +trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was no +light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being +blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart, +realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a +peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le +commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly +true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were +those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing, +over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so +charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the +rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that +lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in +their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious +orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of +personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be +left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow +sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised +as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself +should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and +absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be +tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious +and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for +literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for +recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat +such trifles as if they had a value of their own? Only one thing; and +that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the +inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation +was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not +even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of +perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the +solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared to +the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a +convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to +instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered +serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a +preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful +heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the +generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still +believe felt the icy and disintegrating touch of a new and strange +indifference. 'Mais qu'elle est jolie!' he murmured as he came away. The +Abbess ran forward to ask what holy books he recommended. 'Give her a +threepenny Catechism,' was Massillon's reply. He had seen that the case +was hopeless. + +An innate scepticism, a profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm that +wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving +devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse--such +were the characteristics of the brilliant group of men and women who had +spent their youth at the Court of the Regent, and dallied out their +middle age down the long avenues of Sceaux. About the middle of the +century the Duchesse du Maine died, and Madame du Deffand established +herself in Paris at the Convent of Saint Joseph in a set of rooms which +still showed traces--in the emblazoned arms over the great +mantelpiece--of the occupation of Madame de Montespan. A few years later +a physical affliction overtook her: at the age of fifty-seven she became +totally blind; and this misfortune placed her, almost without a +transition, among the ranks of the old. For the rest of her life she +hardly moved from her drawing-room, which speedily became the most +celebrated in Europe. The thirty years of her reign there fall into two +distinct and almost equal parts. The first, during which d'Alembert was +pre-eminent, came to an end with the violent expulsion of Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse. During the second, which lasted for the rest of her life, +her salon, purged of the Encyclopaedists, took on a more decidedly +worldly tone; and the influence of Horace Walpole was supreme. + +It is this final period of Madame du Deffand's life that is reflected so +minutely in the famous correspondence which the labours of Mrs. Toynbee +have now presented to us for the first time in its entirety. Her letters +to Walpole form in effect a continuous journal covering the space of +fifteen years (1766-1780). They allow us, on the one hand, to trace +through all its developments the progress of an extraordinary passion, +and on the other to examine, as it were under the microscope of perhaps +the bitterest perspicacity on record, the last phase of a doomed +society. For the circle which came together in her drawing-room during +those years had the hand of death upon it. The future lay elsewhere; it +was simply the past that survived there--in the rich trappings of +fashion and wit and elaborate gaiety--but still irrevocably the past. +The radiant creatures of Sceaux had fallen into the yellow leaf. We see +them in these letters, a collection of elderly persons trying hard to +amuse themselves, and not succeeding very well. Pont-de-Veyle, the +youthful septuagenarian, did perhaps succeed; for he never noticed what +a bore he was becoming with his perpetual cough, and continued to go the +rounds with indefatigable animation, until one day his cough was heard +no more. Henault--once notorious for his dinner-parties, and for having +written an historical treatise--which, it is true, was worthless, but he +had written it--Henault was beginning to dodder, and Voltaire, grinning +in Ferney, had already dubbed him 'notre delabre President.' Various +dowagers were engaged upon various vanities. The Marquise de Boufflers +was gambling herself to ruin; the Comtesse de Boufflers was wringing +out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; +the Marechale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the Marechale +de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous +attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: +'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a +shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage que le Saint +Esprit eut aussi peu de gout!' Then there was the floating company of +foreign diplomats, some of whom were invariably to be found at Madame du +Deffand's: Caraccioli, for instance, the Neapolitan Ambassador--'je +perds les trois quarts de ce qu'il dit,' she wrote, 'mais comme il en +dit beaucoup, on peut supporter cette perte'; and Bernstorff, the Danish +envoy, who became the fashion, was lauded to the skies for his wit and +fine manners, until, says the malicious lady, 'a travers tous ces +eloges, je m'avisai de l'appeler Puffendorf,' and Puffendorf the poor +man remained for evermore. Besides the diplomats, nearly every foreign +traveller of distinction found his way to the renowned _salon_; +Englishmen were particularly frequent visitors; and among the familiar +figures of whom we catch more than one glimpse in the letters to Walpole +are Burke, Fox, and Gibbon. Sometimes influential parents in England +obtained leave for their young sons to be admitted into the centre of +Parisian refinement. The English cub, fresh from Eton, was introduced by +his tutor into the red and yellow drawing-room, where the great circle +of a dozen or more elderly important persons, glittering in jewels and +orders, pompous in powder and rouge, ranged in rigid order round the +fireplace, followed with the precision of a perfect orchestra the +leading word or smile or nod of an ancient Sibyl, who seemed to survey +the company with her eyes shut, from a vast chair by the wall. It is +easy to imagine the scene, in all its terrifying politeness. Madame du +Deffand could not tolerate young people; she declared that she did not +know what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the same +difficulty. To an English youth, unfamiliar with the language and shy +as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old +lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the +stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, +from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the +pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. +As a rule the days flowed on in easy monotony--or rather, not the days, +but the nights. For Madame du Deffand rarely rose till five o'clock in +the evening; at six she began her reception; and at nine or half-past +the central moment of the twenty-four hours arrived--the moment of +supper. Upon this event the whole of her existence hinged. Supper, she +used to say, was one of the four ends of man, and what the other three +were she could never remember. She lived up to her dictum. She had an +income of L1400 a year, and of this she spent more than half--L720--on +food. These figures should be largely increased to give them their +modern values; but, economise as she might, she found that she could +only just manage to rub along. Her parties varied considerably in size; +sometimes only four or five persons sat down to supper--sometimes twenty +or thirty. No doubt they were elaborate meals. In a moment of economy we +find the hospitable lady making pious resolutions: she would no longer +give 'des repas'--only ordinary suppers for six people at the most, at +which there should be served nothing more than two entrees, one roast, +two sweets, and--mysterious addition--'la piece du milieu.' This was +certainly moderate for those days (Monsieur de Jonsac rarely provided +fewer than fourteen entrees), but such resolutions did not last long. A +week later she would suddenly begin to issue invitations wildly, and, +day after day, her tables would be loaded with provisions for thirty +guests. But she did not always have supper at home. From time to time +she sallied forth in her vast coach and rattled through the streets of +Paris to one of her still extant dowagers--a Marechale, or a +Duchesse--or the more and more 'delabre President.' There the same +company awaited her as that which met in her own house; it was simply a +change of decorations; often enough for weeks together she had supper +every night with the same half-dozen persons. The entertainment, apart +from the supper itself, hardly varied. Occasionally there was a little +music, more often there were cards and gambling. Madame du Deffand +disliked gambling, but she loathed going to bed, and, if it came to a +choice between the two, she did not hesitate: once, at the age of +seventy-three, she sat up till seven o'clock in the morning playing +vingt-et-un with Charles Fox. But distractions of that kind were merely +incidental to the grand business of the night--the conversation. In the +circle that, after an eight hours' sitting, broke up reluctantly at two +or three every morning to meet again that same evening at six, talk +continually flowed. For those strange creatures it seemed to form the +very substance of life itself. It was the underlying essence, the +circumambient ether, in which alone the pulsations of existence had +their being; it was the one eternal reality; men might come and men +might go, but talk went on for ever. It is difficult, especially for +those born under the Saturnine influence of an English sky, quite to +realise the nature of such conversation. Brilliant, charming, +easy-flowing, gay and rapid it must have been; never profound, never +intimate, never thrilling; but also never emphatic, never affected, +never languishing, and never dull. Madame du Deffand herself had a most +vigorous flow of language. 'Ecoutez! Ecoutez!' Walpole used constantly +to exclaim, trying to get in his points; but in vain; the sparkling +cataract swept on unheeding. And indeed to listen was the wiser part--to +drink in deliciously the animation of those quick, illimitable, +exquisitely articulated syllables, to surrender one's whole soul to the +pure and penetrating precision of those phrases, to follow without a +breath the happy swiftness of that fine-spun thread of thought. Then at +moments her wit crystallised; the cataract threw off a shower of radiant +jewels, which one caught as one might. Some of these have come down to +us. Her remark on Montesquieu's great book--'C'est de l'esprit sur les +lois'--is an almost final criticism. Her famous 'mot de Saint Denis,' so +dear to the heart of Voltaire, deserves to be once more recorded. A +garrulous and credulous Cardinal was describing the martyrdom of Saint +Denis the Areopagite: when his head was cut off, he took it up and +carried it in his hands. That, said the Cardinal, was well known; what +was not well known was the extraordinary fact that he walked with his +head under his arm all the way from Montmartre to the Church of Saint +Denis--a distance of six miles. 'Ah, Monseigneur!' said Madame du +Deffand, 'dans une telle situation, il n'y a que le premier pas qui +coute.' At two o'clock the brilliance began to flag; the guests began to +go; the dreadful moment was approaching. If Madame de Gramont happened +to be there, there was still some hope, for Madame de Gramont abhorred +going to bed almost as much as Madame du Deffand. Or there was just a +chance that the Duc de Choiseul might come in at the last moment, and +stay on for a couple of hours. But at length it was impossible to +hesitate any longer; the chariot was at the door. She swept off, but it +was still early; it was only half-past three; and the coachman was +ordered to drive about the Boulevards for an hour before going home. + +It was, after all, only natural that she should put off going to bed, +for she rarely slept for more than two or three hours. The greater part +of that empty time, during which conversation was impossible, she +devoted to her books. But she hardly ever found anything to read that +she really enjoyed. Of the two thousand volumes she possessed--all bound +alike, and stamped on the back with her device of a cat--she had only +read four or five hundred; the rest were impossible. She perpetually +complained to Walpole of the extreme dearth of reading matter. In +nothing, indeed, is the contrast more marked between that age and ours +than in the quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How the +eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our +biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge +and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! In those days, +even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to +read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from +catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that +Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in +_Athalie_. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the whole he +was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de +Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was +enraptured by the style--but only by the style--of _Gil Blas_. And that +was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or +insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it, +but she soon gave it up--it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon, +but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une +monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne s'occupe +que des betes; il faut l'etre un peu soi-meme pour se devouer a une +telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in +manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted by +the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she +embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was +unexpected; she was positively pleased. _Coriolanus_, it is true, 'me +semble, sauf votre respect, epouvantable, et n'a pas le sens commun'; +and 'pour _La Tempete_, je ne suis pas touchee de ce genre.' But she was +impressed by _Othello_; she was interested by _Macbeth_; and she admired +_Julius Caesar_, in spite of its bad taste. At _King Lear_, indeed, she +had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle piece! Reellement la +trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'ame a un point que je ne puis +exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader +was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning +early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the +cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous +company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and +Lady Macbeth? + +Often, even before the arrival of the old pensioner, she was at work +dictating a letter, usually to Horace Walpole, occasionally to Madame de +Choiseul or Voltaire. Her letters to Voltaire are enchanting; his +replies are no less so; and it is much to be regretted that the whole +correspondence has never been collected together in chronological order, +and published as a separate book. The slim volume would be, of its kind, +quite perfect. There was no love lost between the two old friends; they +could not understand each other; Voltaire, alone of his generation, had +thrown himself into the very vanguard of thought; to Madame du Deffand +progress had no meaning, and thought itself was hardly more than an +unpleasant necessity. She distrusted him profoundly, and he returned the +compliment. Yet neither could do without the other: through her, he kept +in touch with one of the most influential circles in Paris; and even she +could not be insensible to the glory of corresponding with such a man. +Besides, in spite of all their differences, they admired each other +genuinely, and they were held together by the habit of a long +familiarity. The result was a marvellous display of epistolary art. If +they had liked each other any better, they never would have troubled to +write so well. They were on their best behaviour--exquisitely courteous +and yet punctiliously at ease, like dancers in a minuet. His cajoleries +are infinite; his deft sentences, mingling flattery with reflection, +have almost the quality of a caress. She replies in the tone of a +worshipper, glancing lightly at a hundred subjects, purring out her +'Monsieur de Voltaire,' and seeking his advice on literature and life. +He rejoins in that wonderful strain of epicurean stoicism of which he +alone possessed the secret: and so the letters go on. Sometimes one just +catches the glimpse of a claw beneath the soft pad, a grimace under the +smile of elegance; and one remembers with a shock that, after all, one +is reading the correspondence of a monkey and a cat. + +Madame du Deffand's style reflects, perhaps even more completely than +that of Voltaire himself, the common-sense of the eighteenth century. +Its precision is absolute. It is like a line drawn in one stroke by a +master, with the prompt exactitude of an unerring subtlety. There is no +breadth in it--no sense of colour and the concrete mass of things. One +cannot wonder, as one reads her, that she hardly regretted her +blindness. What did she lose by it? Certainly not + + The sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's rose; + +for what did she care for such particulars when her eyes were at their +clearest? Her perception was intellectual; and to the penetrating +glances of her mental vision the objects of the sensual world were mere +irrelevance. The kind of writing produced by such a quality of mind may +seem thin and barren to those accustomed to the wealth and variety of +the Romantic school. Yet it will repay attention. The vocabulary is very +small; but every word is the right one; this old lady of high society, +who had never given a thought to her style, who wrote--and spelt--by the +light of nature, was a past mistress of that most difficult of literary +accomplishments--'l'art de dire en un mot tout ce qu'un mot peut dire.' +The object of all art is to make suggestions. The romantic artist +attains that end by using a multitude of different stimuli, by calling +up image after image, recollection after recollection, until the +reader's mind is filled and held by a vivid and palpable evocation; the +classic works by the contrary method of a fine economy, and, ignoring +everything but what is essential, trusts, by means of the exact +propriety of his presentation, to produce the required effect. Madame du +Deffand carries the classical ideal to its furthest point. She never +strikes more than once, and she always hits the nail on the head. Such +is her skill that she sometimes seems to beat the Romantics even on +their own ground: her reticences make a deeper impression than all the +dottings of their i's. The following passage from a letter to Walpole is +characteristic: + + Nous eumes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la harpe a + merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j'eus du regret que vous + ne l'entendissiez pas; c'est un instrument admirable. Nous eumes + aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu'il fut touche avec une grande + perfection, ce n'est rien en comparaison de la harpe. Je fus fort + triste toute la soiree; j'avais appris en partant que Mme. de + Luxembourg, qui etait allee samedi a Montmorency pour y passer + quinze jours, s'etait trouvee si mal qu'on avait fait venir + Tronchin, et qu'on l'avait ramenee le dimanche a huit heures du + soir, qu'on lui croyait de l'eau dans la poitrine. L'anciennete de + la connaissance; une habitude qui a l'air de l'amitie; voir + disparaitre ceux avec qui l'on vit; un retour sur soi-meme; sentir + que l'on ne tient a rien, que tout fuit, que tout echappe, qu'on + reste seule dans l'univers, et que malgre cela on craint de le + quitter; voila ce qui m'occupa pendant la musique. + +Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and +ordinary expressions--'un instrument admirable'--'une grande +perfection'--'fort triste.' Nothing is described; and yet how much is +suggested! The whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one's +imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, by +a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless +rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old +harp seems to be lingering still. + +While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant exterior +of Madame du Deffand's mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of +her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, +pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair--these are the feelings +that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand's +lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed +the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the +rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was +surrounded by a multitude of friends. What more could anyone desire? The +harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little +appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a feast; +the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her +distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act +of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from +her for ever. Yet--and this intensified her wretchedness--though the +banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself +away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts +of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was +out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and +there she must remain. 'Je ne suis point assez heureuse,' she said, 'de +me passer des choses dont je ne me soucie pas.' She was extremely +lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she passed her +life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, 'Je ne +vois que des sots et des fripons,' she said; and she did not know which +were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in +analysing 'les nuances des sottises' among the people with whom she +lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, +Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her--'elle fait +des definitions,' she wails--to that of the lady who hoped to prove her +friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears--'comme je n'y tate +pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de gout que j'ai pour elle.' Then +there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it. +'Tous les Matignon sont des sots,' said somebody one day to the Regent, +'excepte le Marquis de Matignon.' 'Cela est vrai,' the Regent replied, +'il n'est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu'il est le fils d'un sot.' Madame +du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, there +was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet--what was +it? Something was the matter--yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool +yourself--'l'on est plus bete avec lui que l'on ne l'est tout seul.' As +she said of herself: 'elle est toujours tentee d'arracher les masques +qu'elle rencontre.' Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out +unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked +behind the gravest or the most fascinating exterior; then her fingers +began to itch, and she could resist no longer--she gave way to her +besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with Rousseau's +remark about her--'J'aimai mieux encore m'exposer au fleau de sa haine +qu'a celui de son amitie.' There, sitting in her great Diogenes-tub of +an armchair--her 'tonneau' as she called it--talking, smiling, +scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the +remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces +that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed +itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and +meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism: + + J'admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui etait chez moi; + hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines a ressorts, qui + allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans + reflechir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son role par habitude: Madame + la Duchesse d'Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de Forcalquier + dedaignait tout, Mme. de la Valliere jabotait sur tout. Les hommes + ne jouaient pas de meilleurs roles, et moi j'etais abimee dans les + reflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j'avais passe ma vie dans + les illusions; que je m'etais creusee tous les abimes dans lesquels + j'etais tombee. + +At other times she could see around her nothing but a mass of mutual +hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours: + + Je ramenai la Marechale de Mirepoix chez elle; j'y descendis, je + causai une heure avec elle; je n'en fus pas mecontente. Elle hait + la petite Idole, elle hait la Marechale de Luxembourg; enfin, sa + haine pour tous les gens qui me deplaisent me fit lui pardonner + l'indifference et peut-etre la haine qu'elle a pour moi. Convenez + que voila une jolie societe, un charmant commerce. + +Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found +in the Duchesse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But +there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she _was_ +perfect!--'Elle est parfaite; et c'est un plus grand defaut qu'on ne +pense et qu'on ne saurait imaginer.' At last one day the inevitable +happened--she went to see Madame de Choiseul, and she was bored. 'Je +rentrai chez moi a une heure, penetree, persuadee qu'on ne peut etre +content de personne.' + +One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final +irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop +that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had +come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle +de Lespinasse and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within +a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such +a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die +quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and +she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was +embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she +experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion. +Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an +ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways of +worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, +and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. +Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a +holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, +hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blase bachelor of fifty, should +have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have +treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him +which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in +a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest +fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our +knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; +nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and +painful episode, the principal motive which actuated him was an +inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that +letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived in +terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind +old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his +friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the +laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less +terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the +object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his +London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France +with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by +turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by +the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand--so far as he could like +anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her +letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably +the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute +rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most +ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to +continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du +Deffand. She accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she +wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. +Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her +side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. +Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked +by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the +same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the +charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a +miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he +had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a +good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was +the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had +been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight +of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole +too would have felt 'le fleau de son amitie'? His mask, too, would have +been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved +him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his +brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of +about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks--just long enough to +rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that +she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of +which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once +or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in +plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most violent +and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and +for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and +pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some +satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a +peculiarly painful attack of the gout. + +About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, +after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After +seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand's indomitable spirit was +broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully +accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she +resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, +her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete. +She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations +on the perpetual theme of 'ennui.' 'C'est une maladie de l'ame,' she +says, 'dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l'existence; c'est le +ver solitaire qui absorbe tout.' And again, 'l'ennui est l'avant-gout du +neant, mais le neant lui est preferable.' Her existence had become a +hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been +uprooted and which had been sown with salt. 'Ah! Je le repete sans +cesse, il n'y a qu'un malheur, celui d'etre ne.' The grasshopper had +become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life. +'Comment est-il possible,' she asks, 'qu'on craigne la fin d'une vie +aussi triste?' When Death did come at last, he came very gently. She +felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in +her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: +'Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez +point de mon etat, nous etions presque perdus l'un pour l'autre; nous ne +nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu'on est bien +aise de se savoir aime.' That was her last word to him. Walpole might +have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he +realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would have +been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived--her +room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her +ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one +attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it +is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear. +Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such an +unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an +uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing +that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was +she perhaps right after all? + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 2: _Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand a Horace Walpole_ +(1766-80). Premiere Edition complete, augmentee d'environ 500 Lettres +inedites, publiees, d'apres les originaux, avec une introduction, des +notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, +1912.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND[3] + +The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the history of +civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of +interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the French and +English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance +and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire planted +a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile +influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on +good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native +country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so +that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his was +the hand which did the work. + +It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in +Voltaire's life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a +hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could find +nothing but 'mere inanity and darkness visible'; and since Carlyle's day +the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres' long +Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate +the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the +publication of M. Lanson's elaborate and exhaustive edition of the +_Lettres Philosophiques_, the work in which Voltaire gave to the world +the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien +Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the +period, which he has collated with scrupulous exactitude and to which he +has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and +disputed points. M. Lanson's great attainments are well known, and to +say that M. Foulet's work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to +the edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is +a worthy follower of that noble tradition of profound research and +perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of +European culture. + +Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire's departure for +England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The story, +as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official +documents of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the early +days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied +a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly +have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising +poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of +Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been +rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, +his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of +the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his +middle-class antecedents as completely as he had dropped his +middle-class name, young Arouet, the notary's offspring, floated at his +ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank +and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he +expressed all the ardours of a passionate and polite devotion. Such was +his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night +at the Opera the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful +family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, blustering, +whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to +taunt the poet upon his birth--'Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire--what +_is_ your name?' To which the retort came quickly--'Whatever my name may +be, I know how to preserve the honour of it.' The Chevalier muttered +something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had let +his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to +pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty +with lords. 'Now mind, Dancourt,' said one of those _grands seigneurs_ +to the leading actor of the day, 'if you're more amusing than I am at +dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de batons._' It was +dangerous enough to show one's wits at all in the company of such +privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! A few days later +Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comedie, in Adrienne +Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and +'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan +lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and +the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the +arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's, +where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, +received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went +out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of +Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tete,' he +shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which, +according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which +had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to +everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into +Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of +words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up +to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the +signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted +itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if +they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then +the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the +convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came +into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, +perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at +him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with +icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de +Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed +the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and +_Phedre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups +de batons etaient bien recus et mal donnes.' 'Nous serions bien +malheureux,' said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of +snuff, 'si les poetes n'avaient pas des epaules.' Such friends as +remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing. +'Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitie,' she said; 'dans le fond il a +raison.' But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, and +she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, +lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two +months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised +swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was +cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally +rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long +term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did +not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those +days to a man of honour in such circumstances--to avenge the insult by a +challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, began +to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so +soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One +day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for +Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police +reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making +no concealment of his desire to 'insulter incessamment et avec eclat M. +le chevalier de Rohan.' This decided the authorities, and accordingly on +the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the _Police Gazette_, +'le sieur Arrouet de Voltaire, fameux poete,' was arrested, and +conducted 'par ordre du Roi' to the Bastille. + +A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de Bernieres while he +was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced +upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected +correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit. +The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting +smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are +informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, +for the first time in his life, is serious. + + J'ai ete a l'extremite; je n'attends que ma convalescence pour + abandonner a jamais ce pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l'amitie tendre + que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitie informez-moi par + un mot de votre main de ce qui se passe, ou parlez a l'homme que je + vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entiere confiance. + Presentez mes respects a Madame du Deffand; dites a Thieriot que je + veux absolument qu'il m'aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je + serai heureux; jusque-la, je lui pardonne son indifference. Dites a + M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n'oublierai jamais la generosite + de ses procedes pour moi. Comptez que tout detrompe que je suis de + la vanite des amities humaines, la votre me sera a jamais + precieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir a Paris que pour vous voir, + vous embrasser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance + dans mon amitie et dans mes malheurs. + +'Presentez mes respects a Madame du Deffand!' Strange indeed are the +whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernieres was then living in none other +than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai +des Theatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century later, +the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an +enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; +where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with +the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to +the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, +which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow +old.[4] + +Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. For some time he had +entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged for +permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was +to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to substitute exile +for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight's detention, the 'fameux +poete' was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and +remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty +leagues from Versailles. + +It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and +confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is +generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. His +subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at +Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the +interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object--in which +he did not succeed--of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel. +Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not +in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in +doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned +secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length +of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, +however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over +all the details of Voltaire's stay. Not only are his own extant letters +during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary +English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend +upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We +know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard +Falkener in circumstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in +English--an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of +another race. 'At my coming to London,' he wrote, 'I found my damned Jew +was broken.' (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a +Jewish broker.) + + I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, + alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to + nobody; my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could + not make bold to see our ambassadour in so wretched a condition. I + had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all + the misfortunes of life. In these circumstances my star, that among + all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind + refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who + forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London + citisen that I had seen but once at Paris, carried me to his own + country house, wherein I lead an obscure and charming life since + that time, without going to London, and quite given over to the + pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and generous + affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings + me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp + indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady + Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even + increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, + their money, their house; but I have refused all, because they are + lords, and I have accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a + single gentleman. + +We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as +to who or what Everard Falkener was--besides the fact that he was a +'single gentleman'--we have only just information enough to make us wish +for more. + +'I am here,' he wrote after Voltaire had gone, 'just as you left me, +neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect +health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, +without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all +this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man.' +This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame +his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first +Ambassador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General--has anyone, +before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and +to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of +sixty-three, 'the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill.' + +We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious document +brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an assistant master at +a Quaker's school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to +argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of 'water-baptism,' +until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed +conclusive. + + Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple's seat in + Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on + the subject of water-baptism. Voltaire assumed the part of a + quaker, and at length came to mention that assertion of Paul. They + questioned there being such an assertion in all his writings; on + which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of L500: and + Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl's horses, + and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney.... When I came he + desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, _he + was not sent to baptize_; which I presently did. Then courteously + taking his leave, he mounted and rode back-- + +and, we must suppose, won his wager. + + He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out + the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be + very exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it + might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his + companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every + respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal + value: telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were + most of the noblemen in France and in England; deriding the account + given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and + his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist: for I + could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against. + Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some + reluctance. + +In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating +figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square--'Belitery +Square' he calls it--or at the sign of the 'White Whigg' in Maiden Lane, +Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in +Westminster Abbey, or to pay a call on Congreve, or to attend a +Quaker's Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he +found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the +'French dog' he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and +delivering a harangue beginning--'Brave Englishmen! Am I not +sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?' Then there are +one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb +Dodington's where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the +episode of Sin and Death in _Paradise Lost_ with such vigour that at +last Young burst out with the couplet: + + You are so witty, profligate, and thin, + At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin; + +and at Blenheim, where the old Duchess of Marlborough hoped to lure him +into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had +scruples, when in a fury she snatched the papers out of his hands. 'I +thought,' she cried, 'the man had sense; but I find him at bottom either +a fool or a philosopher.' + +It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its +scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, +and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have +been gratified. Of Voltaire's relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, +and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His +correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose +presence in London was one of his principal inducements in coming to +England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has +completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which +passed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there +any reference to Voltaire's name. Now and then some chance remark raises +our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years +later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to +Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary: + + Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very + old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots + on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and tassle of gold. He spoke + all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but + genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall + and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly + vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with + whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's) and Gay, who + first showed him the _Beggar's Opera_ before it was acted. He says + he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a + great deal of the ridiculum acre. + +And then Major Broome goes on to describe the 'handsome new church' at +Ferney, and the 'very neat water-works' at Geneva. But what a vision has +he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from +our gaze in that brief parenthesis--'with whom he lived for three months +at Lord Peterborough's'! What would we not give now for no more than one +or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that noble river of talk +which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream, +swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty spaces of +forgetfulness and the long night of Time! + +So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated +information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of +Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a +very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to +suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a +purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire +himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the +great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he +was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not +that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _reclame_, +with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of +those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even +less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire's own +story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire +was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is +only natural that, out of the enormous mass of mud that was thrown at +him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in +England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody +else--'avec des details que je ne rapporterai point'--that 'M. de +Voltaire se conduisit tres-irregulierement en Angleterre: qu'il s'y est +fait beaucoup d'ennemis, par des procedes qui n'accordaient pas avec les +principes d'une morale exacte.' And we are told that he left England +'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated +publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of +money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, +who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more +circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, +it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of +betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale +first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it +from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton +Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the +'fulsome flattery' and 'exaggerated compliments' to be found in +Voltaire's correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom +'falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition. +There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no +law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating.' +Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy +premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth +century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has +examined Ruffhead's charge in a very different spirit, with +conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without +foundation. + +It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire's acquaintanceship was not limited +to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which centred about the +disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London +with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English Ambassador +at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. 'Mr. Voltaire, a +poet and a very ingenious one,' was recommended by Walpole to the favour +and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to +support the subscription to 'an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.," +which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the +priests, cannot be printed here.' These letters had their effect, and +Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London +edition of the _Henriade_, there was hardly a great name in England +which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the +poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of L240. Now it is +also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were +suspicious of a 'certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act +in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,' +who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But to +conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was +known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the +inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, +owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers +to the _Henriade_--Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and +that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of +Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition +of another of Voltaire's works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have +had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can +conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very summit +of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew +to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself +and his friends? + +Voltaire's literary activities were as insatiable while he was in +England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition +of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of +the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its +pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon +the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his +tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quantity of material for his +History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged +with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_ +met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition +was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as +many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs. +M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly +successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some +town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the +completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may, +he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he +applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th +of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more +than three years before came to a close. + +It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_ +appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire +gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a +focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation +into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had +scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the +culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the +Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to +England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration +which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the +hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like +most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar +attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular +sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The +agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign +of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual +activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed +to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime +the great nobles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of +the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State. +Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English; +never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of +judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and +complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of +Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the +whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those +elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of +the national genius--'Gulliver's Travels' and the 'Dunciad'--both +appeared during Voltaire's visit. Nor was it only in the high places of +the nation's consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were +visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the +Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into +English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy +Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of +English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny +fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable +silence, over their English beef and English beer. + +It was only natural that such a society should act as a powerful +stimulus upon the vivid temperament of Voltaire, who had come to it with +the bitter knowledge fresh in his mind of the medieval futility, the +narrow-minded cynicism of his own country. Yet the book which was the +result is in many ways a surprising one. It is almost as remarkable for +what it does not say as for what it does. In the first place, Voltaire +makes no attempt to give his readers an account of the outward surface, +the social and spectacular aspects of English life. It is impossible not +to regret this, especially since we know, from a delightful fragment +which was not published until after his death, describing his first +impressions on arriving in London, in how brilliant and inimitable a +fashion he would have accomplished the task. A full-length portrait of +Hanoverian England from the personal point of view, by Voltaire, would +have been a priceless possession for posterity; but it was never to be +painted. The first sketch revealing in its perfection the hand of the +master, was lightly drawn, and then thrown aside for ever. And in +reality it is better so. Voltaire decided to aim at something higher and +more important, something more original and more profound. He determined +to write a book which should be, not the sparkling record of an +ingenious traveller, but a work of propaganda and a declaration of +faith. That new mood, which had come upon him first in Sully's +dining-room and is revealed to us in the quivering phrases of the note +to Madame de Bernieres, was to grow, in the congenial air of England, +into the dominating passion of his life. Henceforth, whatever quips and +follies, whatever flouts and mockeries might play upon the surface, he +was to be in deadly earnest at heart. He was to live and die a fighter +in the ranks of progress, a champion in the mighty struggle which was +now beginning against the powers of darkness in France. The first great +blow in that struggle had been struck ten years earlier by Montesquieu +in his _Lettres Persanes_; the second was struck by Voltaire in the +_Lettres Philosophiques_. The intellectual freedom, the vigorous +precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work +appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as +its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections +upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common +point of view. A description of the institutions and manners of England +is only an incidental part of the scheme: it is the fulcrum by means of +which the lever of Voltaire's philosophy is brought into operation. The +book is an extremely short one--it fills less than two hundred small +octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy +gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it--a set of private letters +to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an +extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a +hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance--from the +theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the effects +of inoculation to the immortality of the soul--and every touch tells. It +is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential +point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality +of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The matters +treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed +so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder +whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been +expressed. But, in reality, what, in those few small pages, has been +expressed is simply the whole philosophy of Voltaire. He offers one an +exquisite dish of whipped cream; one swallows down the unsubstantial +trifle, and asks impatiently if that is all? At any rate, it is enough. +Into that frothy sweetness his subtle hand has insinuated a single drop +of some strange liquor--is it a poison or is it an elixir of +life?--whose penetrating influence will spread and spread until the +remotest fibres of the system have felt its power. Contemporary French +readers, when they had shut the book, found somehow that they were +looking out upon a new world; that a process of disintegration had begun +among their most intimate beliefs and feelings; that the whole rigid +frame-work of society--of life itself--the hard, dark, narrow, +antiquated structure of their existence--had suddenly, in the twinkling +of an eye, become a faded, shadowy thing. + +It might have been expected that, among the reforms which such a work +would advocate, a prominent place would certainly have been given to +those of a political nature. In England a political revolution had been +crowned with triumph, and all that was best in English life was founded +upon the political institutions which had been then established. The +moral was obvious: one had only to compare the state of England under a +free government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and +incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by +Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; he +gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly +mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the +responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even +the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, +whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate the +importance of the fact. As to the underlying principles of the +constitution, the account which he gives of them conveys hardly more to +the reader than the famous lines in the _Henriade_: + + Aux murs de Westminster on voit paraitre ensemble + Trois pouvoirs etonnes du noeud qui les rassemble. + +Apparently Voltaire was aware of these deficiencies, for in the English +edition of the book he caused the following curious excuses to be +inserted in the preface: + + Some of his _English_ Readers may perhaps be dissatisfied at his + not expatiating farther on their Constitution and their Laws, which + most of them revere almost to Idolatry; but, this Reservedness is + an effect of _M. de Voltaire's_ Judgment. He contented himself with + giving his opinion of them in general Reflexions, the Cast of which + is entirely new, and which prove that he had made this Part of the + _British_ Polity his particular Study. Besides, how was it possible + for a Foreigner to pierce thro' their Politicks, that gloomy + Labyrinth, in which such of the _English_ themselves as are best + acquainted with it, confess daily that they are bewilder'd and + lost? + +Nothing could be more characteristic of the attitude, not only of +Voltaire himself, but of the whole host of his followers in the later +eighteenth century, towards the actual problems of politics. They turned +away in disgust from the 'gloomy labyrinth' of practical fact to take +refuge in those charming 'general Reflexions' so dear to their hearts, +'the Cast of which was entirely new'--and the conclusion of which was +also entirely new, for it was the French Revolution. + +It was, indeed, typical of Voltaire and of his age that the _Lettres +Philosophiques_ should have been condemned by the authorities, not for +any political heterodoxy, but for a few remarks which seemed to call in +question the immortality of the soul. His attack upon the _ancien +regime_ was, in the main, a theoretical attack; doubtless its immediate +effectiveness was thereby diminished, but its ultimate force was +increased. And the _ancien regime_ itself was not slow to realise the +danger: to touch the ark of metaphysical orthodoxy was in its eyes the +unforgiveable sin. Voltaire knew well enough that he must be careful. + + Il n'y a qu'une lettre touchant M. Loke [he wrote to a friend]. La + seule matiere philosophique que j'y traite est la petite bagatelle + de l'immortalite de l'ame; mais la chose a trop de consequence pour + la traiter serieusement. Il a fallu l'egorger pour ne pas heurter + de front nos seigneurs les theologiens, gens qui voient si + clairement la spiritualite de l'ame qu'ils feraient bruler, s'ils + pouvaient, les corps de ceux qui en doutent. + +Nor was it only 'M. Loke' whom he felt himself obliged to touch so +gingerly; the remarkable movement towards Deism, which was then +beginning in England, Voltaire only dared to allude to in a hardly +perceivable hint. He just mentions, almost in a parenthesis, the names +of Shaftesbury, Collins, and Toland, and then quickly passes on. In this +connexion, it may be noticed that the influence upon Voltaire of the +writers of this group has often been exaggerated. To say, as Lord Morley +says, that 'it was the English onslaught which sowed in him the seed of +the idea ... of a systematic and reasoned attack' upon Christian +theology, is to misjudge the situation. In the first place it is certain +both that Voltaire's opinions upon those matters were fixed, and that +his proselytising habits had begun, long before he came to England. +There is curious evidence of this in an anonymous letter, preserved +among the archives of the Bastille, and addressed to the head of the +police at the time of Voltaire's imprisonment. + + Vous venez de mettre a la Bastille [says the writer, who, it is + supposed, was an ecclesiastic] un homme que je souhaitais y voir il + y a plus de 15 annees. + +The writer goes on to speak of the + + metier que faisait l'homme en question, prechant le deisme tout a + decouvert aux toilettes de nos jeunes seigneurs ... L'Ancien + Testament, selon lui, n'est qu'un tissu de contes et de fables, les + apotres etaient de bonnes gens idiots, simples, et credules, et les + peres de l'Eglise, Saint Bernard surtout, auquel il en veut le + plus, n'etaient que des charlatans et des suborneurs. + +'Je voudrais etre homme d'authorite,' he adds, 'pour un jour seulement, +afin d'enfermer ce poete entre quatre murailles pour toute sa vie.' That +Voltaire at this early date should have already given rise to such pious +ecclesiastical wishes shows clearly enough that he had little to learn +from the deists of England. And, in the second place, the deists of +England had very little to teach a disciple of Bayle, Fontenelle, and +Montesquieu. They were, almost without exception, a group of second-rate +and insignificant writers whose 'onslaught' upon current beliefs was +only to a faint extent 'systematic and reasoned.' The feeble and +fluctuating rationalism of Toland and Wollaston, the crude and confused +rationalism of Collins, the half-crazy rationalism of Woolston, may each +and all, no doubt, have furnished Voltaire with arguments and +suggestions, but they cannot have seriously influenced his thought. +Bolingbroke was a more important figure, and he was in close personal +relation with Voltaire; but his controversial writings were clumsy and +superficial to an extraordinary degree. As Voltaire himself said, 'in +his works there are many leaves and little fruit; distorted expressions +and periods intolerably long.' Tindal and Middleton were more vigorous; +but their work did not appear until a later period. The masterly and +far-reaching speculations of Hume belong, of course, to a totally +different class. + +Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which +the _Lettres Philosophiques_ did pioneer work of a highly important +kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. +The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best--succinct, lucid, +persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other +hand, show him at his worst. Their principal merit is that they mention +his existence--a fact hitherto unknown in France; otherwise they merely +afford a striking example of the singular contradiction in Voltaire's +nature which made him a revolutionary in intellect and kept him a high +Tory in taste. Never was such speculative audacity combined with such +aesthetic timidity; it is as if he had reserved all his superstition for +matters of art. From his account of Shakespeare, it is clear that he had +never dared to open his eyes and frankly look at what he should see +before him. All was 'barbare, depourvu de bienseances, d'ordre, de +vraisemblance'; in the hurly-burly he was dimly aware of a figured and +elevated style, and of some few 'lueurs etonnantes'; but to the true +significance of Shakespeare's genius he remained utterly blind. + +Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to +reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on 'M. Loke' by +slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, +quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon +some of the _Pensees_ of Pascal. He no doubt hoped that these +reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious +venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved. But all his +subterfuges were useless. It was in vain that he pulled wires and +intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged +Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice +extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his +book. The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt +that it would be safer to skip the best parts--'the poor man!' he said +afterwards, 'he didn't realise what he had missed'--but the permission +never came. Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit +publication; and then the authorities acted with full force. The +_Lettres Philosophiques_ were officially condemned; the book was +declared to be scandalous and 'contraire a la religion, aux bonnes +moeurs, et au respect du aux puissances,' and it was ordered to be +publicly burned by the executioner. The result was precisely what might +have been expected: the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from +putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps +and bounds. England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. Loke +and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of 'ce fou de +Shakespeare' began to be read. And, at the same time, the whispered +message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was +carried over the land. The success of Voltaire's work was complete. + +He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of +the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Chatelet's country +house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and +a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of +the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, and +condemned Voltaire's book. The Newtonian system destroyed that of +Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of +orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard. +But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton _was_ heard. The men of +science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much +to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which +took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century +were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire. + +With his work on Newton, Voltaire's direct connexion with English +influences came to an end. For the rest of his life, indeed, he never +lost his interest in England; he was never tired of reading English +books, of being polite to English travellers, and of doing his best, in +the intervals of more serious labours, to destroy the reputation of that +deplorable English buffoon, whom, unfortunately, he himself had been so +foolish as first to introduce to the attention of his countrymen. But it +is curious to notice how, as time went on, the force of Voltaire's +nature inevitably carried him further and further away from the central +standpoints of the English mind. The stimulus which he had received in +England only served to urge him into a path which no Englishman has ever +trod. The movement of English thought in the eighteenth century found +its perfect expression in the profound, sceptical, and yet essentially +conservative, genius of Hume. How different was the attitude of +Voltaire! With what a reckless audacity, what a fierce uncompromising +passion he charged and fought and charged again! He had no time for the +nice discriminations of an elaborate philosophy, and no desire for the +careful balance of the judicial mind; his creed was simple and explicit, +and it also possessed the supreme merit of brevity: 'Ecrasez l'infame!' +was enough for him. + + +1914. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 3: _Correspondance de Voltaire_ (1726-1729). By Lucien Foulet. +Paris: Hachette, 1913.] + +[Footnote 4: 'Il est aussi anime qu'il ait jamais ete. Il a +quatre-vingt-quatre ans, et en verite je le crois immortel; il jouit de +tous ses sens, aucun meme n'est affaibli; c'est un etre bien singulier, +et en verite fort superieur.' Madame du Deffand to Horace Walpole, 12 +Avril 1778.] + + + + +A DIALOGUE + +BETWEEN + +MOSES, DIOGENES, AND MR. LOKE + + +DIOGENES + +Confess, oh _Moses_! Your Miracles were but conjuring-tricks, your +Prophecies lucky Hazards, and your Laws a _Gallimaufry_ of Commonplaces +and Absurdities. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that you were more skill'd in flattering the Vulgar than in +ascertaining the Truth, and that your Reputation in the World would +never have been so high, had your Lot fallen among a Nation of +Philosophers. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that when you taught the _Jews_ to spoil the _Egyptians_ you +were a sad rogue. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that it was a Fable to give Horses to Pharaoh and an uncloven +hoof to the Hare. + + +DIOGENES + +Confess that you did never see the _Back Parts_ of the Lord. + + +MR. LOKE + +Confess that your style had too much Singularity and too little Taste to +be that of the Holy Ghost. + + +MOSES + +All this may be true, my good Friends; but what are the Conclusions you +would draw from your Raillery? Do you suppose that I am ignorant of all +that a Wise Man might urge against my Conduct, my Tales, and my +Language? But alas! my path was chalk'd out for me not by Choice but by +Necessity. I had not the Happiness of living in _England_ or a _Tub_. I +was the Leader of an ignorant and superstitious People, who would never +have heeded the sober Counsels of Good Sense and Toleration, and who +would have laughed at the Refinements of a nice Philosophy. It was +necessary to flatter their Vanity by telling them that they were the +favour'd Children of God, to satisfy their Passions by allowing them to +be treacherous and cruel to their Enemies, and to tickle their Ears by +Stories and Farces by turns ridiculous and horrible, fit either for a +Nursery or _Bedlam_. By such Contrivances I was able to attain my Ends +and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is +not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must +fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from +Expediency. It is his Duty to _sacrifice_ the Best, which is impossible, +to a _little Good_, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay down a +Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in a +few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and +Superstitious, the _Jews_ would never have escaped from the Bondage of +the _Egyptians_. + + +DIOGENES. + +Perhaps that would not have been an overwhelming Disaster. But, in +truth, you are right. There is no viler Profession than the Government +of Nations. He who dreams that he can lead a great Crowd of Fools +without a great Store of Knavery is a Fool himself. + + +MR. LOKE + +Are not you too hasty? Does not History show that there have been great +Rulers who were good Men? Solon, Henry of _Navarre_, and Milord Somers +were certainly not Fools, and yet I am unwilling to believe that they +were Knaves either. + + +MOSES + +No, not Knaves; but Dissemblers. In their different degrees, they all +juggled; but 'twas not because Jugglery pleas'd 'em; 'twas because Men +cannot be governed without it. + + +MR. LOKE + +I would be happy to try the Experiment. If Men were told the Truth, +might they not believe it? If the Opportunity of Virtue and Wisdom is +never to be offer'd 'em, how can we be sure that they would not be +willing to take it? Let Rulers be _bold_ and _honest_, and it is +possible that the Folly of their Peoples will disappear. + + +DIOGENES + +A pretty phantastick Vision! But History is against you. + + +MOSES + +And Prophecy. + + +DIOGENES + +And Common Observation. Look at the World at this moment, and what do we +see? It is as it has always been, and always will be. So long as it +endures, the World will continue to be rul'd by Cajolery, by Injustice, +and by Imposture. + + +MR. LOKE + +If that be so, I must take leave to lament the _Destiny_ of the Human +Race. + + + + +VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES + +The historian of Literature is little more than a historian of exploded +reputations. What has he to do with Shakespeare, with Dante, with +Sophocles? Has he entered into the springs of the sea? Or has he walked +in the search of the depth? The great fixed luminaries of the firmament +of Letters dazzle his optic glass; and he can hardly hope to do more +than record their presence, and admire their splendours with the eyes of +an ordinary mortal. His business is with the succeeding ages of men, not +with all time; but _Hyperion_ might have been written on the morrow of +Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The +literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the +geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of +forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great +men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer +great--mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the +siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is +for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among the +platitudes of Cicero. It is for him to sit up all night with the +spectral heroes of Byron; it is for him to exchange innumerable +alexandrines with the faded heroines of Voltaire. + +The great potentate of the eighteenth century has suffered cruelly +indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of +him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, and +not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of _Candide_, of +_Akakia_, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his +productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons now +living have travelled through _La Henriade_ or _La Pucelle_? How many +have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of _L'Esprit des +Moeurs_? _Zadig_ and _Zaire, Merope_ and _Charles XII_. still linger, +perhaps, in the schoolroom; but what has become of _Oreste_, and of +_Mahomet_, and of _Alzire_? _Ou sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Though Voltaire's reputation now rests mainly on his achievements as a +precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a +poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not +only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, +every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the +censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded +houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and +Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got +by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf +which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a +comparison between our thoughts and their thoughts, between our feelings +and their feelings, with regard to one and the same thing--a tragedy by +Voltaire. For us, as we take down the dustiest volume in our bookshelf, +as we open it vaguely at some intolerable tirade, as we make an effort +to labour through the procession of pompous commonplaces which meets our +eyes, as we abandon the task in despair, and hastily return the book to +its forgotten corner--to us it is well-nigh impossible to imagine the +scene of charming brilliance which, five generations since, the same +words must have conjured up. The splendid gaiety, the refined +excitement, the pathos, the wit, the passion--all these things have +vanished as completely from our perceptions as the candles, the powder, +the looking-glasses, and the brocades, among which they moved and had +their being. It may be instructive, or at least entertaining, to examine +one of these forgotten masterpieces a little more closely; and we may do +so with the less hesitation, since we shall only be following in the +footsteps of Voltaire himself. His examination of _Hamlet_ affords a +precedent which is particularly applicable, owing to the fact that the +same interval of time divided him from Shakespeare as that which divides +ourselves from him. One point of difference, indeed, does exist between +the relative positions of the two authors. Voltaire, in his study of +Shakespeare, was dealing with a living, and a growing force; our +interest in the dramas of Voltaire is solely an antiquarian interest. At +the present moment,[5] a literal translation of _King Lear_ is drawing +full houses at the Theatre Antoine. As a rule it is rash to prophesy; +but, if that rule has any exceptions, this is certainly one of +them--hundred years hence a literal translation of _Zaire_ will not be +holding the English boards. + +It is not our purpose to appreciate the best, or to expose the worst, of +Voltaire's tragedies. Our object is to review some specimen of what +would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of +the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in +_Alzire, ou Les Americains_, first produced with great success in 1736, +when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist +already well established. + +_Act I_.--The scene is laid in Lima, the capital of Peru, some years +after the Spanish conquest of America. When the play opens, Don Gusman, +a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the +Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and +just; he had spent his life in endeavouring to soften the cruelty of his +countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the +work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's +temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, +harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. + + L'Americain farouche est un monstre sauvage + Qui mord en fremissant le frein de l'esclavage ... + Tout pouvoir, en un mot, perit par l'indulgence, + Et la severite produit l'obeissance. + +Such were the cruel maxims of his government--maxims which he was only +too ready to put into practice. It was in vain that Don Alvarez reminded +his son that the true Christian returns good for evil, and that, as he +epigrammatically put it, 'Le vrai Dieu, mon fils, est un Dieu qui +pardonne.' To enforce his argument, the good old man told the story of +how his own life had been spared by a virtuous American, who, as he +said, 'au lieu de me frapper, embrassa mes genoux.' But Don Gusman +remained unmoved by such narratives, though he admitted that there was +one consideration which impelled him to adopt a more lenient policy. He +was in love with Alzire, Alzire the young and beautiful daughter of +Monteze, who had ruled in Lima before the coming of the Spaniards. 'Je +l'aime, je l'avoue,' said Gusman to his father, 'et plus que je ne +veux.' With these words, the dominating situation of the play becomes +plain to the spectator. The wicked Spanish Governor is in love with the +virtuous American princess. From such a state of affairs, what +interesting and romantic developments may not follow? Alzire, we are not +surprised to learn, still fondly cherished the memory of a Peruvian +prince, who had been slain in an attempt to rescue his country from the +tyranny of Don Gusman. Yet, for the sake of Monteze, her ambitious and +scheming father, she consented to give her hand to the Governor. She +consented; but, even as she did so, she was still faithful to Zamore. +'Sa foi me fut promise,' she declared to Don Gusman, 'il eut pour moi +des charmes.' + + Il m'aima: son trepas me coute encore des larmes: + Vous, loin d'oser ici condamner ma douleur, + Jugez de ma constance, et connaissez mon coeur. + +The ruthless Don did not allow these pathetic considerations to stand in +the way of his wishes, and gave orders that the wedding ceremony should +be immediately performed. But, at the very moment of his apparent +triumph, the way was being prepared for the overthrow of all his hopes. + +_Act II_.--It was only natural to expect that a heroine affianced to a +villain should turn out to be in love with a hero. The hero adored by +Alzire had, it is true, perished; but then what could be more natural +than his resurrection? The noble Zamore was not dead; he had escaped +with his life from the torture-chamber of Don Gusman, had returned to +avenge himself, had been immediately apprehended, and was lying +imprisoned in the lowest dungeon of the castle, while his beloved +princess was celebrating her nuptials with his deadly foe. + +In this distressing situation, he was visited by the venerable Alvarez, +who had persuaded his son to grant him an order for the prisoner's +release. In the gloom of the dungeon, it was at first difficult to +distinguish the features of Zamore; but the old man at last discovered +that he was addressing the very American who, so many years ago, instead +of hitting him, had embraced his knees. He was overwhelmed by this +extraordinary coincidence. 'Approach. O heaven! O Providence! It is he, +behold the object of my gratitude. ... My benefactor! My son!' But let +us not pry further into so affecting a passage; it is sufficient to +state that Don Alvarez, after promising his protection to Zamore, +hurried off to relate this remarkable occurrence to his son, the +Governor. + +Act III.--Meanwhile, Alzire had been married. But she still could not +forget her Peruvian lover. While she was lamenting her fate, and +imploring the forgiveness of the shade of Zamore, she was informed that +a released prisoner begged a private interview. 'Admit him.' He was +admitted. 'Heaven! Such were his features, his gait, his voice: Zamore!' +She falls into the arms of her confidante. 'Je succombe; a peine je +respire.' + + ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant. + ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire! + Est-ce une illusion? + +It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to confess +to her lover that she was already married to Don Gusman. Zamore was at +first unable to grasp the horrible truth, and, while he was still +struggling with his conflicting emotions, the door was flung open, and +Don Gusman, accompanied by his father, entered the room. + +A double recognition followed. Zamore was no less horrified to behold in +Don Gusman the son of the venerable Alvarez, than Don Gusman was +infuriated at discovering that the prisoner to whose release he had +consented was no other than Zamore. When the first shock of surprise was +over, the Peruvian hero violently insulted his enemy, and upbraided him +with the tortures he had inflicted. The Governor replied by ordering the +instant execution of the prince. It was in vain that Don Alvarez +reminded his son of Zamore's magnanimity; it was in vain that Alzire +herself offered to sacrifice her life for that of her lover. Zamore was +dragged from the apartment; and Alzire and Don Alvarez were left alone +to bewail the fate of the Peruvian hero. Yet some faint hopes still +lingered in the old man's breast. 'Gusman fut inhumain,' he admitted, +'je le sais, j'en fremis; + + Mais il est ton epoux, il t'aime, il est mon fils: + Son ame a la pitie se peut ouvrir encore.' + +'Helas!' (replied Alzire), 'que n'etes-vous le pere de Zamore!' + +_Act IV_.--Even Don Gusman's heart was, in fact, unable to steel itself +entirely against the prayers and tears of his father and his wife; and +he consented to allow a brief respite to Zamore's execution. Alzire was +not slow to seize this opportunity of doing her lover a good turn; for +she immediately obtained his release by the ingenious stratagem of +bribing the warder of the dungeon. Zamore was free. But alas! Alzire was +not; was she not wedded to the wicked Gusman? Her lover's expostulations +fell on unheeding ears. What mattered it that her marriage vow had been +sworn before an alien God? 'J'ai promis; il suffit; il n'importe a quel +dieu!' + + ZAMORE: Ta promesse est un crime; elle est ma perte; adieu. + Perissent tes serments et ton Dieu que j'abhorre! + + ALZIRE: Arrete; quels adieux! arrete, cher Zamore! + +But the prince tore himself away, with no further farewell upon his lips +than an oath to be revenged upon the Governor. Alzire, perplexed, +deserted, terrified, tortured by remorse, agitated by passion, turned +for comfort to that God, who, she could not but believe, was, in some +mysterious way, the Father of All. + + Great God, lead Zamore in safety through the desert places. ... Ah! + can it be true that thou art but the Deity of another universe? + Have the Europeans alone the right to please thee? Art thou after + all the tyrant of one world and the father of another? ... No! The + conquerors and the conquered, miserable mortals as they are, all + are equally the work of thy hands.... + +Her reverie was interrupted by an appalling sound. She heard shrieks; +she heard a cry of 'Zamore!' And her confidante, rushing in, confusedly +informed her that her lover was in peril of his life. + + Ah, chere Emire [she exclaimed], allons le secourir! + + EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel! + + ALZIRE: Je puis mourir. + +Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an +emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself +under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately +removed to the lowest dungeon. + +_Act V_.--It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt the +reason of her arrest. Zamore, she was informed, had rushed straight from +her apartment into the presence of Don Gusman, and had plunged a dagger +into his enemy's breast. The hero had then turned to Don Alvarez and, +with perfect tranquillity, had offered him the bloodstained poniard. + + J'ai fait ce que j'ai du, j'ai venge mon injure; + Fais ton devoir, dit-il, et venge la nature. + +Before Don Alvarez could reply to this appeal, Zamore had been haled off +by the enraged soldiery before the Council of Grandees. Don Gusman had +been mortally wounded; and the Council proceeded at once to condemn to +death, not only Zamore, but also Alzire, who, they found, had been +guilty of complicity in the murder. It was the unpleasant duty of Don +Alvarez to announce to the prisoners the Council's sentence. He did so +in the following manner: + + Good God, what a mixture of tenderness and horror! My own liberator + is the assassin of my son. Zamore!... Yes, it is to thee that I owe + this life which I detest; how dearly didst thou sell me that fatal + gift.... I am a father, but I am also a man; and, in spite of thy + fury, in spite of the voice of that blood which demands vengeance + from my agitated soul, I can still hear the voice of thy + benefactions. And thou, who wast my daughter, thou whom in our + misery I yet call by a name which makes our tears to flow, ah! how + far is it from thy father's wishes to add to the agony which he + already feels the horrible pleasure of vengeance. I must lose, by + an unheard-of catastrophe, at once my liberator, my daughter, and + my son. The Council has sentenced you to death. + +Upon one condition, however, and upon one alone, the lives of the +culprits were to be spared--that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. +What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for +a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while Alzire +added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by +hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was +just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor +of death upon his features, was carried into the room. The implacable +Governor was about to utter his last words. Alzire was resigned; Alvarez +was plunged in misery; Zamore was indomitable to the last. But lo! when +the Governor spoke, it was seen at once that an extraordinary change had +come over his mind. He was no longer proud, he was no longer cruel, he +was no longer unforgiving; he was kind, humble, and polite; in short, he +had repented. Everybody was pardoned, and everybody recognised the truth +of Christianity. And their faith was particularly strengthened when Don +Gusman, invoking a final blessing upon Alzire and Zamore, expired in the +arms of Don Alvarez. For thus were the guilty punished, and the virtuous +rewarded. The noble Zamore, who had murdered his enemy in cold blood, +and the gentle Alzire who, after bribing a sentry, had allowed her lover +to do away with her husband, lived happily ever afterwards. That they +were able to do so was owing entirely to the efforts of the wicked Don +Gusman; and the wicked Don Gusman very properly descended to the grave. + +Such is the tragedy of _Alzire_, which, it may be well to repeat, was in +its day one of the most applauded of its author's productions. It was +upon the strength of works of this kind that his contemporaries +recognised Voltaire's right to be ranked in a sort of dramatic +triumvirate, side by side with his great predecessors, Corneille and +Racine. With Racine, especially, Voltaire was constantly coupled; and it +is clear that he himself firmly believed that the author of _Alzire_ was +a worthy successor of the author of _Athalie_. At first sight, indeed, +the resemblance between the two dramatists is obvious enough; but a +closer inspection reveals an ocean of differences too vast to be spanned +by any superficial likeness. + +A careless reader is apt to dismiss the tragedies of Racine as mere +_tours de force_; and, in one sense, the careless reader is right. For, +as mere displays of technical skill, those works are certainly +unsurpassed in the whole range of literature. But the notion of 'a mere +_tour de force_' carries with it something more than the idea of +technical perfection; for it denotes, not simply a work which is +technically perfect, but a work which is technically perfect and nothing +more. The problem before a writer of a Chant Royal is to overcome +certain technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his +_tour de force_, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is +accomplished. But Racine's problem was very different. The technical +restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary was +cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic +movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every +conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the +alacrity of Lilliputians pegging down a Gulliver; wherever he turned he +was met by a hiatus or a pitfall, a blind-alley or a _mot bas_. But his +triumph was not simply the conquest of these refractory creatures; it +was something much more astonishing. It was the creation, in spite of +them, nay, by their very aid, of a glowing, living, soaring, and +enchanting work of art. To have brought about this amazing combination, +to have erected, upon a structure of Alexandrines, of Unities, of Noble +Personages, of stilted diction, of the whole intolerable paraphernalia +of the Classical stage, an edifice of subtle psychology, of exquisite +poetry, of overwhelming passion--that is a _tour de force_ whose +achievement entitles Jean Racine to a place among the very few +consummate artists of the world. + +Voltaire, unfortunately, was neither a poet nor a psychologist; and, +when he took up the mantle of Racine, he put it, not upon a human being, +but upon a tailor's block. To change the metaphor, Racine's work +resembled one of those elaborate paper transparencies which delighted +our grandmothers, illuminated from within so as to present a charming +tinted picture with varying degrees of shadow and of light. Voltaire was +able to make the transparency, but he never could light the candle; and +the only result of his efforts was some sticky pieces of paper, cut into +curious shapes, and roughly daubed with colour. To take only one +instance, his diction is the very echo of Racine's. There are the same +pompous phrases, the same inversions, the same stereotyped list of +similes, the same poor bedraggled company of words. It is amusing to +note the exclamations which rise to the lips of Voltaire's characters in +moments of extreme excitement--_Qu'entends-je? Que vois-je? Ou suis-je? +Grands Dieux! Ah, c'en est trop, Seigneur! Juste Ciel! Sauve-toi de ces +lieux! Madame, quelle horreur_ ... &c. And it is amazing to discover +that these are the very phrases with which Racine has managed to express +all the violence of human terror, and rage, and love. Voltaire at his +best never rises above the standard of a sixth-form boy writing +hexameters in the style of Virgil; and, at his worst, he certainly falls +within measurable distance of a flogging. He is capable, for instance, +of writing lines as bad as the second of this couplet-- + + C'est ce meme guerrier dont la main tutelaire, + De Gusman, votre epoux, sauva, dit-on, le pere, + +or as + + Qui les font pour un temps rentrer tous en eux-memes, + +or + + Vous comprenez, seigneur, que je ne comprends pas. + +Voltaire's most striking expressions are too often borrowed from his +predecessors. Alzire's 'Je puis mourir,' for instance, is an obvious +reminiscence of the 'Qu'il mourut!' of le vieil Horace; and the cloven +hoof is shown clearly enough by the 'O ciel!' with which Alzire's +confidante manages to fill out the rest of the line. Many of these +blemishes are, doubtless, the outcome of simple carelessness; for +Voltaire was too busy a man to give over-much time to his plays. 'This +tragedy was the work of six days,' he wrote to d'Alembert, enclosing +_Olympie_. 'You should not have rested on the seventh,' was d'Alembert's +reply. But, on the whole, Voltaire's verses succeed in keeping up to a +high level of mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever +man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most +palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a +real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can +only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains and +his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a +moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and +they are all put back into their box. The glance which the reader has +taken into the little case labelled _Alzire_ has perhaps given him a +sufficient notion of these queer discarded marionettes. + +Voltaire's dramatic efforts were hampered by one further unfortunate +incapacity; he was almost completely devoid of the dramatic sense. It is +only possible to write good plays without the power of +character-drawing, upon one condition--that of possessing the power of +creating dramatic situations. The _Oedipus Tyrannus_ of Sophocles, for +instance, is not a tragedy of character; and its vast crescendo of +horror is produced by a dramatic treatment of situation, not of persons. +One of the principal elements in this stupendous example of the +manipulation of a great dramatic theme has been pointed out by Voltaire +himself. The guilt of Oedipus, he says, becomes known to the audience +very early in the play; and, when the _denouement_ at last arrives, it +comes as a shock, not to the audience, but to the King. There can be no +doubt that Voltaire has put his finger upon the very centre of those +underlying causes which make the _Oedipus_ perhaps the most awful of +tragedies. To know the hideous truth, to watch its gradual dawn upon one +after another of the characters, to see Oedipus at last alone in +ignorance, to recognise clearly that he too must know, to witness his +struggles, his distraction, his growing terror, and, at the inevitable +moment, the appalling revelation--few things can be more terrible than +this. But Voltaire's comment upon the master-stroke by which such an +effect has been obtained illustrates, in a remarkable way, his own sense +of the dramatic. 'Nouvelle preuve,' he remarks, 'que Sophocle n'avait +pas perfectionne son art.' + +More detailed evidence of Voltaire's utter lack of dramatic insight is +to be found, of course, in his criticisms of Shakespeare. Throughout +these, what is particularly striking is the manner in which Voltaire +seems able to get into such intimate contact with his great predecessor, +and yet to remain as absolutely unaffected by him as Shakespeare himself +was by Voltaire. It is unnecessary to dwell further upon so hackneyed a +subject; but one instance may be given of the lengths to which this +dramatic insensibility of Voltaire's was able to go--his adaptation of +_Julius Caesar_ for the French stage. A comparison of the two pieces +should be made by anyone who wishes to realise fully, not only the +degradation of the copy, but the excellence of the original. Particular +attention should be paid to the transmutation of Antony's funeral +oration into French alexandrines. In Voltaire's version, the climax of +the speech is reached in the following passage; it is an excellent +sample of the fatuity of the whole of his concocted rigmarole:-- + + ANTOINE: Brutus ... ou suis-je? O ciel! O crime! O barbarie!' + Chers amis, je succombe; et mes sens interdits ... + Brutus, son assassin!... ce monstre etait son fils! + ROMAINS: Ah dieux! + +If Voltaire's demerits are obvious enough to our eyes, his merits were +equally clear to his contemporaries, whose vision of them was not +perplexed and retarded by the conventions of another age. The weight of +a reigning convention is like the weight of the atmosphere--it is so +universal that no one feels it; and an eighteenth-century audience came +to a performance of _Alzire_ unconscious of the burden of the Classical +rules. They found instead an animated procession of events, of scenes +just long enough to be amusing and not too long to be dull, of startling +incidents, of happy _mots_. They were dazzled by an easy display of +cheap brilliance, and cheap philosophy, and cheap sentiment, which it +was very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, at such a +distance, and under artificial light. When, in _Merope_, one saw La +Dumesnil; 'lorsque,' to quote Voltaire himself, 'les yeux egares, la +voix entrecoupee, levant une main tremblante, elle allait immoler son +propre fils; quand Narbas l'arreta; quand, laissant tomber son poignard, +on la vit s'evanouir entre les bras de ses femmes, et qu'elle sortit de +cet etat de mort avec les transports d'une mere; lorsque, ensuite, +s'elancant aux yeux de Polyphonte, traversant en un clin d'oeil tout le +theatre, les larmes dans les yeux, la paleur sur le front, les sanglots +a la bouche, les bras etendus, elle s'ecria: "Barbare, il est mon +fils!"'--how, face to face with splendours such as these, could one +question for a moment the purity of the gem from which they sparkled? +Alas! to us, who know not La Dumesnil, to us whose _Merope_ is nothing +more than a little sediment of print, the precious stone of our +forefathers has turned out to be a simple piece of paste. Its glittering +was the outcome of no inward fire, but of a certain adroitness in the +manufacture; to use our modern phraseology, Voltaire was able to make up +for his lack of genius by a thorough knowledge of 'technique,' and a +great deal of 'go.' + +And to such titles of praise let us not dispute his right. His vivacity, +indeed, actually went so far as to make him something of an innovator. +He introduced new and imposing spectacular effects; he ventured to write +tragedies in which no persons of royal blood made their appearance; he +was so bold as to rhyme 'pere' with 'terre.' The wild diversity of his +incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under +happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose +path which ended in the bonfire of 1830. + +But it was his misfortune to be for ever clogged by a tradition of +decorous restraint; so that the effect of his plays is as anomalous as +would be--let us say--that of a shilling shocker written by Miss Yonge. +His heroines go mad in epigrams, while his villains commit murder in +inversions. Amid the hurly-burly of artificiality, it was all his +cleverness could do to keep its head to the wind; and he was only able +to remain afloat at all by throwing overboard his humour. The Classical +tradition has to answer for many sins; perhaps its most infamous +achievement was that it prevented Moliere from being a great tragedian. +But there can be no doubt that its most astonishing one was to have +taken--if only for some scattered moments--the sense of the ridiculous +from Voltaire. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 5: April, 1905.] + + + + +VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT + + +At the present time,[6] when it is so difficult to think of anything but +of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast +occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least +prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be +instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that +Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless +to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely +active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would +be as well for him _not_ to live in France. For, just as modern Germany +dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so +modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of +the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms +one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in +history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few +brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's +masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of +_The History of Friedrich II_. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty years +have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of new +material--including the valuable edition of the correspondence between +Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the +Archives at Berlin--has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite +of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another rapid +review of it will not be out of place. + +Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and already one of the most famous +men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the +Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence +which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over +forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose +personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed to +lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary +European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his +nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was +moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering +of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted +with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his +admiration for the author of the _Henriade_ and _Zaire_ was unbounded. + + La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour + tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font esperer + que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous trouvez + dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de + lettres, qui ne peut etre que profitable a tout etre pensant. J'ose + meme avancer, sans deroger au merite d'autrui, que dans l'univers + entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception a faire de ceux dont vous ne + pourriez etre le maitre. + +The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that +graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his +correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,' +and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion +of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had +commended as 'le plus celebre philosophe de nos jours.' For the next +four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It +was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his +passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured out +with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and _la raison +suffisante_, odes _sur la Flatterie_, and epistles _sur l'Humanite_, +while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no less enormous +philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal +Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, though +the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young +Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but +extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it +possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs +of feeling or of character. Voltaire's _empressement_ seems to take on, +once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one +notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with +'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly into +'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his +'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a +little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events. + + Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractere, afin que vous + ne vous y mepreniez plus ... J'ai peu de merite et peu de savoir; + mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonte, et un fonds inepuisable + d'estime et d'amitie pour les personnes d'une vertu distinguee, et + avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitie + exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que + vous meritez; mais je n'en ai pas assez pour m'empecher de faire de + mauvais vers. + +But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place +of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of comparing +Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of +proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus +d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est Frederic +que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of +protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez +pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime a outrance ... Je crois, +par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je +crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siecle d'un Voltaire pour +le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments were too +emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said +afterwards, 'les epithetes ne nous coutaient rien'; yet neither was +without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered +upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope +that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a +crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love +of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening. + +In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the +relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both +sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered +that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes +heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His _prince philosophe_ +started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and +turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was +at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than +Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the +King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed a +good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, remarkably +rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in +Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his +accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no +more, and its place is taken--at once and for ever--by the +self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In +this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of +Voltaire should lose some of its glitter--especially since Frederick now +began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh +with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is +noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the +part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse +Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only been +sent him on the condition of _un secret inviolable_. He writes to Jordan +complaining of Voltaire's avarice in very stringent terms. 'Ton avare +boira la lie de son insatiable desir de s'enrichir ... Son apparition de +six jours me coutera par journee cinq cent cinquante ecus. C'est bien +payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.' +He declares that 'la cervelle du poete est aussi legere que le style de +ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man +_extraordinaire en tout_. + +Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing more +and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished. +For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne, +Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised +in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for +years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would +_posseder_--for so he put it--the author of the _Henriade_, would keep +him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all, +would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own +verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish would +be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was +dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his +surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the +Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was +Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Chatelet. He had lived with her +for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of +friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would never +leave her--no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is +true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a +solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of +ladies--even of ladies like Madame du Chatelet--learned enough to +translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the +Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to _posseder_ Voltaire +either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated +temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first time, poor +Madame du Chatelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters from +Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew +nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her +distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she +dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But suddenly +Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at +her feet once more. + +What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of the +King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found +the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an +insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial +way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he +should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France +for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the +Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick +had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, he +had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that +of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an +opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give +verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded the +Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly +sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix +would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever +to return to France; and in that case--well, Voltaire would have no +other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and Madame +du Chatelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, Frederick's +plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had +happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to +stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had +been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to +stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he +forgave Frederick. But the King was most anxious to patch up the +quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing +Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more +immediate desire--to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous +work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet +and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates--_La +Pucelle_. + +Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more flattering +than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point +injustice sur mon caractere; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de badiner +sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La +Pucelle!_ et encore _La Pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour de Dieu, +ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-meme, envoyez-la-moi.' And at last +Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his +_Pucelle_--just enough to whet Frederick's appetite--and he declared +himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aime tendrement,' he wrote in March +1749; 'j'ai ete fache contre vous, je vous ai pardonne, et actuellement +je vous aime a la folie.' Within a year of this date his situation had +undergone a complete change. Madame du Chatelet was dead; and his +position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de +Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to +have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this +time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good +bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at Berlin +in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin and +Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of +Merit, together with a pension of L800 a year. These arrangements caused +considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying +prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien! +Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the +Quays. + +The curious drama that followed, with its farcical [Greek: peripeteia] +and its tragi-comic _denouement_, can hardly be understood without a +brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief +actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had +now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem +which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He +frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year +before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most +urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter +to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He had +been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's +letters). + + Il meriterait d'etre fleurdelise au Parnasse. C'est bien dommage + qu'une ame aussi lache soit unie a un aussi beau genie. Il a les + gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que + c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de + rien, car j'en ai besoin pour l'etude de l'elocution francaise. On + peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scelerat. Je veux savoir son + francais; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouve le moyen de + reunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en meme temps + qu'on meprise son caractere. + +There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he was a +scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of +_l'elocution francaise_; therefore it was necessary that he should come +and live in Berlin. But as for anything more--as for any real +interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of +respect, or even of regard--all that was utterly out of the question. +The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward, +and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. In +the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude +which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle--that he was the victim of +an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, and +that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly +disappointed--becomes obviously untenable. If any man ever acted with +his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin. + +Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in more +than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to +_l'elocution francaise_ is easy enough to understand; but Frederick's +devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense +that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or +by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and +constant proximity of--what?--of a man whom he himself described as a +'singe' and a 'scelerat,' a man of base soul and despicable character. +And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it +quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but +delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery, +so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less +undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange; +but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue--a vogue, +indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern reader +to realise it--enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and +literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick +was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of +any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady +and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the +social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid +to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole +standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast majority +of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was concentrated +in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French poetry +meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French +poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this +curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The _Grand Siecle_ +was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of +Boileau. + +Frederick's library, still preserved at Potsdam, shows us what +literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed +entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the +masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. But +Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create; +he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after +the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred +sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine. +It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of +the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his +own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept +him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled +volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most +complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb--_Poeta +nascitur, non fit_. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her +feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible +conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and +now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or +pathetic--one hardly knows which--were it not so certainly neither the +one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness, +from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay. +Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong--something, but +not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice; +and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it--Voltaire, the one true +heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of +Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over +_Mahomet_ as over _Britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed Homer +and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read +the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the +lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed +(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. +Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he +would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German +Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of +rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of +correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the +blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes choses +d'un scelerat.' + +And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite +convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the +master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage +of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon +enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession +of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an +ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the +ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to +Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion +as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great +writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner +of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une ame aussi lache +soit unie a un aussi beau genie.' _C'est bien dommage_!--as if there was +nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty +woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little +tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau +genie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was wrong: it +was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing. + +A devil--or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the +complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so +mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements +of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold +within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the +more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at +least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it +was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to +realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to +Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of +publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood +the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself. +He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still +before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to +take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his consciousness, +aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at +this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth +into the unknown? + +What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it +is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with +Paris--he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless +literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his +countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not +appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he +admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour. +'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des graces, et, de plus, il +etait roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande seduction, attendu la +faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal +intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased +consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his +order--to say nothing of the addition of L800 to his income. Yet, on the +other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for +servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would +make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in +his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however +successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to +Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he +had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by +the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he +always was--a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without +remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes--however dubious +those purposes may have been. + +And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece, +Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris +establishment and in whom he confided--in so far as he can be said to +have confided in anyone--he repeatedly states that there is nothing +permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is +only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on to +Italy to visit 'sa Saintete' and to inspect 'la ville souterraine,' that +he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads +are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will +be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will +certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of +finishing his _Siecle de Louis XIV_.; he really must wait just a few +weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris +until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying +and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers +on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go. +Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried +official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other +friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could +see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true +intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret +corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a +premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems +to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room +through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when +all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window +which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery +fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going +after all. + +In any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire's +visit could only have ended as it did--in an explosion. The elements of +the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two +confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house +together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of +mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or +later human nature will assert itself, and the _menage_ will break up. +And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such +cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them +was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very +thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he +might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and +perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the +incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist +of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the +skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked how +much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on +his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses +were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man +expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well +enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and +uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very few +weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible +on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take +place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and +one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling +each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he +opens all our letters in the post'--Voltaire, whose light-handedness +with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The monkey,' +mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his +friends'--Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's +letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. 'How happy I should be here,' +exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing--his Majesty is +utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a +farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was +busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire. + +It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the first +really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the +temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of +illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a +series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with +the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and +countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost +his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the +court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it +is almost certain--the evidence is not quite conclusive--that he +committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was +furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from +Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not part +with his _beau genie_ so soon. He cracked his whip, and, setting the +monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the +shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu +tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once +more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa, +came out and basked again in those refulgent beams. + +And the beams were decidedly refulgent--so much so, in fact, that they +almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite. +For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's +admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses--there is a +letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein +the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which, +she says, 'vous rendent si celebre et immortel'--though he had ample +leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the +brilliant conversation of the King, though he could often forget for +weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot--yet, in +spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, and +he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's +court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of +persons--foreigners for the most part--whose business it was to instruct +him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out +of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one +of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant +dabbler in scientific matters--he had written a book to explain Newton +to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull +free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many +debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love +affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for +atheism and bad manners; and Poellnitz was a decaying baron who, under +stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his +religion six times. + +These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his +leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange +rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with +d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of _La +Pucelle_. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove +the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout +with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, +and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place +where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times +Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of +Poellnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and +serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a +Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough, +Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little +menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and Chasot +both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to +visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow their +example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to +return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch +was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his +escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a +surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jesus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains +of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous +voila enfin retourne a ces noms consolateurs.' La Mettrie, with an oath, +expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, +remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son ame.' + +Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure +whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from +the rest--that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of +the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate +fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then +recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very +anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing +measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to Lapland, +and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the +Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He +possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was +energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories +of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to +come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply +justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his +earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once +overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited +Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an _homme d'esprit_, +and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal +supper-parties. It was the happy--the too happy--President who was the +rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other +slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration +for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a +severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces +deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer +ensemble dans la meme chambre.' And indeed to the vain and sensitive +poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies, +intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at +supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to +the shady mediocrities who sat around--that sight was gall and wormwood; +and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes +began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its +work. + +Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to +conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was +very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five +years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he was +deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who +could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?--Voltaire, who as +obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and +Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the +length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man, +La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and +war was not long in coming. + +Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an +important mathematical law--the 'principle of least action.' The law +was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the +development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a +recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without realising +its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it +was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, however, was very +proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the +principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was +therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in +Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir +attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support +of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law +was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the +case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, and +that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When +Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He +summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig +was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should solemnly +pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious and +false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions +depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler +was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful +condemnation. + +Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had put +himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in +attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was +wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he +was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper subject +for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck now, +he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to +give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon this +matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick +certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive of +the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would +certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who himself +drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty. +But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two +years in Berlin, and the atmosphere of a Court was beginning to weigh +upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for a +fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick +combined--he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered +himself that he would settle the hash of the President. + +As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from Berlin, +and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement +ordre a mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September 18, +1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled 'Reponse +d'un Academicien de Berlin a un Academicien de Paris.' It was a +statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its +concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President +must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The +terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man, +and that man was receiving a royal pension of L800 a year and carrying +about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his +writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be +published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble +work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy +invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely +compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Reponse d'un Academicien +de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans genie,' an +'imposteur effronte,' a 'malheureux ecrivain' while the 'Reponse' itself +was a 'grossierete plate,' whose publication was an 'action malicieuse, +lache, infame,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the royal +insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le +sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien +etonnes de se trouver la.' But one thing was now certain: the King had +joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind +of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear--he +would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever. +And it so happened that just then an unexpected opportunity occurred +for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that +weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,' +he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.' + +Meanwhile the life of the Court--which passed for the most part at +Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built +for himself--proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life, +half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the +ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do +here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb +_s'ennuyer_,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a verb +unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still +preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the +formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly +coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable +old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his _Pucelle_, and +his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill--very ill; he was +probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed +to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked. +He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he +was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But +he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found +him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,' +remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up from +the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques +meurent l'oeil enflamme?' When the evening came it was time to dress, +and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to the +little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, was +preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered +together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the +sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little space, +to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the +royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza, +and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of +Rossbach drew tears from the author of _Candide_. But a moment later it +was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid +laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of +Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations +of Voltaire. + +Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the +rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but +nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but +still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's +enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours, +the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number +of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly +speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very +unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and +Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The +famous _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_ is still fresh with a fiendish +gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the +skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have +glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted +with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' +_reveries_ have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and +nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The _Diatribe_, however, +is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For +instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that +Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B +divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well +founded. 'Lorsque la metaphysique entre dans la geometrie,' Voltaire +wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui +entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des tenebres'; and +Maupertuis had in fact vitiated his treatment of the 'principle of +least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through +Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific +principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the +experimental method, a consistent attack upon _a priori_ reasoning, +loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all +this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of +effervescent raillery--cruel, personal, insatiable--the raillery of a +demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed +till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade +Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure. +Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later, +under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book +appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within +bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them +privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he +flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business. + + Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the + President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est + finie. J'ai parle si vrai a l'home, je lui ai lave si bien la tete + que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, et je connais son ame lache, + incapable de sentiments d'honneur. Je l'ai intimide du cote de la + boursse, ce qui a fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai + declare enfin nettement que ma maison devait etre un sanctuaire et + non une retraite de brigands ou de celerats qui distillent des + poissons. + +Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had come +a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and +by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick +wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe +qu'il devait mepriser apres qu'on l'avait fouette.' But now the monkey +_had_ been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems strange +that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close +observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He +might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in +spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose +obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a +threat 'du cote de la boursse.' Before the month was out all Germany was +swarming with _Akakias_; thousands of copies were being printed in +Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is +difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who +thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the enraged +master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'etonne,' fulminated +Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all Europe +was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the +President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly +espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection. +'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper, +'dans l'etat ou je suis!' (He was, of course, once more dying.) 'Quoi! +vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.' +Frederick replied by having copies of _Akakia_ burnt by the common +hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his Order, +his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the +final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed +before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and +to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's +suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of Voltaire +to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly +controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's +accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually +went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation. +But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at +Potsdam--'soupers de Damocles' Voltaire called them; and then, on March +26, 1753, the two men parted for ever. + +The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in the +wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters of Plombieres, stopped at +Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises to +the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of +_Akakia_. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to +Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued +yet another edition of _Akakia_, appended a somewhat unauthorised +version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and +cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a +vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which +figure so freely in the comedies of Moliere. This stroke was the _coup +de grace_ of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he dragged himself +from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple +of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In +the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had suddenly +remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few +privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had spent +so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several +passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that +those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious +Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which he +now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by +feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered +uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have +been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident in +Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet in +arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange +blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much controversial +and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German +biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little comedy +of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame--that +Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian +Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was careless in his +orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need any +Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government +in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the rule +of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd. + +After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free--free in +every sense of the word--free from the service of Kings and the clutches +of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He +hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of +Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the +profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering +and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to +and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time +even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were +almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was +submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose +compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream. +But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier +and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even +Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of Ferney +something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He +actually came to respect the author of _Akakia_, and to cherish his +memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma priere,' he told d'Alembert, +when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin +Voltaire, _ora pro nobis_.' + +1915. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 6: October 1915.] + + + + +THE ROUSSEAU AFFAIR + + +No one who has made the slightest expedition into that curious and +fascinating country, Eighteenth-Century France, can have come away from +it without at least _one_ impression strong upon him--that in no other +place and at no other time have people ever squabbled so much. France in +the eighteenth century, whatever else it may have been--however splendid +in genius, in vitality, in noble accomplishment and high endeavour--was +certainly not a quiet place to live in. One could never have been +certain, when one woke up in the morning, whether, before the day was +out, one would not be in the Bastille for something one had said at +dinner, or have quarrelled with half one's friends for something one had +never said at all. + +Of all the disputes and agitations of that agitated age none is more +remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, +which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly +affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the +most potent of the precursors of the Revolution. The affair is +constantly cropping up in the literature of the time; it occupies a +prominent place in the later books of the _Confessions_; and there is an +account of its earlier phases--an account written from the anti-Rousseau +point of view--in the _Memoires_ of Madame d'Epinay. The whole story is +an exceedingly complex one, and all the details of it have never been +satisfactorily explained; but the general verdict of subsequent writers +has been decidedly hostile to Rousseau, though it has not subscribed to +all the virulent abuse poured upon him by his enemies at the time of the +quarrel. This, indeed, is precisely the conclusion which an unprejudiced +reader of the _Confessions_ would naturally come to. Rousseau's story, +even as he himself tells it, does not carry conviction. He would have us +believe that he was the victim of a vast and diabolical conspiracy, of +which Grimm and Diderot were the moving spirits, which succeeded in +alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included +all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does +such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but +the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally +insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the +unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot contrived by +rancorous enemies, but of his own perplexed, suspicious, and deluded +mind. This conclusion is supported by the account of the affair given by +contemporaries, and it is still further strengthened by Rousseau's own +writings subsequent to the _Confessions_, where his endless +recriminations, his elaborate hypotheses, and his wild inferences bear +all the appearance of mania. Here the matter has rested for many years; +and it seemed improbable that any fresh reasons would arise for +reopening the question. Mrs. F. Macdonald, however, in a +recently-published work[7], has produced some new and important +evidence, which throws entirely fresh light upon certain obscure parts +of this doubtful history; and is possibly of even greater interest. For +it is Mrs. Macdonald's contention that her new discovery completely +overturns the orthodox theory, establishes the guilt of Grimm, Diderot, +and the rest of the anti-Rousseau party, and proves that the story told +in the _Confessions_ is simply the truth. + +If these conclusions really do follow from Mrs. Macdonald's +newly-discovered data, it would be difficult to over-estimate the value +of her work, for the result of it would be nothing less than a +revolution in our judgments upon some of the principal characters of the +eighteenth century. To make it certain that Diderot was a cad and a +cheat, that d'Alembert was a dupe, and Hume a liar--that, surely, were +no small achievement. And, even if these conclusions do not follow from +Mrs. Macdonald's data, her work will still be valuable, owing to the +data themselves. Her discoveries are important, whatever inferences may +be drawn from them; and for this reason her book, 'which represents,' as +she tells us, 'twenty years of research,' will be welcome to all +students of that remarkable age. + +Mrs. Macdonald's principal revelations relate to the _Memoires_ of +Madame d'Epinay. This work was first printed in 1818, and the concluding +quarter of it contains an account of the Rousseau quarrel, the most +detailed of all those written from the anti-Rousseau point of view. It +has, however, always been doubtful how far the _Memoires_ were to be +trusted as accurate records of historical fact. The manuscript +disappeared; but it was known that the characters who, in the printed +book, appear under the names of real persons, were given pseudonyms in +the original document; and many of the minor statements contradicted +known events. Had Madame d'Epinay merely intended to write a _roman a +clef_? What seemed, so far as concerned the Rousseau narrative, to put +this hypothesis out of court was the fact that the story of the quarrel +as it appears in the _Memoires_ is, in its main outlines, substantiated +both by Grimm's references to Rousseau in his _Correspondance +Litteraire_, and by a brief memorandum of Rousseau's misconduct, drawn +up by Diderot for his private use, and not published until many years +after Madame d'Epinay's death. Accordingly most writers on the subject +have taken the accuracy of the _Memoires_ for granted; Sainte-Beuve, for +instance, prefers the word of Madame d'Epinay to that of Rousseau, when +there is a direct conflict of testimony; and Lord Morley, in his +well-known biography, uses the _Memoires_ as an authority for many of +the incidents which he relates. Mrs. Macdonald's researches, however, +have put an entirely different complexion on the case. She has +discovered the manuscript from which the _Memoires_ were printed, and +she has examined the original draft of this manuscript, which had been +unearthed some years ago, but whose full import had been unaccountably +neglected by previous scholars. From these researches, two facts have +come to light. In the first place, the manuscript differs in many +respects from the printed book, and, in particular, contains a +conclusion of two hundred sheets, which has never been printed at all; +the alterations were clearly made in order to conceal the inaccuracies +of the manuscript; and the omitted conclusion is frankly and palpably a +fiction. And in the second place, the original draft of the manuscript +turns out to be the work of several hands; it contains, especially in +those portions which concern Rousseau, many erasures, corrections, and +notes, while several pages have been altogether cut out; most of the +corrections were made by Madame d'Epinay herself; but in nearly every +case these corrections carry out the instructions in the notes; and the +notes themselves are in the handwriting of Diderot and Grimm. Mrs. +Macdonald gives several facsimiles of pages in the original draft, which +amply support her description of it; but it is to be hoped that before +long she will be able to produce a new and complete edition of the +_Memoires_, with all the manuscript alterations clearly indicated; for +until then it will be difficult to realise the exact condition of the +text. However, it is now beyond dispute both that Madame d'Epinay's +narrative cannot be regarded as historically accurate, and that its +agreement with the statements of Grimm and Diderot is by no means an +independent confirmation of its truth, for Grimm and Diderot themselves +had a hand in its compilation. + +Thus far we are on firm ground. But what are the conclusions which Mrs. +Macdonald builds up from these foundations? The account, she says, of +Rousseau's conduct and character, as it appears in the printed version, +is hostile to him, but it was not the account which Madame d'Epinay +herself originally wrote. The hostile narrative was, in effect, composed +by Grimm and Diderot, who induced Madame d'Epinay to substitute it for +her own story; and thus her own story could not have agreed with +theirs. Madame d'Epinay knew the truth; she knew that Rousseau's conduct +had been honourable and wise; and so she had described it in her book; +until, falling completely under the influence of Grimm and Diderot, she +had allowed herself to become the instrument for blackening the +reputation of her old friend. Mrs. Macdonald paints a lurid picture of +the conspirators at work--of Diderot penning his false and malignant +instructions, of Madame d'Epinay's half-unwilling hand putting the last +touches to the fraud, of Grimm, rushing back to Paris at the time of the +Revolution, and risking his life in order to make quite certain that the +result of all these efforts should reach posterity. Well! it would be +difficult--perhaps it would be impossible--to prove conclusively that +none of these things ever took place. The facts upon which Mrs. +Macdonald lays so much stress--the mutilations, the additions, the +instructing notes, the proved inaccuracy of the story the manuscripts +tell--these facts, no doubt, may be explained by Mrs. Macdonald's +theories; but there are other facts--no less important, and no less +certain--which are in direct contradiction to Mrs. Macdonald's view, and +over which she passes as lightly as she can. Putting aside the question +of the _Memoires_, we know nothing of Diderot which would lead us to +entertain for a moment the supposition that he was a dishonourable and +badhearted man; we do know that his writings bear the imprint of a +singularly candid, noble, and fearless mind; we do know that he devoted +his life, unflinchingly and unsparingly, to a great cause. We know less +of Grimm; but it is at least certain that he was the intimate friend of +Diderot, and of many more of the distinguished men of the time. Is all +this evidence to be put on one side as of no account? Are we to dismiss +it, as Mrs. Macdonald dismisses it, as merely 'psychological'? Surely +Diderot's reputation as an honest man is as much a fact as his notes in +the draft of the _Memoires_. It is quite true that his reputation _may_ +have been ill-founded, that d'Alembert, and Turgot, and Hume _may_ have +been deluded, or _may_ have been bribed, into admitting him to their +friendship; but is it not clear that we ought not to believe any such +hypotheses as these until we have before us such convincing proof of +Diderot's guilt that we _must_ believe them? Mrs. Macdonald declares +that she has produced such proof; and she points triumphantly to her +garbled and concocted manuscripts. If there is indeed no explanation of +these garblings and concoctions other than that which Mrs. Macdonald +puts forward--that they were the outcome of a false and malicious +conspiracy to blast the reputation of Rousseau--then we must admit that +she is right, and that all our general 'psychological' considerations as +to Diderot's reputation in the world must be disregarded. But, before we +come to this conclusion, how careful must we be to examine every other +possible explanation of Mrs. Macdonald's facts, how rigorously must we +sift her own explanation of them, how eagerly must we seize upon every +loophole of escape! + +It is, I believe, possible to explain the condition of the d'Epinay +manuscript without having recourse to the iconoclastic theory of Mrs. +Macdonald. To explain everything, indeed, would be out of the question, +owing to our insufficient data, and the extreme complexity of the +events; all that we can hope to do is to suggest an explanation which +will account for the most important of the known facts. Not the least +interesting of Mrs. Macdonald's discoveries went to show that the +_Memoires_, so far from being historically accurate, were in reality +full of unfounded statements, that they concluded with an entirely +imaginary narrative, and that, in short, they might be described, almost +without exaggeration, in the very words with which Grimm himself +actually did describe them in his _Correspondance Litteraire_, as +'l'ebauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon +this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the +most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. +But she has proved too much. The _Memoires_, she says, are a fiction; +therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why +should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but +simply novelists? Will not this hypothesis fit into the facts just as +well as Mrs. Macdonald's? Madame d'Epinay, let us suppose, wrote a +narrative, partly imaginary and partly true, based upon her own +experiences, but without any strict adherence to the actual course of +events, and filled with personages whose actions were, in many cases, +fictitious, but whose characters were, on the whole, moulded upon the +actual characters of her friends. Let us suppose that when she had +finished her work--a work full of subtle observation and delightful +writing--she showed it to Grimm and Diderot. They had only one criticism +to make: it related to her treatment of the character which had been +moulded upon that of Rousseau. 'Your Rousseau, chere Madame, is a very +poor affair indeed! The most salient points in his character seem to +have escaped you. We know what that man really was. We know how he +behaved at that time. _C'etait un homme a faire peur_. You have missed a +great opportunity of drawing a fine picture of a hypocritical rascal.' +Whereupon they gave her their own impressions of Rousseau's conduct, +they showed her the letters that had passed between them, and they +jotted down some notes for her guidance. She rewrote the story in +accordance with their notes and their anecdotes; but she rearranged the +incidents, she condensed or amplified the letters, as she thought +fit--for she was not writing a history, but 'l'ebauche d'un long roman.' +If we suppose that this, or something like this, was what occurred, +shall we not have avoided the necessity for a theory so repugnant to +common-sense as that which would impute to a man of recognised integrity +the meanest of frauds? + +To follow Mrs. Macdonald into the inner recesses and elaborations of her +argument would be a difficult and tedious task. The circumstances with +which she is principally concerned--the suspicions, the accusations, the +anonymous letters, the intrigues, the endless problems as to whether +Madame d'Epinay was jealous of Madame d'Houdetot, whether Therese told +fibs, whether, on the 14th of the month, Grimm was grossly impertinent, +and whether, on the 15th, Rousseau was outrageously rude, whether +Rousseau revealed a secret to Diderot, which Diderot revealed to +Saint-Lambert, and whether, if Diderot revealed it, he believed that +Rousseau had revealed it before--these circumstances form, as Lord +Morley says, 'a tale of labyrinthine nightmares,' and Mrs. Macdonald has +done very little to mitigate either the contortions of the labyrinths or +the horror of the dreams. Her book is exceedingly ill-arranged; it is +enormously long, filling two large volumes, with an immense apparatus of +appendices and notes; it is full of repetitions and of irrelevant +matter; and the argument is so indistinctly set forth that even an +instructed reader finds great difficulty in following its drift. +Without, however, plunging into the abyss of complications which yawns +for us in Mrs. Macdonald's pages, it may be worth while to touch upon +one point with which she has dealt (perhaps wisely for her own case!) +only very slightly--the question of the motives which could have induced +Grimm and Diderot to perpetuate a series of malignant lies. + +It is, doubtless, conceivable that Grimm, who was Madame d'Epinay's +lover, was jealous of Rousseau, who was Madame d'Epinay's friend. We +know very little of Grimm's character, but what we do know seems to show +that he was a jealous man and an ambitious man; it is possible that a +close alliance with Madame d'Epinay may have seemed to him a necessary +step in his career; and it is conceivable that he may have determined +not to rest until his most serious rival in Madame d'Epinay's affections +was utterly cast out. He was probably prejudiced against Rousseau from +the beginning, and he may have allowed his prejudices to colour his view +of Rousseau's character and acts. The violence of the abuse which Grimm +and the rest of the Encyclopaedists hurled against the miserable +Jean-Jacques was certainly quite out of proportion to the real facts of +the case. Whenever he is mentioned one is sure of hearing something +about _traitre_ and _mensonge_ and _sceleratesse_. He is referred to as +often as not as if he were some dangerous kind of wild beast. This was +Grimm's habitual language with regard to him; and this was the view of +his character which Madame d'Epinay finally expressed in her book. The +important question is--did Grimm know that Rousseau was in reality an +honourable man, and, knowing this, did he deliberately defame him in +order to drive him out of Madame d'Epinay's affections? The answer, I +think, must be in the negative, for the following reason. If Grimm had +known that there was something to be ashamed of in the notes with which +he had supplied Madame d'Epinay, and which led to the alteration of her +_Memoires_, he certainly would have destroyed the draft of the +manuscript, which was the only record of those notes having ever been +made. As it happens, we know that he had the opportunity of destroying +the draft, and he did not do so. He came to Paris at the risk of his +life in 1791, and stayed there for four months, with the object, +according to his own account, of collecting papers belonging to the +Empress Catherine, or, according to Mrs. Macdonald's account, of having +the rough draft of the _Memoires_ copied out by his secretary. Whatever +his object, it is certain that the copy--that from which ultimately the +_Memoires_ were printed--was made either at that time, or earlier; and +that there was nothing on earth to prevent him, during the four months +of his stay in Paris, from destroying the draft. Mrs. Macdonald's +explanation of this difficulty is lamentably weak. Grimm, she says, must +have wished to get away from Paris 'without arousing suspicion by +destroying papers.' This is indeed an 'exquisite reason,' which would +have delighted that good knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Grimm had four +months at his disposal; he was undisturbed in his own house; why should +he not have burnt the draft page by page as it was copied out? There can +be only one reply: Why _should_ he? + +If it is possible to suggest some fairly plausible motives which might +conceivably have induced Grimm to blacken Rousseau's character, the case +of Diderot presents difficulties which are quite insurmountable. Mrs. +Macdonald asserts that Diderot was jealous of Rousseau. Why? Because he +was tired of hearing Rousseau described as 'the virtuous'; that is all. +Surely Mrs. Macdonald should have been the first to recognise that such +an argument is a little too 'psychological.' The truth is that Diderot +had nothing to gain by attacking Rousseau. He was not, like Grimm, in +love with Madame d'Epinay; he was not a newcomer who had still to win +for himself a position in the Parisian world. His acquaintance with +Madame d'Epinay was slight; and, if there were any advances, they were +from her side, for he was one of the most distinguished men of the day. +In fact, the only reason that he could have had for abusing Rousseau was +that he believed Rousseau deserved abuse. Whether he was right in +believing so is a very different question. Most readers, at the present +day, now that the whole noisy controversy has long taken its quiet place +in the perspective of Time, would, I think, agree that Diderot and the +rest of the Encyclopaedists were mistaken. As we see him now, in that +long vista, Rousseau was not a wicked man; he was an unfortunate, a +distracted, a deeply sensitive, a strangely complex, creature; and, +above all else, he possessed one quality which cut him off from his +contemporaries, which set an immense gulf betwixt him and them: he was +modern. Among those quick, strong, fiery people of the eighteenth +century, he belonged to another world--to the new world of +self-consciousness, and doubt, and hesitation, of mysterious melancholy +and quiet intimate delights, of long reflexions amid the solitudes of +Nature, of infinite introspections amid the solitudes of the heart. Who +can wonder that he was misunderstood, and buffeted, and driven mad? Who +can wonder that, in his agitations, his perplexities, his writhings, he +seemed, to the pupils of Voltaire, little less than a frenzied fiend? +'Cet homme est un forcene!' Diderot exclaims. 'Je tache en vain de faire +de la poesie, mais cet homme me revient tout a travers mon travail; il +me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avais a cote de moi un damne: il est +damne, cela est sur. ... J'avoue que je n'ai jamais eprouve un trouble +d'ame si terrible que celui que j'ai ... Que je ne revoie plus cet +homme-la, il me ferait croire au diable et a l'enfer. Si je suis jamais +force de retourner chez lui, je suis sur que je fremirai tout le long du +chemin: j'avais la fievre en revenant ... On entendait ses cris jusqu'au +bout du jardin; et je le voyais!... Les poetes ont bien fait de mettre +un intervalle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En verite, la main me +tremble.' Every word of that is stamped with sincerity; Diderot was +writing from his heart. But he was wrong; the 'intervalle immense,' +across which, so strangely and so horribly, he had caught glimpses of +what he had never seen before, was not the abyss between heaven and +hell, but between the old world and the new. + +1907. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 7: _Jean Jacques Rousseau: a New Criticism_, by Frederika +Macdonald. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall. 1906.] + + + + +THE POETRY OF BLAKE[8] + + +The new edition of Blake's poetical works, published by the Clarendon +Press, will be welcomed by every lover of English poetry. The volume is +worthy of the great university under whose auspices it has been +produced, and of the great artist whose words it will help to +perpetuate. Blake has been, hitherto, singularly unfortunate in his +editors. With a single exception, every edition of his poems up to the +present time has contained a multitude of textual errors which, in the +case of any other writer of equal eminence, would have been well-nigh +inconceivable. The great majority of these errors were not the result of +accident: they were the result of deliberate falsification. Blake's text +has been emended and corrected and 'improved,' so largely and so +habitually, that there was a very real danger of its becoming +permanently corrupted; and this danger was all the more serious, since +the work of mutilation was carried on to an accompaniment of fervent +admiration of the poet. 'It is not a little bewildering,' says Mr. +Sampson, the present editor, 'to find one great poet and critic +extolling Blake for the "glory of metre" and "the sonorous beauty of +lyrical work" in the two opening lyrics of the _Songs of Experience_, +while he introduces into the five short stanzas quoted no less than +seven emendations of his own, involving additions of syllables and +important changes of meaning.' This is Procrustes admiring the exquisite +proportions of his victim. As one observes the countless instances +accumulated in Mr. Sampson's notes, of the clippings and filings to +which the free and spontaneous expression of Blake's genius has been +subjected, one is reminded of a verse in one of his own lyrics, where he +speaks of the beautiful garden in which-- + + Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, + And binding with briers my joys and desires; + +and one cannot help hazarding the conjecture, that Blake's prophetic +vision recognised, in the lineaments of the 'priests in black gowns,' +most of his future editors. Perhaps, though, if Blake's prescience had +extended so far as this, he would have taken a more drastic measure; and +we shudder to think of the sort of epigram with which the editorial +efforts of his worshippers might have been rewarded. The present +edition, however, amply compensates for the past. Mr. Sampson gives us, +in the first place, the correct and entire text of the poems, so printed +as to afford easy reading to those who desire access to the text and +nothing more. At the same time, in a series of notes and prefaces, he +has provided an elaborate commentary, containing, besides all the +variorum readings, a great mass of bibliographical and critical matter; +and, in addition, he has enabled the reader to obtain a clue through the +labyrinth of Blake's mythology, by means of ample quotations from those +passages in the _Prophetic Books_, which throw light upon the +obscurities of the poems. The most important Blake document--the +Rossetti MS.--has been freshly collated, with the generous aid of the +owner, Mr. W.A. White, to whom the gratitude of the public is due in no +common measure; and the long-lost Pickering MS.--the sole authority for +some of the most mystical and absorbing of the poems--was, with deserved +good fortune, discovered by Mr. Sampson in time for collation in the +present edition. Thus there is hardly a line in the volume which has not +been reproduced from an original, either written or engraved by the hand +of Blake. Mr. Sampson's minute and ungrudging care, his high critical +acumen, and the skill with which he has brought his wide knowledge of +the subject to bear upon the difficulties of the text, combine to make +his edition a noble and splendid monument of English scholarship. It +will be long indeed before the poems of Blake cease to afford matter for +fresh discussions and commentaries and interpretations; but it is safe +to predict that, so far as their form is concerned, they will +henceforward remain unchanged. There will be no room for further +editing. The work has been done by Mr. Sampson, once and for all. + +In the case of Blake, a minute exactitude of text is particularly +important, for more than one reason. Many of his effects depend upon +subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling, which are too easily +lost in reproduction. 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,' is the ordinary +version of one of his most celebrated lines. But in Blake's original +engraving the words appear thus--'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright'; and who +can fail to perceive the difference? Even more remarkable is the change +which the omission of a single stop has produced in the last line of one +of the succeeding stanzas of the same poem. + + And what shoulder, and what art, + Could twist the sinews of thy heart? + And when thy heart began to beat, + What dread hand? and what dread feet? + +So Blake engraved the verse; and, as Mr. Sampson points out,'the +terrible, compressed force' of the final line vanishes to nothing in the +'languid punctuation' of subsequent editions:--'What dread hand and what +dread feet?' It is hardly an exaggeration to say, that the re-discovery +of this line alone would have justified the appearance of the present +edition. + +But these considerations of what may be called the mechanics of Blake's +poetry are not--important as they are--the only justification for a +scrupulous adherence to his autograph text. Blake's use of language was +not guided by the ordinarily accepted rules of writing; he allowed +himself to be trammelled neither by prosody nor by grammar; he wrote, +with an extraordinary audacity, according to the mysterious dictates of +his own strange and intimate conception of the beautiful and the just. +Thus his compositions, amenable to no other laws than those of his own +making, fill a unique place in the poetry of the world. They are the +rebels and atheists of literature, or rather, they are the sanctuaries +of an Unknown God; and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox +incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate +afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with +advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven +in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor is +this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has +been made from the authoritative version, it is hardly possible to stop +there. The emendator is on an inclined plane which leads him inevitably +from readjustments of punctuation to corrections of grammar, and from +corrections of grammar to alterations of rhythm; if he is in for a +penny, he is in for a pound. The first poem in the Rossetti MS. may be +adduced as one instance--out of the enormous number which fill Mr. +Sampson's notes--of the dangers of editorial laxity. + + I told my love, I told my love, + I told her all my heart; + Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, + Ah! she doth depart. + +This is the first half of the poem; and editors have been contented with +an alteration of stops, and the change of 'doth' into 'did.' But their +work was not over; they had, as it were, tasted blood; and their version +of the last four lines of the poem is as follows: + + Soon after she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly: + He took her with a sigh. + +Reference to the MS., however, shows that the last line had been struck +out by Blake, and another substituted in its place--a line which is now +printed for the first time by Mr. Sampson. So that the true reading of +the verse is: + + Soon as she was gone from me, + A traveller came by, + Silently, invisibly-- + O! was no deny. + +After these exertions, it must have seemed natural enough to Rossetti +and his successors to print four other expunged lines as part of the +poem, and to complete the business by clapping a title to their +concoction--'Love's Secret'--a title which there is no reason to suppose +had ever entered the poet's mind. + +Besides illustrating the shortcomings of his editors, this little poem +is an admirable instance of Blake's most persistent quality--his +triumphant freedom from conventional restraints. His most characteristic +passages are at once so unexpected and so complete in their effect, that +the reader is moved by them, spontaneously, to some conjecture of +'inspiration.' Sir Walter Raleigh, indeed, in his interesting +Introduction to a smaller edition of the poems, protests against such +attributions of peculiar powers to Blake, or indeed to any other poet. +'No man,' he says, 'destitute of genius, could live for a day.' But even +if we all agree to be inspired together, we must still admit that there +are degrees of inspiration; if Mr. F's Aunt was a woman of genius, what +are we to say of Hamlet? And Blake, in the hierarchy of the inspired, +stands very high indeed. If one could strike an average among poets, it +would probably be true to say that, so far as inspiration is concerned, +Blake is to the average poet, as the average poet is to the man in the +street. All poetry, to be poetry at all, must have the power of making +one, now and then, involuntarily ejaculate: 'What made him think of +that?' With Blake, one is asking the question all the time. + +Blake's originality of manner was not, as has sometimes been the case, +a cloak for platitude. What he has to say belongs no less distinctly to +a mind of astonishing self-dependence than his way of saying it. In +English literature, as Sir Walter Raleigh observes, he 'stands outside +the regular line of succession.' All that he had in common with the +great leaders of the Romantic Movement was an abhorrence of the +conventionality and the rationalism of the eighteenth century; for the +eighteenth century itself was hardly more alien to his spirit than that +exaltation of Nature--the 'Vegetable Universe,' as he called it--from +which sprang the pantheism of Wordsworth and the paganism of Keats. +'Nature is the work of the Devil,' he exclaimed one day; 'the Devil is +in us as far as we are Nature.' There was no part of the sensible world +which, in his philosophy, was not impregnated with vileness. Even the +'ancient heavens' were not, to his uncompromising vision, 'fresh and +strong'; they were 'writ with Curses from Pole to Pole,' and destined to +vanish into nothingness with the triumph of the Everlasting Gospel. + +There are doubtless many to whom Blake is known simply as a charming and +splendid lyrist, as the author of _Infant Joy_, and _The Tyger_, and the +rest of the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_. These poems show but +faint traces of any system of philosophy; but, to a reader of the +Rossetti and Pickering MSS., the presence of a hidden and symbolic +meaning in Blake's words becomes obvious enough--a meaning which +receives its fullest expression in the _Prophetic Books_. It was only +natural that the extraordinary nature of Blake's utterance in these +latter works should have given rise to the belief that he was merely an +inspired idiot--a madman who happened to be able to write good verses. +That belief, made finally impossible by Mr. Swinburne's elaborate Essay, +is now, happily, nothing more than a curiosity of literary history; and +indeed signs are not wanting that the whirligig of Time, which left +Blake for so long in the Paradise of Fools, is now about to place him +among the Prophets. Anarchy is the most fashionable of creeds; and +Blake's writings, according to Sir Walter Raleigh, contain a complete +exposition of its doctrines. The same critic asserts that Blake was 'one +of the most consistent of English poets and thinkers.' This is high +praise indeed; but there seems to be some ambiguity in it. It is one +thing to give Blake credit for that sort of consistency which lies in +the repeated enunciation of the same body of beliefs throughout a large +mass of compositions and over a long period of time, and which could +never be possessed by a, madman or an incoherent charlatan. It is quite +another thing to assert that his doctrines form in themselves a +consistent whole, in the sense in which that quality would be ordinarily +attributed to a system of philosophy. Does Sir Walter mean to assert +that Blake is, in this sense too, 'consistent'? It is a little difficult +to discover. Referring, in his Introduction, to Blake's abusive notes on +Bacon's _Essays_, he speaks of-- + + The sentimental enthusiast, who worships all great men + indifferently, [and who] finds himself in a distressful position + when his gods fall out among themselves. His case [Sir Walter + wittily adds] is not much unlike that of Terah, the father of + Abraham, who (if the legend be true) was a dealer in idols among + the Chaldees, and, coming home to his shop one day, after a brief + absence, found that the idols had quarrelled, and the biggest of + them had smashed the rest to atoms. Blake is a dangerous idol for + any man to keep in his shop. + +We wonder very much whether he is kept in Sir Walter Raleigh's. + +It seems clear, at any rate, that no claim for a 'consistency' which +would imply freedom from self-contradiction can be validly made for +Blake. His treatment of the problem of evil is enough to show how very +far he was from that clarity of thought without which even prophets are +liable, when the time comes, to fall into disrepute. 'Plato,' said +Blake, 'knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. +There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes.' And +this is the perpetual burden of his teaching. 'Satan's empire is the +empire of nothing'; there is no such thing as evil--it is a mere +'negation.' And the 'moral virtues,' which attempt to discriminate +between right and wrong, are the idlest of delusions; they are merely +'allegories and dissimulations,' they 'do not exist.' Such was one of +the most fundamental of Blake's doctrines; but it requires only a +superficial acquaintance with his writings to recognise that their whole +tenour is an implicit contradiction of this very belief. Every page he +wrote contains a moral exhortation; bad thoughts and bad feelings raised +in him a fury of rage and indignation which the bitterest of satirists +never surpassed. His epigrams on Reynolds are masterpieces of virulent +abuse; the punishment which he devised for Klopstock--his impersonation +of 'flaccid fluency and devout sentiment'--is unprintable; as for those +who attempt to enforce moral laws, they shall be 'cast out,' for they +'crucify Christ with the head downwards.' The contradiction is indeed +glaring. 'There is no such thing as wickedness,' Blake says in effect, +'and you are wicked if you think there is.' If it is true that evil does +not exist, all Blake's denunciations are so much empty chatter; and, on +the other hand, if there is a real distinction between good and bad, if +everything, in fact, is _not_ good in God's eyes--then why not say so? +Really Blake, as politicians say, 'cannot have it both ways.' + +But of course, his answer to all this is simple enough. To judge him +according to the light of reason is to make an appeal to a tribunal +whose jurisdiction he had always refused to recognise as binding. In +fact, to Blake's mind, the laws of reason were nothing but a horrible +phantasm deluding and perplexing mankind, from whose clutches it is the +business of every human soul to free itself as speedily as possible. +Reason is the 'Spectre' of Blake's mythology, that Spectre, which, he +says, + + Around me night and day + Like a wild beast guards my way. + +It is a malignant spirit, for ever struggling with the 'Emanation,' or +imaginative side of man, whose triumph is the supreme end of the +universe. Ever since the day when, in his childhood, Blake had seen +God's forehead at the window, he had found in imaginative vision the +only reality and the only good. He beheld the things of this world 'not +with, but through, the eye': + + With my inward Eye, 'tis an old Man grey, + With my outward, a Thistle across my way. + +It was to the imagination, and the imagination alone, that Blake yielded +the allegiance of his spirit. His attitude towards reason was the +attitude of the mystic; and it involved an inevitable dilemma. He never +could, in truth, quite shake himself free of his 'Spectre'; struggle as +he would, he could not escape altogether from the employment of the +ordinary forms of thought and speech; he is constantly arguing, as if +argument were really a means of approaching the truth; he was subdued to +what he worked in. As in his own poem, he had, somehow or other, been +locked into a crystal cabinet--the world of the senses and of reason--a +gilded, artificial, gimcrack dwelling, after 'the wild' where he had +danced so merrily before. + + I strove to seize the inmost Form + With ardour fierce and hands of flame, + But burst the Crystal Cabinet, + And like a Weeping Babe became-- + + A weeping Babe upon the wild.... + +To be able to lay hands upon 'the inmost form,' one must achieve the +impossible; one must be inside and outside the crystal cabinet at the +same time. But Blake was not to be turned aside by such considerations. +He would have it both ways; and whoever demurred was crucifying Christ +with the head downwards. + +Besides its unreasonableness, there is an even more serious objection to +Blake's mysticism--and indeed to all mysticism: its lack of humanity. +The mystic's creed--even when arrayed in the wondrous and ecstatic +beauty of Blake's verse--comes upon the ordinary man, in the rigidity of +its uncompromising elevation, with a shock which is terrible, and +almost cruel. The sacrifices which it demands are too vast, in spite of +the divinity of what it has to offer. What shall it profit a man, one is +tempted to exclaim, if he gain his own soul, and lose the whole world? +The mystic ideal is the highest of all; but it has no breadth. The +following lines express, with a simplicity and an intensity of +inspiration which he never surpassed, Blake's conception of that ideal: + + And throughout all Eternity + I forgive you, you forgive me. + As our dear Redeemer said: + 'This the Wine, & this the Bread.' + +It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for +instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would +have subjected such lines as these. His criticism would have been +irrelevant, because it would never have reached the heart of the matter +at issue; it would have been based upon no true understanding of Blake's +words. But that they do admit of a real, an unanswerable criticism, it +is difficult to doubt. Charles Lamb, perhaps, might have made it; +incidentally, indeed, he has. 'Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary +walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the +delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful +glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent +vanities, and jests, and _irony itself_'--do these things form no part +of your Eternity? + +The truth is plain: Blake was an intellectual drunkard. His words come +down to us in a rapture of broken fluency from impossible intoxicated +heights. His spirit soared above the empyrean; and, even as it soared, +it stumbled in the gutter of Felpham. His lips brought forth, in the +same breath, in the same inspired utterance, the _Auguries of Innocence_ +and the epigrams on Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was in no condition to chop +logic, or to take heed of the existing forms of things. In the imaginary +portrait of himself, prefixed to Sir Walter Raleigh's volume, we can see +him, as he appeared to his own 'inward eye,' staggering between the +abyss and the star of Heaven, his limbs cast abroad, his head thrown +back in an ecstasy of intoxication, so that, to the frenzy of his +rolling vision, the whole universe is upside down. We look, and, as we +gaze at the strange image and listen to the marvellous melody, we are +almost tempted to go and do likewise. + +But it is not as a prophet, it is as an artist, that Blake deserves the +highest honours and the most enduring fame. In spite of his hatred of +the 'vegetable universe,' his poems possess the inexplicable and +spontaneous quality of natural objects; they are more like the works of +Heaven than the works of man. They have, besides, the two most obvious +characteristics of Nature--loveliness and power. In some of his lyrics +there is an exquisite simplicity, which seems, like a flower or a child, +to be unconscious of itself. In his poem of _The Birds_--to mention, out +of many, perhaps a less known instance--it is not the poet that one +hears, it is the birds themselves. + + O thou summer's harmony, + I have lived and mourned for thee; + Each day I mourn along the wood, + And night hath heard my sorrows loud. + +In his other mood--the mood of elemental force--Blake produces effects +which are unique in literature. His mastery of the mysterious +suggestions which lie concealed in words is complete. + + He who torments the Chafer's Sprite + Weaves a Bower in endless Night. + +What dark and terrible visions the last line calls up! And, with the aid +of this control over the secret springs of language, he is able to +produce in poetry those vast and vague effects of gloom, of foreboding, +and of terror, which seem to be proper to music alone. Sometimes his +words are heavy with the doubtful horror of an approaching thunderstorm: + + The Guests are scattered thro' the land, + For the Eye altering alters all; + The Senses roll themselves in fear, + And the flat Earth becomes a Ball; + The Stars, Sun, Moon, all shrink away, + A desart vast without a bound, + And nothing left to eat or drink, + And a dark desart all around. + +And sometimes Blake invests his verses with a sense of nameless and +infinite ruin, such as one feels when the drum and the violin +mysteriously come together, in one of Beethoven's Symphonies, to predict +the annihilation of worlds: + + On the shadows of the Moon, + Climbing through Night's highest noon: + In Time's Ocean falling, drowned: + In Aged Ignorance profound, + Holy and cold, I clipp'd the Wings + Of all Sublunary Things: + But when once I did descry + The Immortal Man that cannot Die, + Thro' evening shades I haste away + To close the Labours of my Day. + The Door of Death I open found, + And the Worm Weaving in the Ground; + Thou'rt my Mother, from the Womb; + Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb: + Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife, + And weeping over the Web of Life. + +Such music is not to be lightly mouthed by mortals; for us, in our +weakness, a few strains of it, now and then, amid the murmur of ordinary +converse, are enough. For Blake's words will always be strangers on this +earth; they could only fall with familiarity from the lips of his own +Gods: + + above Time's troubled fountains, + On the great Atlantic Mountains, + In my Golden House on high. + +They belong to the language of Los and Rahab and Enitharmon; and their +mystery is revealed for ever in the land of the Sunflower's desire. + +1906. + +NOTES: + +[Footnote 8: _The Poetical Works of William Blake. A new and verbatim +text from the manuscript, engraved, and letter-press originals, with +variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces._ By John +Sampson, Librarian in the University of Liverpool. Oxford: At the +Clarendon Press, 1905. + +_The Lyrical Poems of William Blake._ Text by John Sampson, with an +Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1905.] + + + + +THE LAST ELIZABETHAN + +The shrine of Poetry is a secret one; and it is fortunate that this +should be the case; for it gives a sense of security. The cult is too +mysterious and intimate to figure upon census papers; there are no +turnstiles at the temple gates; and so, as all inquiries must be +fruitless, the obvious plan is to take for granted a good attendance of +worshippers, and to pass on. Yet, if Apollo were to come down (after the +manner of deities) and put questions--must we suppose to the +Laureate?--as to the number of the elect, would we be quite sure of +escaping wrath and destruction? Let us hope for the best; and perhaps, +if we were bent upon finding out the truth, the simplest way would be to +watch the sales of the new edition of the poems of Beddoes, which +Messrs. Routledge have lately added to the 'Muses' Library.' How many +among Apollo's pew-renters, one wonders, have ever read Beddoes, or, +indeed, have ever heard of him? For some reason or another, this +extraordinary poet has not only never received the recognition which is +his due, but has failed almost entirely to receive any recognition +whatever. If his name is known at all, it is known in virtue of the one +or two of his lyrics which have crept into some of the current +anthologies. But Beddoes' highest claim to distinction does not rest +upon his lyrical achievements, consummate as those achievements are; it +rests upon his extraordinary eminence as a master of dramatic blank +verse. Perhaps his greatest misfortune was that he was born at the +beginning of the nineteenth century, and not at the end of the +sixteenth. His proper place was among that noble band of Elizabethans, +whose strong and splendid spirit gave to England, in one miraculous +generation, the most glorious heritage of drama that the world has +known. If Charles Lamb had discovered his tragedies among the folios of +the British Museum, and had given extracts from them in the _Specimens +of Dramatic Poets_, Beddoes' name would doubtless be as familiar to us +now as those of Marlowe and Webster, Fletcher and Ford. As it happened, +however, he came as a strange and isolated phenomenon, a star which had +wandered from its constellation, and was lost among alien lights. It is +to very little purpose that Mr. Ramsay Colles, his latest editor, +assures us that 'Beddoes is interesting as marking the transition from +Shelley to Browning'; it is to still less purpose that he points out to +us a passage in _Death's Jest Book_ which anticipates the doctrines of +_The Descent of Man._ For Beddoes cannot be hoisted into line with his +contemporaries by such methods as these; nor is it in the light of such +after-considerations that the value of his work must be judged. We must +take him on his own merits, 'unmixed with seconds'; we must discover and +appraise his peculiar quality for its own sake. + + He hath skill in language; + And knowledge is in him, root, flower, and fruit, + A palm with winged imagination in it, + Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave; + And on them hangs a lamp of magic science + In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts + Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead. + +If the neglect suffered by Beddoes' poetry may be accounted for in more +ways than one, it is not so easy to understand why more curiosity has +never been aroused by the circumstances of his life. For one reader who +cares to concern himself with the intrinsic merit of a piece of writing +there are a thousand who are ready to explore with eager sympathy the +history of the writer; and all that we know both of the life and the +character of Beddoes possesses those very qualities of peculiarity, +mystery, and adventure, which are so dear to the hearts of subscribers +to circulating libraries. Yet only one account of his career has ever +been given to the public; and that account, fragmentary and incorrect as +it is, has long been out of print. It was supplemented some years ago +by Mr. Gosse, who was able to throw additional light upon one important +circumstance, and who has also published a small collection of Beddoes' +letters. The main biographical facts, gathered from these sources, have +been put together by Mr. Ramsay Colles, in his introduction to the new +edition; but he has added nothing fresh; and we are still in almost +complete ignorance as to the details of the last twenty years of +Beddoes' existence--full as those years certainly were of interest and +even excitement. Nor has the veil been altogether withdrawn from that +strange tragedy which, for the strange tragedian, was the last of all. + +Readers of Miss Edgeworth's letters may remember that her younger sister +Anne, married a distinguished Clifton physician, Dr. Thomas Beddoes. +Their eldest son, born in 1803, was named Thomas Lovell, after his +father and grandfather, and grew up to be the author of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_. Dr. Beddoes was a remarkable man, +endowed with high and varied intellectual capacities and a rare +independence of character. His scientific attainments were recognised by +the University of Oxford, where he held the post of Lecturer in +Chemistry, until the time of the French Revolution, when he was obliged +to resign it, owing to the scandal caused by the unconcealed intensity +of his liberal opinions. He then settled at Clifton as a physician, +established a flourishing practice, and devoted his leisure to politics +and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose +merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents +which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, +if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously +suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a +striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. +Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and his father's +inability to make the best use of them; he possessed in a no less +remarkable degree his father's independence of mind. In both cases, this +quality was coupled with a corresponding eccentricity of conduct, which +occasionally, to puzzled onlookers, wore the appearance of something +very near insanity. Many stories are related of the queer behaviour of +Dr. Beddoes. One day he astonished the ladies of Clifton by appearing at +a tea-party with a packet of sugar in his hand; he explained that it was +East Indian sugar, and that nothing would induce him to eat the usual +kind, which came from Jamaica and was made by slaves. More extraordinary +were his medical prescriptions; for he was in the habit of ordering cows +to be conveyed into his patients' bedrooms, in order, as he said, that +they might 'inhale the animals' breath.' It is easy to imagine the +delight which the singular spectacle of a cow climbing upstairs into an +invalid's bedroom must have given to the future author of _Harpagus_ and +_The Oviparous Tailor_. But 'little Tom,' as Miss Edgeworth calls him, +was not destined to enjoy for long the benefit of parental example; for +Dr. Beddoes died in the prime of life, when the child was not yet six +years old. + +The genius at school is usually a disappointing figure, for, as a rule, +one must be commonplace to be a successful boy. In that preposterous +world, to be remarkable is to be overlooked; and nothing less vivid than +the white-hot blaze of a Shelley will bring with it even a distinguished +martyrdom. But Beddoes was an exception, though he was not a martyr. On +the contrary, he dominated his fellows as absolutely as if he had been a +dullard and a dunce. He was at Charterhouse; and an entertaining account +of his existence there has been preserved to us in a paper of school +reminiscences, written by Mr. C.D. Bevan, who had been his fag. Though +his place in the school was high, Beddoes' interests were devoted not so +much to classical scholarship as to the literature of his own tongue. +Cowley, he afterwards told a friend, had been the first poet he had +understood; but no doubt he had begun to understand poetry many years +before he went to Charterhouse; and, while he was there, the reading +which he chiefly delighted in was the Elizabethan drama. 'He liked +acting,' says Mr. Bevan, 'and was a good judge of it, and used to give +apt though burlesque imitations of the popular actors, particularly Kean +and Macready. Though his voice was harsh and his enunciation offensively +conceited, he read with so much propriety of expression and manner, that +I was always glad to listen: even when I was pressed into the service as +his accomplice, his enemy, or his love, with a due accompaniment of +curses, caresses, or kicks, as the course of his declamation required. +One play in particular, Marlowe's _Tragedy of Dr. Faustus_, excited my +admiration in this way; and a liking for the old English drama, which I +still retain, was created and strengthened by such recitations.' But +Beddoes' dramatic performances were not limited to the works of others; +when the occasion arose he was able to supply the necessary material +himself. A locksmith had incurred his displeasure by putting a bad lock +on his bookcase; Beddoes vowed vengeance; and when next the man appeared +he was received by a dramatic interlude, representing his last moments, +his horror and remorse, his death, and the funeral procession, which was +interrupted by fiends, who carried off body and soul to eternal +torments. Such was the realistic vigour of the performance that the +locksmith, according to Mr. Bevan, 'departed in a storm of wrath and +execrations, and could not be persuaded, for some time, to resume his +work.' + +Besides the interlude of the wicked locksmith, Beddoes' school +compositions included a novel in the style of Fielding (which has +unfortunately disappeared), the beginnings of an Elizabethan tragedy, +and much miscellaneous verse. In 1820 he left Charterhouse, and went to +Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in the following year, while still a +freshman, he published his first volume, _The Improvisatore_, a series +of short narratives in verse. The book had been written in part while he +was at school; and its immaturity is obvious. It contains no trace of +the nervous vigour of his later style; the verse is weak, and the +sentiment, to use his own expression, 'Moorish.' Indeed, the only +interest of the little work lies in the evidence which it affords that +the singular pre-occupation which eventually dominated Beddoes' mind +had, even in these early days, made its appearance. The book is full of +death. The poems begin on battle-fields and end in charnel-houses; old +men are slaughtered in cold blood, and lovers are struck by lightning +into mouldering heaps of corruption. The boy, with his elaborate +exhibitions of physical horror, was doing his best to make his readers' +flesh creep. But the attempt was far too crude; and in after years, when +Beddoes had become a past-master of that difficult art, he was very much +ashamed of his first publication. So eager was he to destroy every trace +of its existence, that he did not spare even the finely bound copies of +his friends. The story goes that he amused himself by visiting their +libraries with a penknife, so that, when next they took out the precious +volume, they found the pages gone. + +Beddoes, however, had no reason to be ashamed of his next publication, +_The Brides' Tragedy_, which appeared in 1822. In a single bound, he had +reached the threshold of poetry, and was knocking at the door. The line +which divides the best and most accomplished verse from poetry +itself--that subtle and momentous line which every one can draw, and no +one can explain--Beddoes had not yet crossed. But he had gone as far as +it was possible to go by the aid of mere skill in the art of writing, +and he was still in his twentieth year. Many passages in _The Brides' +Tragedy_ seem only to be waiting for the breath of inspiration which +will bring them into life; and indeed, here and there, the breath has +come, the warm, the true, the vital breath of Apollo. No one, surely, +whose lips had not tasted of the waters of Helicon, could have uttered +such words as these: + + Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye, + When first it darkened with immortal life + +or a line of such intense imaginative force as this: + + I've huddled her into the wormy earth; + +or this splendid description of a stormy sunrise: + + The day is in its shroud while yet an infant; + And Night with giant strides stalks o'er the world, + Like a swart Cyclops, on its hideous front + One round, red, thunder-swollen eye ablaze. + +The play was written on the Elizabethan model, and, as a play, it is +disfigured by Beddoes' most characteristic faults: the construction is +weak, the interest fluctuates from character to character, and the +motives and actions of the characters themselves are for the most part +curiously remote from the realities of life. Yet, though the merit of +the tragedy depends almost entirely upon the verse, there are signs in +it that, while Beddoes lacked the gift of construction, he nevertheless +possessed one important dramatic faculty--the power of creating detached +scenes of interest and beauty. The scene in which the half-crazed +Leonora imagines to herself, beside the couch on which her dead daughter +lies, that the child is really living after all, is dramatic in the +highest sense of the word; the situation, with all its capabilities of +pathetic irony, is conceived and developed with consummate art and +absolute restraint. Leonora's speech ends thus: + + ... Speak, I pray thee, Floribel, + Speak to thy mother; do but whisper 'aye'; + Well, well, I will not press her; I am sure + She has the welcome news of some good fortune, + And hoards the telling till her father comes; + ... Ah! She half laughed. I've guessed it then; + Come tell me, I'll be secret. Nay, if you mock me, + I must be very angry till you speak. + Now this is silly; some of these young boys + Have dressed the cushions with her clothes in sport. + 'Tis very like her. I could make this image + Act all her greetings; she shall bow her head: + 'Good-morrow, mother'; and her smiling face + Falls on my neck.--Oh, heaven, 'tis she indeed! + I know it all--don't tell me. + +The last seven words are a summary of anguish, horror, and despair, such +as Webster himself might have been proud to write. + +_The Brides' Tragedy_ was well received by critics; and a laudatory +notice of Beddoes in the _Edinburgh_, written by Bryan Waller +Procter--better known then than now under his pseudonym of Barry +Cornwall--led to a lasting friendship between the two poets. The +connection had an important result, for it was through Procter that +Beddoes became acquainted with the most intimate of all his +friends--Thomas Forbes Kelsall, then a young lawyer at Southampton. In +the summer of 1823 Beddoes stayed at Southampton for several months, +and, while ostensibly studying for his Oxford degree, gave up most of +his time to conversations with Kelsall and to dramatic composition. It +was a culminating point in his life: one of those moments which come, +even to the most fortunate, once and once only--when youth, and hope, +and the high exuberance of genius combine with circumstance and +opportunity to crown the marvellous hour. The spade-work of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ had been accomplished; the seed had been sown; and now the +harvest was beginning. Beddoes, 'with the delicious sense,' as Kelsall +wrote long afterwards, 'of the laurel freshly twined around his head,' +poured out, in these Southampton evenings, an eager stream of song. 'His +poetic composition,' says his friend, 'was then exceedingly facile: more +than once or twice has he taken home with him at night some unfinished +act of a drama, in which the editor [Kelsall] had found much to admire, +and, at the next meeting, has produced a new one, similar in design, but +filled with other thoughts and fancies, which his teeming imagination +had projected, in its sheer abundance, and not from any feeling, right +or fastidious, of unworthiness in its predecessor. Of several of these +very striking fragments, large and grand in their aspect as they each +started into form, + + Like the red outline of beginning Adam, + +... the only trace remaining is literally the impression thus deeply cut +into their one observer's mind. The fine verse just quoted is the sole +remnant, indelibly stamped on the editor's memory, of one of these +extinct creations.' Fragments survive of at least four dramas, +projected, and brought to various stages of completion, at about this +time. Beddoes was impatient of the common restraints; he was dashing +forward in the spirit of his own advice to another poet: + + Creep not nor climb, + As they who place their topmost of sublime + On some peak of this planet, pitifully. + Dart eaglewise with open wings, and fly + Until you meet the gods! + +Eighteen months after his Southampton visit, Beddoes took his degree at +Oxford, and, almost immediately, made up his mind to a course of action +which had the profoundest effect upon his future life. He determined to +take up the study of medicine; and with that end in view established +himself, in 1825, at the University at Goettingen. It is very clear, +however, that he had no intention of giving up his poetical work. He +took with him to Germany the beginnings of a new play--'a very +Gothic-styled tragedy,' he calls it, 'for which I have a jewel of a +name--DEATH'S JEST-BOOK; of course,' he adds, 'no one will ever read +it'; and, during his four years at Goettingen, he devoted most of his +leisure to the completion of this work. He was young; he was rich; he +was interested in medical science; and no doubt it seemed to him that he +could well afford to amuse himself for half-a-dozen years, before he +settled down to the poetical work which was to be the serious occupation +of his life. But, as time passed, he became more and more engrossed in +the study of medicine, for which he gradually discovered he had not only +a taste but a gift; so that at last he came to doubt whether it might +not be his true vocation to be a physician, and not a poet after all. +Engulfed among the students of Goettingen, England and English ways of +life, and even English poetry, became dim to him; 'dir, dem Anbeter der +seligen Gottheiten der Musen, u.s.w.,' he wrote to Kelsall, 'was +Unterhaltendes kann der Liebhaber von Knochen, der fleissige Botaniker +und Phisiolog mittheilen?' In 1830 he was still hesitating between the +two alternatives. 'I sometimes wish,' he told the same friend, 'to +devote myself exclusively to the study of anatomy and physiology in +science, of languages, and dramatic poetry'; his pen had run away with +him; and his 'exclusive' devotion turned out to be a double one, +directed towards widely different ends. While he was still in this state +of mind, a new interest took possession of him--an interest which worked +havoc with his dreams of dramatic authorship and scientific research: he +became involved in the revolutionary movement which was at that time +beginning to agitate Europe. The details of his adventures are unhappily +lost to us, for we know nothing more of them than can be learnt from a +few scanty references in his rare letters to English friends; but it is +certain that the part he played was an active, and even a dangerous one. +He was turned out of Wuerzburg by 'that ingenious Jackanapes,' the King +of Bavaria; he was an intimate friend of Hegetschweiler, one of the +leaders of liberalism in Switzerland; and he was present in Zurich when +a body of six thousand peasants, 'half unarmed, and the other half armed +with scythes, dungforks and poles, entered the town and overturned the +liberal government.' In the tumult Hegetschweiler was killed, and +Beddoes was soon afterwards forced to fly the canton. During the +following years we catch glimpses of him, flitting mysteriously over +Germany and Switzerland, at Berlin, at Baden, at Giessen, a strange +solitary figure, with tangled hair and meerschaum pipe, scribbling +lampoons upon the King of Prussia, translating Grainger's _Spinal Cord_ +into German, and Schoenlein's _Diseases of Europeans_ into English, +exploring Pilatus and the Titlis, evolving now and then some ghostly +lyric or some rabelaisian tale, or brooding over the scenes of his +'Gothic-styled tragedy,' wondering if it were worthless or inspired, and +giving it--as had been his wont for the last twenty years--just one more +touch before he sent it to the press. He appeared in England once or +twice, and in 1846 made a stay of several months, visiting the Procters +in London, and going down to Southampton to be with Kelsall once again. +Eccentricity had grown on him; he would shut himself for days in his +bedroom, smoking furiously; he would fall into fits of long and deep +depression. He shocked some of his relatives by arriving at their +country house astride a donkey; and he amazed the Procters by starting +out one evening to set fire to Drury Lane Theatre with a lighted +five-pound note. After this last visit to England, his history becomes +even more obscure than before. It is known that in 1847 he was in +Frankfort, where he lived for six months in close companionship with a +young baker called Degen--'a nice-looking young man, nineteen years of +age,' we are told, 'dressed in a blue blouse, fine in expression, and of +a natural dignity of manner'; and that, in the spring of the following +year, the two friends went off to Zurich, where Beddoes hired the +theatre for a night in order that Degen might appear on the stage in the +part of Hotspur. At Basel, however, for some unexplained reason, the +friends parted, and Beddoes fell immediately into the profoundest gloom. +'Il a ete miserable,' said the waiter at the Cigogne Hotel, where he was +staying, 'il a voulu se tuer.' It was true. He inflicted a deep wound in +his leg with a razor, in the hope, apparently, of bleeding to death. He +was taken to the hospital, where he constantly tore off the bandages, +until at last it was necessary to amputate the leg below the knee. The +operation was successful, Beddoes began to recover, and, in the autumn, +Degen came back to Basel. It seemed as if all were going well; for the +poet, with his books around him, and the blue-bloused Degen by his +bedside, talked happily of politics and literature, and of an Italian +journey in the spring. He walked out twice; was he still happy? Who can +tell? Was it happiness, or misery, or what strange impulse, that drove +him, on his third walk, to go to a chemist's shop in the town, and to +obtain there a phial of deadly poison? On the evening of that day--the +26th of January, 1849--Dr. Ecklin, his physician, was hastily summoned, +to find Beddoes lying insensible upon the bed. He never recovered +consciousness, and died that night. Upon his breast was found a pencil +note, addressed to one of his English friends. 'My dear Philips,' it +began, 'I am food for what I am good for--worms.' A few testamentary +wishes followed. Kelsall was to have the manuscripts; and--'W. Beddoes +must have a case (50 bottles) of Champagne Moet, 1847 growth, to drink +my death in ... I ought to have been, among other things,' the gruesome +document concluded, 'a good poet. Life was too great a bore on one peg, +and that a bad one. Buy for Dr. Ecklin one of Reade's best +stomach-pumps.' It was the last of his additions to Death's Jest Book, +and the most _macabre_ of all. + +Kelsall discharged his duties as literary executor with exemplary care. +The manuscripts were fragmentary and confused. There were three distinct +drafts of _Death's Jest Book_, each with variations of its own; and from +these Kelsall compiled his first edition of the drama, which appeared in +1850. In the following year he brought out the two volumes of poetical +works, which remained for forty years the only record of the full scope +and power of Beddoes' genius. They contain reprints of _The Brides' +Tragedy_ and _Death's Jest Book_, together with two unfinished +tragedies, and a great number of dramatic fragments and lyrics; and the +poems are preceded by Kelsall's memoir of his friend. Of these rare and +valuable volumes the Muses' Library edition is almost an exact reprint, +except that it omits the memoir and revives _The Improvisatore_. Only +one other edition of Beddoes exists--the limited one brought out by Mr. +Gosse in 1890, and based upon a fresh examination of the manuscripts. +Mr. Gosse was able to add ten lyrics and one dramatic fragment to those +already published by Kelsall; he made public for the first time the true +story of Beddoes' suicide, which Kelsall had concealed; and, in 1893, he +followed up his edition of the poems by a volume of Beddoes' letters. It +is clear, therefore, that there is no one living to whom lovers of +Beddoes owe so much as to Mr. Gosse. He has supplied most important +materials for the elucidation of the poet's history: and, among the +lyrics which he has printed for the first time, are to be found one of +the most perfect specimens of Beddoes' command of unearthly pathos--_The +Old Ghost_--and one of the most singular examples of his vein of +grotesque and ominous humour--_The Oviparous Tailor_. Yet it may be +doubted whether even Mr. Gosse's edition is the final one. There are +traces in Beddoes' letters of unpublished compositions which may still +come to light. What has happened, one would like to know, to _The Ivory +Gate_, that 'volume of prosaic poetry and poetical prose,' which Beddoes +talked of publishing in 1837? Only a few fine stanzas from it have ever +appeared. And, as Mr. Gosse himself tells us, the variations in _Death's +Jest Book_ alone would warrant the publication of a variorum edition of +that work--'if,' he wisely adds, for the proviso contains the gist of +the matter--'if the interest in Beddoes should continue to grow.' + +'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama +must be a bold, trampling fellow--no creeper into worm-holes--no reviver +even--however good. These reanimations are vampire-cold.' The words +occur in one of Beddoes' letters, and they are usually quoted by +critics, on the rare occasions on which his poetry is discussed, as an +instance of the curious incapacity of artists to practise what they +preach. But the truth is that Beddoes was not a 'creeper into +worm-holes,' he was not even a 'reviver'; he was a reincarnation. +Everything that we know of him goes to show that the laborious and +elaborate effort of literary reconstruction was quite alien to his +spirit. We have Kelsall's evidence as to the ease and abundance of his +composition; we have the character of the man, as it shines forth in his +letters and in the history of his life--records of a 'bold, trampling +fellow,' if ever there was one; and we have the evidence of his poetry +itself. For the impress of a fresh and vital intelligence is stamped +unmistakably upon all that is best in his work. His mature blank verse +is perfect. It is not an artificial concoction galvanized into the +semblance of life; it simply lives. And, with Beddoes, maturity was +precocious, for he obtained complete mastery over the most difficult and +dangerous of metres at a wonderfully early age. Blank verse is like the +Djin in the Arabian Nights; it is either the most terrible of masters, +or the most powerful of slaves. If you have not the magic secret, it +will take your best thoughts, your bravest imaginations, and change them +into toads and fishes; but, if the spell be yours, it will turn into a +flying carpet and lift your simplest utterance into the highest heaven. +Beddoes had mastered the 'Open, Sesame' at an age when most poets are +still mouthing ineffectual wheats and barleys. In his twenty-second +year, his thoughts filled and moved and animated his blank verse as +easily and familiarly as a hand in a glove. He wishes to compare, for +instance, the human mind, with its knowledge of the past, to a single +eye receiving the light of the stars; and the object of the comparison +is to lay stress upon the concentration on one point of a vast +multiplicity of objects. There could be no better exercise for a young +verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then +to examine these lines by Beddoes--lines where simplicity and splendour +have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art. + + How glorious to live! Even in one thought + The wisdom of past times to fit together, + And from the luminous minds of many men + Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, + Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets + Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered + Into one ray. + +The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the +diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing--that art +by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to +combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however, +impossible to do more than touch upon this side--the technical side--of +Beddoes' genius. But it may be noticed that in his mastery of +phrasing--as in so much besides--he was a true Elizabethan. The great +artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead +thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an +eighteenth-century dramatist--Addison, for instance--to understand how +right they were. + +Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had +already begun to show itself in _The Brides' Tragedy_, reached its full +development in his subsequent work. The opening act of _The Second +Brother_--the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies--is a +striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way +that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not +one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next +brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after +years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar--to find his younger +brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay +debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the +duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and +extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While +Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, +Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended +by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand. +'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes: + + I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught + Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines. + +Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute his +brother. + + _Orazio_. Insolent beggar! + + _Marcello_. Prince! But we must shake hands. + Look you, the round earth's like a sleeping serpent, + Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown + Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks + Of two close planets, catching in the air: + You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, + Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top + Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark, + With nothing reigning on my desolate head + But an old spirit of a murdered god, + Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father. + +They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims-- + + Aye, Prince, you have a brother-- + + _Orazio_. The Duke--he'll scourge you. + + _Marcello_. Nay, _the second_, sir, + Who, like an envious river, flows between + Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne.... + + _Orazio_. Stood he before me there, + By you, in you, as like as you're unlike, + Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old, + And many years nearer than him to Death, + The falling brilliancy of whose white sword + Your ancient locks so silverly reflect, + I would deny, outswear, and overreach, + And pass him with contempt, as I do you. + Jove! How we waste the stars: set on, my friends. + +And so the revelling band pass onward, singing still, as they vanish +down the darkened street: + + Strike, you myrtle-crowned boys, + Ivied maidens, strike together!... + +and Marcello is left alone: + + I went forth + Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes + His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer, + And like its horrible return was mine, + To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat, + Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love, + And take a heart of venom: let me make + A staircase of the frightened breasts of men, + And climb into a lonely happiness! + And thou, who only art alone as I, + Great solitary god of that one sun, + I charge thee, by the likeness of our state, + Undo these human veins that tie me close + To other men, and let your servant griefs + Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in + Salt scorn and steaming hate! + +A moment later he learnt that the duke has suddenly died, and that the +dukedom is his. The rest of the play affords an instance of Beddoes' +inability to trace out a story, clearly and forcibly, to an appointed +end. The succeeding acts are crowded with beautiful passages, with vivid +situations, with surprising developments, but the central plot vanishes +away into nothing, like a great river dissipating itself among a +thousand streams. It is, indeed, clear enough that Beddoes was +embarrassed with his riches, that his fertile mind conceived too easily, +and that he could never resist the temptation of giving life to his +imaginations, even at the cost of killing his play. His conception of +Orazio, for instance, began by being that of a young Bacchus, as he +appears in the opening scene. But Beddoes could not leave him there; he +must have a romantic wife, whom he has deserted; and the wife, once +brought into being, must have an interview with her husband. The +interview is an exquisitely beautiful one, but it shatters Orazio's +character, for, in the course of it, he falls desperately in love with +his wife; and meanwhile the wife herself has become so important and +interesting a figure that she must be given a father, who in his turn +becomes the central character in more than one exciting scene. But, by +this time, what has happened to the second brother? It is easy to +believe that Beddoes was always ready to begin a new play rather than +finish an old one. But it is not so certain that his method was quite as +inexcusable as his critics assert. To the reader, doubtless, his faulty +construction is glaring enough; but Beddoes wrote his plays to be acted, +as a passage in one of his letters very clearly shows. 'You are, I +think,' he writes to Kelsall, 'disinclined to the stage: now I confess +that I think this is the highest aim of the dramatist, and should be +very desirous to get on it. To look down on it is a piece of +impertinence, as long as one chooses to write in the form of a play, +and is generally the result of one's own inability to produce anything +striking and affecting in that way.' And it is precisely upon the stage +that such faults of construction as those which disfigure Beddoes' +tragedies matter least. An audience, whose attention is held and +delighted by a succession of striking incidents clothed in splendid +speech, neither cares nor knows whether the effect of the whole, as a +whole, is worthy of the separate parts. It would be foolish, in the +present melancholy condition of the art of dramatic declamation, to wish +for the public performance of _Death's Jest Book_; but it is impossible +not to hope that the time may come when an adequate representation of +that strange and great work may be something more than 'a possibility +more thin than air.' Then, and then only, shall we be able to take the +true measure of Beddoes' genius. + +Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of +construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the common +realities of existence. Not only is the subject-matter of the greater +part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves +seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the +strange, and the unreal. They have no healthy activity; or, if they +have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are +all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting +the attributes of Death. The central idea of _Death's Jest Book_--the +resurrection of a ghost--fails to be truly effective, because it is +difficult to see any clear distinction between the phantom and the rest +of the characters. The duke, saved from death by the timely arrival of +Wolfram, exclaims 'Blest hour!' and then, in a moment, begins to ponder, +and agonise, and dream: + + And yet how palely, with what faded lips + Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune! + Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter + Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost, + Arisen out of hoary centuries + Where none can speak his language. + +Orazio, in his brilliant palace, is overcome with the same feelings: + + Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests, + Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike + Marriage or death. + +And his description of his own revels applies no less to the whole +atmosphere of Beddoes' tragedies: + + Voices were heard, most loud, which no man owned: + There were more shadows too than there were men; + And all the air more dark and thick than night + Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more + Than living breaths. + +It would be vain to look, among such spectral imaginings as these, for +guidance in practical affairs, or for illuminating views on men and +things, or for a philosophy, or, in short, for anything which may be +called a 'criticism of life.' If a poet must be a critic of life, +Beddoes was certainly no poet. He belongs to the class of writers of +which, in English literature, Spenser, Keats, and Milton are the +dominant figures--the writers who are great merely because of their art. +Sir James Stephen was only telling the truth when he remarked that +Milton might have put all that he had to say in _Paradise Lost_ into a +prose pamphlet of two or three pages. But who cares about what Milton +had to say? It is his way of saying it that matters; it is his +expression. Take away the expression from the _Satires_ of Pope, or from +_The Excursion_, and, though you will destroy the poems, you will leave +behind a great mass of thought. Take away the expression from +_Hyperion_, and you will leave nothing at all. To ask which is the +better of the two styles is like asking whether a peach is better than a +rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the +other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression +that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many modulations, +of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. +Playing on it, he can give utterance to the subtlest visions, such as +this: + + Just now a beam of joy hung on his eyelash; + But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye, + Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings + Into a darkening hole. + +Or to the most marvellous of vague and vast conceptions, such as this: + + I begin to hear + Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing + Of waves, where time into Eternity + Falls over ruined worlds. + +Or he can evoke sensations of pure loveliness, such as these: + + So fair a creature! of such charms compact + As nature stints elsewhere: which you may find + Under the tender eyelid of a serpent, + Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose, + By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see, + Like water from a crystal overfilled, + Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave + Her fair sides to the ground. + +Or he can put into a single line all the long memories of adoration: + + My love was much; + My life but an inhabitant of his. + +Or he can pass in a moment from tiny sweetness to colossal turmoil: + + I should not say + How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow, + On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm + And soft at evening: so the little flower + Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water + Close to the golden welcome of its breast, + Delighting in the touch of that which led + The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops + Tritons and lions of the sea were warring, + And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood, + Of their own inmates; others were of ice, + And some had islands rooted in their waves, + Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds, + And showers tumbling on their tumbling self, + And every sea of every ruined star + Was but a drop in the world-melting flood. + +He can express alike the beautiful tenderness of love, and the hectic, +dizzy, and appalling frenzy of extreme rage:-- + + ... What shall I do? I speak all wrong, + And lose a soul-full of delicious thought + By talking. Hush! Let's drink each other up + By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I, + My heavenly wife?... + I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second + By thy cheek's change. + +In that, one can almost feel the kisses; and, in this, one can almost +hear the gnashing of the teeth. 'Never!' exclaims the duke to his son +Torrismond: + + There lies no grain of sand between + My loved and my detested! Wing thee hence, + Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cobweb + Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron, + Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire! + And may this intervening earth be snow, + And my step burn like the mid coal of Aetna, + Plunging me, through it all, into the core, + Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds, + If I do not--O, but he is my son! + +Is not that tremendous? But, to find Beddoes in his most characteristic +mood, one must watch him weaving his mysterious imagination upon the +woof of mortality. One must wander with him through the pages of +_Death's Jest Book_, one must grow accustomed to the dissolution of +reality, and the opening of the nettled lips of graves; one must learn +that 'the dead are most and merriest,' one must ask--'Are the ghosts +eaves-dropping?'--one must realise that 'murder is full of holes.' Among +the ruins of his Gothic cathedral, on whose cloister walls the Dance of +Death is painted, one may speculate at ease over the fragility of +existence, and, within the sound of that dark ocean, + + Whose tumultuous waves + Are heaped, contending ghosts, + +one may understand how it is that + + Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful + To man than Life. + +Lingering there, one may watch the Deaths come down from their cloister, +and dance and sing amid the moonlight; one may laugh over the grotesque +contortions of skeletons; one may crack jokes upon corruption; one may +sit down with phantoms, and drink to the health of Death. + +In private intercourse Beddoes was the least morbid of human beings. His +mind was like one of those Gothic cathedrals of which he was so +fond--mysterious within, and filled with a light at once richer and less +real than the light of day; on the outside, firm, and towering, and +immediately impressive; and embellished, both inside and out, with +grinning gargoyles. His conversation, Kelsall tells us, was full of +humour and vitality, and untouched by any trace of egoism or +affectation. He loved discussion, plunging into it with fire, and +carrying it onward with high dexterity and good-humoured force. His +letters are excellent: simple, spirited, spicy, and as original as his +verse; flavoured with that vein of rattling open-air humour which had +produced his school-boy novel in the style of Fielding. He was a man +whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so +eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, +and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: not +the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, +Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who +forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a grave, +and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. His tragedy, like +Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an over-powerful will--a will so strong as +to recoil upon itself, and fall into indecision. It is easy for a weak +man to be decided--there is so much to make him so; but a strong man, +who can do anything, sometimes leaves everything undone. Fortunately +Beddoes, though he did far less than he might have done, possessed so +rich a genius that what he did, though small in quantity, is in quality +beyond price. 'I might have been, among other things, a good poet,' were +his last words. 'Among other things'! Aye, there's the rub. But, in +spite of his own 'might have been,' a good poet he was. Perhaps for him, +after all, there was very little to regret; his life was full of high +nobility; and what other way of death would have befitted the poet of +death? There is a thought constantly recurring throughout his +writings--in his childish as in his most mature work--the thought of the +beauty and the supernal happiness of soft and quiet death. He had +visions of 'rosily dying,' of 'turning to daisies gently in the grave,' +of a 'pink reclining death,' of death coming like a summer cloud over +the soul. 'Let her deathly life pass into death,' says one of his +earliest characters, 'like music on the night wind.' And, in _Death's +Jest Book_, Sibylla has the same thoughts: + + O Death! I am thy friend, + I struggle not with thee, I love thy state: + Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now; + And let me pass praying away into thee, + As twilight still does into starry night. + +Did his mind, obsessed and overwhelmed by images of death, crave at last +for the one thing stranger than all these--the experience of it? It is +easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at +the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual +dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had +recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, +perhaps, came crowding back upon him--thoughts of the futility of life, +and the supremacy of death and the mystical whirlpool of the unknown, +and the long quietude of the grave. In the end, Death had grown to be +something more than Death to him--it was, mysteriously and +transcendentally, Love as well. + + Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature tells, + When laughing waters close o'er drowning men; + When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells; + When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken + Of those who seek a cure for long despair + Will learn ... + +What learning was it that rewarded him? What ghostly knowledge of +eternal love? + + If there are ghosts to raise, + What shall I call, + Out of hell's murky haze, + Heaven's blue pall? + --Raise my loved long-lost boy + To lead me to his joy.-- + There are no ghosts to raise; + Out of death lead no ways; + Vain is the call. + + --Know'st thou not ghosts to sue? + No love thou hast. + Else lie, as I will do, + And breathe thy last. + So out of Life's fresh crown + Fall like a rose-leaf down. + Thus are the ghosts to woo; + Thus are all dreams made true, + Ever to last! + +1907. + + + + +HENRI BEYLE + + +In the whole of French literature it would be difficult to point to a +figure at once so important, so remarkable, and so little known to +English readers as Henri Beyle. Most of us are, no doubt, fairly +familiar with his pseudonym of 'Stendhal'; some of us have read _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_; but how many of us have +any further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment +appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete edition, +every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with +enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary +periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and +appreciation? The eminent critic, M. Andre Gide, when asked lately to +name the novel which stands in his opinion first among the novels of +France, declared that since, without a doubt, the place belongs to one +or other of the novels of Stendhal, his only difficulty was in making +his choice among these; and he finally decided upon _La Chartreuse de +Parme_. According to this high authority, Henri Beyle was indisputably +the creator of the greatest work of fiction in the French language, yet +on this side of the Channel we have hardly more than heard of him! Nor +is it merely as a writer that Beyle is admired in France. As a man, he +seems to have come in, sixty or seventy years after his death, for a +singular devotion. There are 'Beylistes,' or 'Stendhaliens,' who dwell +with rapture upon every detail of the master's private life, who extend +with pious care the long catalogue of his amorous adventures, who +discuss the shades of his character with the warmth of personal +friendship, and register his opinions with a zeal which is hardly less +than sectarian. But indeed it is precisely in these extremes of his +French devotees that we shall find a clue to the explanation of our own +indifference. Beyle's mind contained, in a highly exaggerated form, most +of the peculiarly distinctive elements of the French character. This +does not mean that he was a typical Frenchman; far from it. He did not, +like Voltaire or Hugo, strike a note to which the whole national genius +vibrated in response. He has never been, it is unlikely that he ever +will be, a popular writer. His literary reputation in France has been +confined, until perhaps quite lately, to a small distinguished circle. +'On me lira,' he was fond of saying, 'vers 1880'; and the 'Beylistes' +point to the remark in triumph as one further proof of the almost divine +prescience of the great man. But in truth Beyle was always read by the +_elite_ of French critics and writers--'the happy few,' as he used to +call them; and among these he has never been without enthusiastic +admirers. During his lifetime Balzac, in an enormous eulogy of _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, paid him one of the most magnificent compliments +ever received by a man of letters from a fellow craftsman. In the next +generation Taine declared himself his disciple; a little later--'vers +1880,' in fact--we find Zola describing him as 'notre pere a tous,' and +M. Bourget followed with elaborate incense. To-day we have writers of +such different tendencies as M. Barres and M. Gide acclaiming him as a +supreme master, and the fashionable idolatry of the 'Beylistes.' Yet, at +the same time, running parallel to this stream of homage, it is easy to +trace a line of opinion of a totally different kind. It is the opinion +of the more solid, the more middle-class elements of French life. Thus +Sainte-Beuve, in two characteristic 'Lundis,' poured a great deal of +very tepid water upon Balzac's flaming panegyric. Then Flaubert--'vers +1880,' too--confessed that he could see very little in Stendhal. And, +only a few years ago, M. Chuquet, of the Institute, took the trouble to +compose a thick book in which he has collected with scrupulous detail +all the known facts concerning the life and writings of a man whom he +forthwith proceeds to damn through five hundred pages of faint praise. +These discrepancies are curious: how can we account for such odd +differences of taste? How are we to reconcile the admiration of Balzac +with the dislike of Flaubert, the raptures of M. Bourget and M. Barres +with the sniffs of Sainte-Beuve and M. Chuquet of the Institute? The +explanation seems to be that Beyle occupies a position in France +analogous to that of Shelley in England. Shelley is not a national hero, +not because he lacked the distinctive qualities of an Englishman, but +for the opposite reason--because he possessed so many of them in an +extreme degree. The idealism, the daring, the imagination, and the +unconventionality which give Shakespeare, Nelson, and Dr. Johnson their +place in our pantheon--all these were Shelley's, but they were his in +too undiluted and intense a form, with the result that, while he will +never fail of worshippers among us, there will also always be Englishmen +unable to appreciate him at all. Such, _mutatis mutandis_--and in this +case the proviso is a very large one--is the position of Beyle in +France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French bean +he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French +French writer--too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and +so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet +this very fact is in itself no bad reason for giving him some attention. +An understanding of this very Gallic individual might give us a new +insight into the whole strange race. And besides, the curious creature +is worth looking at for his own sake too. + +But, when one tries to catch him and pin him down on the +dissecting-table, he turns out to be exasperatingly elusive. Even his +most fervent admirers cannot agree among themselves as to the true +nature of his achievements. Balzac thought of him as an artist, Taine +was captivated by his conception of history, M. Bourget adores him as a +psychologist, M. Barres lays stress upon his 'sentiment d'honneur,' and +the 'Beylistes' see in him the embodiment of modernity. Certainly very +few writers have had the good fortune to appeal at once so constantly +and in so varied a manner to succeeding generations as Henri Beyle. The +circumstances of his life no doubt in part account for the complexity of +his genius. He was born in 1783, when the _ancien regime_ was still in +full swing; his early manhood was spent in the turmoil of the Napoleonic +wars; he lived to see the Bourbon reaction, the Romantic revival, the +revolution of 1830, and the establishment of Louis Philippe; and when he +died, at the age of sixty, the nineteenth century was nearly half-way +through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world +and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, +preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His +grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner +of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile +'melange de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two +representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the +result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty +others) 'notoirement suspect' of disaffection to the Republic, and +confined to his house. At the age of sixteen Beyle arrived in Paris, +just after the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Brumaire had made Bonaparte +First Consul, and he immediately came under the influence of his cousin +Daru, that extraordinary man to whose terrific energies was due the +organisation of Napoleon's greatest armies, and whose leisure +moments--for apparently he had leisure moments--were devoted to the +composition of idylls in the style of Tibullus and to an enormous +correspondence on literary topics with the poetasters of the day. It was +as a subordinate to this remarkable personage that Beyle spent nearly +the whole of the next fifteen years of his life--in Paris, in Italy, in +Germany, in Russia--wherever the whirling tempest of the Napoleonic +policy might happen to carry him. His actual military experience was +considerably slighter than what, in after years, he liked to give his +friends to understand it had been. For hardly more than a year, during +the Italian campaign, he was in the army as a lieutenant of dragoons: +the rest of his public service was spent in the commissariat department. +The descriptions which he afterwards delighted to give of his adventures +at Marengo, at Jena, at Wagram, or at the crossing of the Niemen have +been shown by M. Chuquet's unkind researches to have been imaginary. +Beyle was present at only one great battle--Bautzen. 'Nous voyons fort +bien,' he wrote in his journal on the following day, 'de midi a trois +heures, tout ce qu'on peut voir d'une bataille, c'est a dire rien.' He +was, however, at Moscow in 1812, and he accompanied the army through the +horrors of the retreat. When the conflagration had broken out in the +city he had abstracted from one of the deserted palaces a finely bound +copy of the _Faceties_ of Voltaire; the book helped to divert his mind +as he lay crouched by the campfire through the terrible nights that +followed; but, as his companions showed their disapproval of anyone who +could smile over Akakia and Pompignan in such a situation, one day he +left the red-morocco volume behind him in the snow. + +The fall of Napoleon threw Beyle out of employment, and the period of +his literary activity began. His books were not successful; his fortune +gradually dwindled; and he drifted in Paris and Italy, and even in +England, more and more disconsolately, with thoughts of suicide +sometimes in his head. But in 1830 the tide of his fortunes turned. The +revolution of July, by putting his friends into power, brought him a +competence in the shape of an Italian consulate; and in the same year he +gained for the first time some celebrity by the publication of _Le Rouge +et Le Noir_. The rest of his life was spent in the easy discharge of his +official duties at Civita Vecchia, alternating with periods of +leave--one of them lasted for three years--spent in Paris among his +friends, of whom the most distinguished was Prosper Merimee. In 1839 +appeared his last published work--_La Chartreuse de Parme_; and three +years later he died suddenly in Paris. His epitaph, composed by himself +with the utmost care, was as follows: + + QUI GIACE ARRIGO BEYLE MILANESE VISSE, SCRISSE, AMO. + +The words, read rightly, indicate many things--his adoration of Italy +and Milan, his eccentricity, his scorn of the conventions of society and +the limits of nationality, his adventurous life, his devotion to +literature, and, lastly, the fact that, through all the varieties of his +experience--in the earliest years of his childhood, in his agitated +manhood, in his calm old age--there had never been a moment when he was +not in love. + +Beyle's work falls into two distinct groups--the first consisting of his +novels, and the second of his miscellaneous writings, which include +several biographies, a dissertation on Love, some books of criticism and +travel, his letters and various autobiographical fragments. The bulk of +the latter group is large; much of it has only lately seen the light; +and more of it, at present in MS. at the library of Grenoble, is +promised us by the indefatigable editors of the new complete edition +which is now appearing in Paris. The interest of this portion of Beyle's +writings is almost entirely personal: that of his novels is mainly +artistic. It was as a novelist that Beyle first gained his celebrity, +and it is still as a novelist--or rather as the author of _Le Rouge et +Le Noir_ and _La Chartreuse de Parme_ (for an earlier work, _Armance_, +some short stories, and some later posthumous fragments may be left out +of account)--that he is most widely known to-day. These two remarkable +works lose none of their significance if we consider the time at which +they were composed. It was in the full flood of the Romantic revival, +that marvellous hour in the history of French literature when the +tyranny of two centuries was shattered for ever, and a boundless wealth +of inspirations, possibilities, and beauties before undreamt-of suddenly +burst upon the view. It was the hour of Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Gautier, +Balzac, with their new sonorities and golden cadences, their new lyric +passion and dramatic stress, their new virtuosities, their new impulse +towards the strange and the magnificent, their new desire for diversity +and the manifold comprehension of life. But, if we turn to the +contemporaneous pages of Stendhal, what do we find? We find a succession +of colourless, unemphatic sentences; we find cold reasoning and exact +narrative; we find polite irony and dry wit. The spirit of the +eighteenth century is everywhere; and if the old gentleman with the +perruque and the 'M. de Voltaire' could have taken a glance at his +grandson's novels, he would have rapped his snuff-box and approved. It +is true that Beyle joined the ranks of the Romantics for a moment with a +_brochure_ attacking Racine at the expense of Shakespeare; but this was +merely one of those contradictory changes of front which were inherent +in his nature; and in reality the whole Romantic movement meant nothing +to him. There is a story of a meeting in the house of a common friend +between him and Hugo, in which the two men faced each other like a +couple of cats with their backs up and their whiskers bristling. No +wonder! But Beyle's true attitude towards his great contemporaries was +hardly even one of hostility: he simply could not open their books. As +for Chateaubriand, the god of their idolatry, he loathed him like +poison. He used to describe how, in his youth, he had been on the point +of fighting a duel with an officer who had ventured to maintain that a +phrase in _Atala_--'la cime indeterminee des forets'--was not +intolerable. Probably he was romancing (M. Chuquet says so); but at any +rate the story sums up symbolically Beyle's attitude towards his art. To +him the whole apparatus of 'fine writing'--the emphatic phrase, the +picturesque epithet, the rounded rhythm--was anathema. The charm that +such ornaments might bring was in reality only a cloak for loose +thinking and feeble observation. Even the style of the eighteenth +century was not quite his ideal; it was too elegant; there was an +artificial neatness about the form which imposed itself upon the +substance, and degraded it. No, there was only one example of the +perfect style, and that was the _Code Napoleon_; for there alone +everything was subordinated to the exact and complete expression of what +was to be said. A statement of law can have no place for irrelevant +beauties, or the vagueness of personal feeling; by its very nature, it +must resemble a sheet of plate glass through which every object may be +seen with absolute distinctness, in its true shape. Beyle declared that +he was in the habit of reading several paragraphs of the Code every +morning after breakfast 'pour prendre le ton.' This again was for long +supposed to be one of his little jokes; but quite lately the searchers +among the MSS. at Grenoble have discovered page after page copied out +from the Code in Beyle's handwriting. No doubt, for that wayward lover +of paradoxes, the real joke lay in everybody taking for a joke what _he_ +took quite seriously. + +This attempt to reach the exactitude and the detachment of an official +document was not limited to Beyle's style; it runs through the whole +tissue of his work. He wished to present life dispassionately and +intellectually, and if he could have reduced his novels to a series of +mathematical symbols, he would have been charmed. The contrast between +his method and that of Balzac is remarkable. That wonderful art of +materialisation, of the sensuous evocation of the forms, the qualities, +the very stuff and substance of things, which was perhaps Balzac's +greatest discovery, Beyle neither possessed nor wished to possess. Such +matters were to him of the most subordinate importance, which it was no +small part of the novelist's duty to keep very severely in their place. +In the earlier chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, for instance, he is +concerned with almost the same subject as Balzac in the opening of _Les +Illusions Perdues_--the position of a young man in a provincial town, +brought suddenly from the humblest surroundings into the midst of the +leading society of the place through his intimate relations with a woman +of refinement. But while in Balzac's pages what emerges is the concrete +vision of provincial life down to the last pimple on the nose of the +lowest footman, Beyle concentrates his whole attention on the personal +problem, hints in a few rapid strokes at what Balzac has spent all his +genius in describing, and reveals to us instead, with the precision of a +surgeon at an operation, the inmost fibres of his hero's mind. In fact, +Beyle's method is the classical method--the method of selection, of +omission, of unification, with the object of creating a central +impression of supreme reality. Zola criticises him for disregarding 'le +milieu.' + + Il y a [he says] un episode celebre dans 'Le Rouge et Le Noir,' la + scene ou Julien, assis un soir a cote de Mme. de Renal, sous les + branches noires d'un arbre, se fait un devoir de lui prendre la + main, pendant qu'elle cause avec Mme. Derville. C'est un petit + drame muet d'une grande puissance, et Stendhal y a analyse + merveilleusement les etats d'ame de ses deux personnages. Or, le + milieu n'apparait pas une seule fois. Nous pourrions etre n'importe + ou dans n'importe quelles conditions, la scene resterait la meme + pourvu qu'il fit noir ... Donnez l'episode a un ecrivain pour qui + les milieux existent, et dans la defaite de cette femme, il fera + entrer la nuit, avec ses odeurs, avec ses voix, avec ses voluptes + molles. Et cet ecrivain sera dans la verite, son tableau sera plus + complet. + +More complete, perhaps; but would it be more convincing? Zola, with his +statistical conception of art, could not understand that you could tell +a story properly unless you described in detail every contingent fact. +He could not see that Beyle was able, by simply using the symbol 'nuit,' +to suggest the 'milieu' at once to the reader's imagination. Everybody +knows all about the night's accessories--'ses odeurs, ses voix, ses +voluptes molles'; and what a relief it is to be spared, for once in a +way, an elaborate expatiation upon them! And Beyle is perpetually +evoking the gratitude of his readers in this way. 'Comme il insiste +peu!' as M. Gide exclaims. Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence +is his capacity for making a summary. Beyle knew this, and his novels +are full of passages which read like nothing so much as extraordinarily +able summaries of some enormous original narrative which has been lost. + +It was not that he was lacking in observation, that he had no eye for +detail, or no power of expressing it; on the contrary, his vision was of +the sharpest, and his pen could call up pictorial images of startling +vividness, when he wished. But he very rarely did wish: it was apt to +involve a tiresome insistence. In his narratives he is like a brilliant +talker in a sympathetic circle, skimming swiftly from point to point, +taking for granted the intelligence of his audience, not afraid here and +there to throw out a vague 'etc.' when the rest of the sentence is too +obvious to state; always plain of speech, never self-assertive, and +taking care above all things never to force the note. His famous +description of the Battle of Waterloo in _La Chartreuse de Parme_ is +certainly the finest example of this side of his art. Here he produces +an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with +unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the +loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its +insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses and +indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his +own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero--a young Italian +impelled by Napoleonic enthusiasm to join the French army as a volunteer +on the eve of the battle--go through the great day in such a state of +vague perplexity that in the end he can never feel quite certain that he +really _was_ at Waterloo. He experiences a succession of trivial and +unpleasant incidents, culminating in his being hoisted off his horse by +two of his comrades, in order that a general, who has had his own shot +from under him, might be supplied with a mount; for the rest, he crosses +and recrosses some fields, comes upon a dead body in a ditch, drinks +brandy with a _vivandiere_, gallops over a field covered with dying men, +has an indefinite skirmish in a wood--and it is over. At one moment, +having joined the escort of some generals, the young man allows his +horse to splash into a stream, thereby covering one of the generals +with muddy water from head to foot. The passage that follows is a good +specimen of Beyle's narrative style: + + En arrivant sur l'autre rive, Fabrice y avait trouve les generaux + tout seuls; le bruit du canon lui sembla redoubler; ce fut a peine + s'il entendit le general, par lui si bien mouille, qui criait a son + oreille: + + Ou as-tu pris ce cheval? + + Fabrice etait tellement trouble, qu'il repondit en Italien: _l'ho + comprato poco fa_. (Je viens de l'acheter a l'instant.) + + Que dis-tu? lui cria le general. + + Mais le tapage devint tellement fort en ce moment, que Fabrice ne + put lui repondre. Nous avouerons que notre heros etait fort peu + heros en ce moment. Toutefois, la peur ne venait chez lui qu'en + seconde ligne; il etait surtout scandalise de ce bruit qui lui + faisait mal aux oreilles. L'escorte prit le galop; on traversait + une grande piece de terre labouree, situee au dela du canal, et ce + champ etait jonche de cadavres. + +How unemphatic it all is! What a paucity of epithet, what a reticence in +explanation! How a Romantic would have lingered over the facial +expression of the general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that +'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in +conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of +hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet terseness has +produced? + +It is, however, in his psychological studies that the detached and +intellectual nature of Beyle's method is most clearly seen. When he is +describing, for instance, the development of Julien Sorel's mind in _Le +Rouge et Le Noir_, when he shows us the soul of the young peasant with +its ignorance, its ambition, its pride, going step by step into the +whirling vortex of life--then we seem to be witnessing not so much the +presentment of a fiction as the unfolding of some scientific fact. The +procedure is almost mathematical: a proposition is established, the +inference is drawn, the next proposition follows, and so on until the +demonstration is complete. Here the influence of the eighteenth century +is very strongly marked. Beyle had drunk deeply of that fountain of +syllogism and analysis that flows through the now forgotten pages of +Helvetius and Condillac; he was an ardent votary of logic in its +austerest form--'la lo-gique' he used to call it, dividing the syllables +in a kind of awe-inspired emphasis; and he considered the ratiocinative +style of Montesquieu almost as good as that of the _Code Civil_. + +If this had been all, if we could sum him up simply as an acute and +brilliant writer who displays the scientific and prosaic sides of the +French genius in an extreme degree, Beyle's position in literature would +present very little difficulty. He would take his place at once as a +late--an abnormally late--product of the eighteenth century. But he was +not that. In his blood there was a virus which had never tingled in the +veins of Voltaire. It was the virus of modern life--that new +sensibility, that new passionateness, which Rousseau had first made +known to the world, and which had won its way over Europe behind the +thunder of Napoleon's artillery. Beyle had passed his youth within +earshot of that mighty roar, and his inmost spirit could never lose the +echo of it. It was in vain that he studied Condillac and modelled his +style on the Code; in vain that he sang the praises of _la lo-gique_, +shrugged his shoulders at the Romantics, and turned the cold eye of a +scientific investigator upon the phenomena of life; he remained +essentially a man of feeling. His unending series of _grandes passions_ +was one unmistakable sign of this; another was his intense devotion to +the Fine Arts. Though his taste in music and painting was the taste of +his time--the literary and sentimental taste of the age of Rossini and +Canova--he nevertheless brought to the appreciation of works of art a +kind of intimate gusto which reveals the genuineness of his emotion. The +'jouissances d'ange,' with which at his first entrance into Italy he +heard at Novara the _Matrimonio Segreto_ of Cimarosa, marked an epoch in +his life. He adored Mozart: 'I can imagine nothing more distasteful to +me,' he said, 'than a thirty-mile walk through the mud; but I would +take one at this moment if I knew that I should hear a good performance +of _Don Giovanni_ at the end of it.' The Virgins of Guido Reni sent him +into ecstasies and the Goddesses of Correggio into raptures. In short, +as he himself admitted, he never could resist 'le Beau' in whatever form +he found it. _Le Beau!_ The phrase is characteristic of the peculiar +species of ingenuous sensibility which so oddly agitated this sceptical +man of the world. His whole vision of life was coloured by it. His sense +of values was impregnated with what he called his 'espagnolisme'--his +immense admiration for the noble and the high-sounding in speech or act +or character--an admiration which landed him often enough in hysterics +and absurdity. Yet this was the soil in which a temperament of caustic +reasonableness had somehow implanted itself. The contrast is surprising, +because it is so extreme. Other men have been by turns sensible and +enthusiastic: but who before or since has combined the emotionalism of a +schoolgirl with the cold penetration of a judge on the bench? Beyle, for +instance, was capable of writing, in one of those queer epitaphs of +himself which he was constantly composing, the high-falutin' words 'Il +respecta un seul homme: Napoleon'; and yet, as he wrote them, he must +have remembered well enough that when he met Napoleon face to face his +unabashed scrutiny had detected swiftly that the man was a play-actor, +and a vulgar one at that. Such were the contradictions of his double +nature, in which the elements, instead of being mixed, came together, as +it were, in layers, like superimposed strata of chalk and flint. + +In his novels this cohabitation of opposites is responsible both for +what is best and what is worst. When the two forces work in unison the +result is sometimes of extraordinary value--a product of a kind which it +would be difficult to parallel in any other author. An eye of icy gaze +is turned upon the tumultuous secrets of passion, and the pangs of love +are recorded in the language of Euclid. The image of the surgeon +inevitably suggests itself--the hand with the iron nerve and the swift +knife laying bare the trembling mysteries within. It is the intensity of +Beyle's observation, joined with such an exactitude of exposition, that +makes his dry pages sometimes more thrilling than the wildest tale of +adventure or all the marvels of high romance. The passage in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_ describing Count Mosca's jealousy has this quality, +which appears even more clearly in the chapters of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ +concerning Julien Sorel and Mathilde de la Mole. Here Beyle has a +subject after his own heart. The loves of the peasant youth and the +aristocratic girl, traversed and agitated by their overweening pride, +and triumphing at last rather over themselves than over each +other--these things make up a gladiatorial combat of 'espagnolismes,' +which is displayed to the reader with a supreme incisiveness. The climax +is reached when Mathilde at last gives way to her passion, and throws +herself into the arms of Julien, who forces himself to make no response: + + Ses bras se roidirent, tant l'effort impose par la politique etait + penible. Je ne dois pas meme me permettre de presser contre mon + coeur ce corps souple et charmant; ou elle me meprise, ou elle me + maltraite. Quel affreux caractere! + + Et en maudissant le caractere de Mathilde, il l'en aimait cent fois + plus; il lui semblait avoir dans ses bras une reine. + + L'impassible froideur de Julien redoubla le malheur de Mademoiselle + de la Mole. Elle etait loin d'avoir le sang-froid necessaire pour + chercher a deviner dans ses yeux ce qu'il sentait pour elle en cet + instant. Elle ne put se resoudre a le regarder; elle tremblait de + rencontrer l'expression du mepris. + + Assise sur le divan de la bibliotheque, immobile et la tete tournee + du cote oppose a Julien, elle etait en proie aux plus vives + douleurs que l'orgueil et l'amour puissent faire eprouver a une ame + humaine. Dans quelle atroce demarche elle venait de tomber! + + Il m'etait reserve, malheureuse que je suis! de voir repoussees les + avances les plus indecentes! Et repoussees par qui? ajoutait + l'orgueil fou de douleur, repoussees par un domestique de mon pere. + + C'est ce que je ne souffrirai pas, dit-elle a haute voix. + +At that moment she suddenly sees some unopened letters addressed to +Julien by another woman. + + --Ainsi, s'ecria-t-elle hors d'elle-meme, non seulement vous etes + bien avec elle, mais encore vous la meprisez. Vous, un homme de + rien, mepriser Madame la Marechale de Fervaques! + + --Ah! pardon, mon ami, ajouta-t-elle en se jetant a ses genoux, + meprise-moi si tu veux, mais aime-moi, je ne puis plus vivre privee + de ton amour. Et elle tomba tout a fait evanouie. + + --La voila donc, cette orgueilleuse, a mes pieds! se dit Julien. + +Such is the opening of this wonderful scene, which contains the +concentrated essence of Beyle's genius, and which, in its combination of +high passion, intellectual intensity, and dramatic force, may claim +comparison with the great dialogues of Corneille. + +'Je fais tous les efforts possibles pour etre _sec_,' he says of +himself. 'Je veux imposer silence a mon coeur, qui croit avoir beaucoup +a dire. Je tremble toujours de n'avoir ecrit qu'un soupir, quand je +crois avoir note une verite.' Often he succeeds, but not always. At +times his desire for dryness becomes a mannerism and fills whole pages +with tedious and obscure argumentation. And, at other times, his +sensibility gets the upper hand, throws off all control, and revels in +an orgy of melodrama and 'espagnolisme.' Do what he will, he cannot keep +up a consistently critical attitude towards the creatures of his +imagination: he depreciates his heroes with extreme care, but in the end +they get the better of him and sweep him off his feet. When, in _La +Chartreuse de Parme_, Fabrice kills a man in a duel, his first action is +to rush to a looking-glass to see whether his beauty has been injured by +a cut in the face; and Beyle does not laugh at this; he is impressed by +it. In the same book he lavishes all his art on the creation of the +brilliant, worldly, sceptical Duchesse de Sanseverina, and then, not +quite satisfied, he makes her concoct and carry out the murder of the +reigning Prince in order to satisfy a desire for amorous revenge. This +really makes her perfect. But the most striking example of Beyle's +inability to resist the temptation of sacrificing his head to his heart +is in the conclusion of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_, where Julien, to be +revenged on a former mistress who defames him, deliberately goes down +into the country, buys a pistol, and shoots the lady in church. Not only +is Beyle entranced by the _bravura_ of this senseless piece of +brutality, but he destroys at a blow the whole atmosphere of impartial +observation which fills the rest of the book, lavishes upon his hero the +blindest admiration, and at last, at the moment of Julien's execution, +even forgets himself so far as to write a sentence in the romantic +style: 'Jamais cette tete n'avait ete aussi poetique qu'au moment ou +elle allait tomber.' Just as Beyle, in his contrary mood, carries to an +extreme the French love of logical precision, so in these rhapsodies he +expresses in an exaggerated form a very different but an equally +characteristic quality of his compatriots--their instinctive +responsiveness to fine poses. It is a quality that Englishmen in +particular find it hard to sympathise with. They remain stolidily +unmoved when their neighbours are in ecstasies. They are repelled by the +'noble' rhetoric of the French Classical Drama; they find the tirades of +Napoleon, which animated the armies of France to victory, pieces of +nauseous clap-trap. And just now it is this side--to us the obviously +weak side--of Beyle's genius that seems to be most in favour with French +critics. To judge from M. Barres, writing dithyrambically of Beyle's +'sentiment d'honneur,' that is his true claim to greatness. The +sentiment of honour is all very well, one is inclined to mutter on this +side of the Channel; but oh, for a little sentiment of humour too! + +The view of Beyle's personality which his novels give us may be seen +with far greater detail in his miscellaneous writings. It is to these +that his most modern admirers devote their main attention--particularly +to his letters and his autobiographies; but they are all of them highly +characteristic of their author, and--whatever the subject may be, from a +guide to Rome to a life of Napoleon--one gathers in them, scattered up +and down through their pages, a curious, dimly adumbrated +philosophy--an ill-defined and yet intensely personal point of view--_le +Beylisme_. It is in fact almost entirely in this secondary quality that +their interest lies; their ostensible subject-matter is unimportant. An +apparent exception is the book in which Beyle has embodied his +reflections upon Love. The volume, with its meticulous apparatus of +analysis, definition, and classification, which gives it the air of +being a parody of _L'Esprit des Lois_, is yet full of originality, of +lively anecdote and keen observation. Nobody but Beyle could have +written it; nobody but Beyle could have managed to be at once so +stimulating and so jejune, so clear-sighted and so exasperating. But +here again, in reality, it is not the question at issue that is +interesting--one learns more of the true nature of Love in one or two of +La Bruyere's short sentences than in all Beyle's three hundred pages of +disquisition; but what is absorbing is the sense that comes to one, as +one reads it, of the presence, running through it all, of a restless and +problematical spirit. 'Le Beylisme' is certainly not susceptible of any +exact definition; its author was too capricious, too unmethodical, in +spite of his _lo-gique_, ever to have framed a coherent philosophy; it +is essentially a thing of shreds and patches, of hints, suggestions, and +quick visions of flying thoughts. M. Barres says that what lies at the +bottom of it is a 'passion de collectionner les belles energies.' But +there are many kinds of 'belles energies,' and some of them certainly do +not fit into the framework of 'le Beylisme.' 'Quand je suis arrete par +des voleurs, ou qu'on me tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande +colere contre le gouvernement et le cure de l'endroit. Quand au voleur, +il me plait, s'il est energique, car il m'amuse.' It was the energy of +self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not +interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at +times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an +egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. The +'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle was always advocating was no respectable +epicureanism; it had about it a touch of the fanatical. There was +anarchy in it--a hatred of authority, an impatience with custom, above +all a scorn for the commonplace dictates of ordinary morality. Writing +his memoirs at the age of fifty-two, Beyle looked back with pride on the +joy that he had felt, as a child of ten, amid his royalist family at +Grenoble, when the news came of the execution of Louis XVI. His father +announced it: + + --C'en est fait, dit-il avec un gros soupir, ils l'ont assassine. + + Je fus saisi d'un des plus vifs mouvements de joie que j'ai eprouve + en ma vie. Le lecteur pensera peut-etre que je suis cruel, mais tel + j'etais a 5 X 2, tel je suis a 10 X 5 + 2 ... Je puis dire que + l'approbation des etres, que je regarde comme faibles, m'est + absolument indifferente. + +These are the words of a born rebel, and such sentiments are constantly +recurring in his books. He is always discharging his shafts against some +established authority; and, of course, he reserved his bitterest hatred +for the proudest and most insidious of all authorities--the Roman +Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly +hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, +and whose account of the seminary in _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ is one of the +most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of +the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a +prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern +thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of +Nietzsche. His love of power and self-will, his aristocratic outlook, +his scorn of the Christian virtues, his admiration of the Italians of +the Renaissance, his repudiation of the herd and the morality of the +herd--these qualities, flashing strangely among his observations on +Rossini and the Coliseum, his reflections on the memories of the past +and his musings on the ladies of the present, certainly give a +surprising foretaste of the fiery potion of Zarathustra. The creator of +the Duchesse de Sanseverina had caught more than a glimpse of the +transvaluation of all values. Characteristically enough, the appearance +of this new potentiality was only observed by two contemporary forces in +European society--Goethe and the Austrian police. It is clear that +Goethe alone among the critics of the time understood that Beyle was +something more than a novelist, and discerned an uncanny significance in +his pages. 'I do not like reading M. de Stendhal,' he observed to +Winckelmann, 'but I cannot help doing so. He is extremely free and +extremely impertinent, and ... I recommend you to buy all his books.' As +for the Austrian police, they had no doubt about the matter. Beyle's +book of travel, _Rome, Naples et Florence_, was, they decided, +pernicious and dangerous in the highest degree; and the poor man was +hunted out of Milan in consequence. + +It would be a mistake to suppose that Beyle displayed in his private +life the qualities of the superman. Neither his virtues nor his vices +were on the grand scale. In his own person he never seems to have +committed an 'espagnolisme.' Perhaps his worst sin was that of +plagiarism: his earliest book, a life of Haydn, was almost entirely +'lifted' from the work of a learned German; and in his next he embodied +several choice extracts culled from the _Edinburgh Review_. On this +occasion he was particularly delighted, since the _Edinburgh_, in +reviewing the book, innocently selected for special approbation the very +passages which he had stolen. It is singular that so original a writer +should have descended to pilfering. But Beyle was nothing if not +inconsistent. With all his Classicism he detested Racine; with all his +love of music he could see nothing in Beethoven; he adored Italy, and, +so soon as he was given his Italian consulate, he was usually to be +found in Paris. As his life advanced he grew more and more wayward, +capricious, and eccentric. He indulged in queer mystifications, covering +his papers with false names and anagrams--for the police, he said, were +on his track, and he must be careful. His love-affairs became less and +less fortunate; but he was still sometimes successful, and when he was +he registered the fact--upon his braces. He dreamed and drifted a great +deal. He went up to San Pietro in Montorio, and looking over Rome, wrote +the initials of his past mistresses in the dust. He tried to make up his +mind whether Napoleon after all _was_ the only being he respected; +no--there was also Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. He went to the opera at +Naples and noted that 'la musique parfaite, comme la pantomime parfaite, +me fait songer a ce qui forme actuellement l'objet de mes reveries et me +fait venir des idees excellentes: ... or, ce soir, je ne puis me +dissimuler que j'ai le malheur _of being too great an admirer of Lady +L...._' He abandoned himself to 'les charmantes visions du Beau qui +souvent encore remplissent ma tete a l'age de _fifty-two_.' He wondered +whether Montesquieu would have thought his writings worthless. He sat +scribbling his reminiscences by the fire till the night drew on and the +fire went out, and still he scribbled, more and more illegibly, until at +last the paper was covered with hieroglyphics undecipherable even by M. +Chuquet himself. He wandered among the ruins of ancient Rome, playing to +perfection the part of cicerone to such travellers as were lucky enough +to fall in with him; and often his stout and jovial form, with the +satyric look in the sharp eyes and the compressed lips, might be seen by +the wayside in the Campagna, as he stood and jested with the reapers or +the vine-dressers or with the girls coming out, as they had come since +the days of Horace, to draw water from the fountains of Tivoli. In more +cultivated society he was apt to be nervous; for his philosophy was +never proof against the terror of being laughed at. But sometimes, late +at night, when the surroundings were really sympathetic, he could be +very happy among his friends. 'Un salon de huit ou dix personnes,' he +said, 'dont toutes les femmes ont eu des amants, ou la conversation est +gaie, anecdotique, et ou l'on prend du punch leger a minuit et demie, +est l'endroit du monde ou je me trouve le mieux.' + +And in such a Paradise of Frenchmen we may leave Henri Beyle. + +1914 + + + + +LADY HESTER STANHOPE + + +The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations +through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under +whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak +upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an +indomitable _hauteur_. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage. +The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the +hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady +Hester's was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a +nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some +eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the +air. + +Noses, of course, are aristocratic things; and Lady Hester was the child +of a great aristocracy. But, in her case, the aristocratic impulse, +which had carried her predecessors to glory, had less fortunate results. +There has always been a strong strain of extravagance in the governing +families of England; from time to time they throw off some peculiarly +ill-balanced member, who performs a strange meteoric course. A century +earlier, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an illustrious example of this +tendency: that splendid comet, after filling half the heavens, vanished +suddenly into desolation and darkness. Lady Hester Stanhope's spirit was +still more uncommon; and she met with a most uncommon fate. + +She was born in 1776, the eldest daughter of that extraordinary Earl +Stanhope, Jacobin and inventor, who made the first steamboat and the +first calculating machine, who defended the French Revolution in the +House of Lords and erased the armorial bearings--'damned aristocratical +nonsense'--from his carriages and his plate. Her mother, Chatham's +daughter and the favourite sister of Pitt, died when she was four years +old. The second Lady Stanhope, a frigid woman of fashion, left her +stepdaughters to the care of futile governesses, while 'Citizen +Stanhope' ruled the household from his laboratory with the violence of a +tyrant. It was not until Lady Hester was twenty-four that she escaped +from the slavery of her father's house, by going to live with her +grandmother, Lady Chatham. On Lady Chatham's death, three years later, +Pitt offered her his protection, and she remained with him until his +death in 1806. + +Her three years with Pitt, passed in the very centre of splendid power, +were brilliant and exciting. She flung herself impetuously into the +movement and the passion of that vigorous society; she ruled her uncle's +household with high vivacity; she was liked and courted; if not +beautiful, she was fascinating--very tall, with a very fair and clear +complexion, and dark-blue eyes, and a countenance of wonderful +expressiveness. Her talk, full of the trenchant nonchalance of those +days, was both amusing and alarming: 'My dear Hester, what are you +saying?' Pitt would call out to her from across the room. She was +devoted to her uncle, who warmly returned her affection. She was +devoted, too--but in a more dangerous fashion--to the intoxicating +Antinous, Lord Granville Leveson Gower. The reckless manner in which she +carried on this love-affair was the first indication of something +overstrained, something wild and unaccountable, in her temperament. Lord +Granville, after flirting with her outrageously, declared that he could +never marry her, and went off on an embassy to St. Petersburg. Her +distraction was extreme: she hinted that she would follow him to Russia; +she threatened, and perhaps attempted, suicide; she went about telling +everybody that he had jilted her. She was taken ill, and then there were +rumours of an accouchement, which, it was said, she took care to +_afficher_, by appearing without rouge and fainting on the slightest +provocation. In the midst of these excursions and alarums there was a +terrible and unexpected catastrophe. Pitt died. And Lady Hester +suddenly found herself a dethroned princess, living in a small house in +Montague Square on a pension of L1200 a year. + +She did not abandon society, however, and the tongue of gossip continued +to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was +announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was +whispered that Canning was 'le regnant'--that he was with her 'not only +all day, but almost all night.' She quarrelled with Canning and became +attached to Sir John Moore. Whether she was actually engaged to marry +him--as she seems to have asserted many years later--is doubtful; his +letters to her, full as they are of respectful tenderness, hardly +warrant the conclusion; but it is certain that he died with her name on +his lips. Her favourite brother, Charles, was killed beside him; and it +was natural that under this double blow she should have retired from +London. She buried herself in Wales; but not for long. In 1810 she set +sail for Gibraltar with her brother James, who was rejoining his +regiment in the Peninsula. She never returned to England. + +There can be no doubt that at the time of her departure the thought of a +lifelong exile was far from her mind. It was only gradually, as she +moved further and further eastward, that the prospect of life in +England--at last even in Europe--grew distasteful to her; as late as +1816 she was talking of a visit to Provence. Accompanied by two or three +English fellow travellers, her English maid, Mrs. Fry, her private +physician, Dr. Meryon, and a host of servants, she progressed, slowly +and in great state, through Malta and Athens, to Constantinople. She was +conveyed in battleships, and lodged with governors and ambassadors. +After spending many months in Constantinople, Lady Hester discovered +that she was 'dying to see Napoleon with her own eyes,' and attempted +accordingly to obtain passports to France. The project was stopped by +Stratford Canning, the English Minister, upon which she decided to visit +Egypt, and, chartering a Greek vessel, sailed for Alexandria in the +winter of 1811. Off the island of Rhodes a violent storm sprang up; the +whole party were forced to abandon the ship, and to take refuge upon a +bare rock, where they remained without food or shelter for thirty hours. +Eventually, after many severe privations, Alexandria was reached in +safety; but this disastrous voyage was a turning-point in Lady Hester's +career. At Rhodes she was forced to exchange her torn and dripping +raiment for the attire of a Turkish gentleman--a dress which she never +afterwards abandoned. It was the first step in her orientalization. + +She passed the next two years in a triumphal progress. Her appearance in +Cairo caused the greatest sensation, and she was received in state by +the Pasha, Mehemet Ali. Her costume on this occasion was gorgeous: she +wore a turban of cashmere, a brocaded waistcoat, a priceless pelisse, +and a vast pair of purple velvet pantaloons embroidered all over in +gold. She was ushered by chamberlains with silver wands through the +inner courts of the palace to a pavilion in the harem, where the Pasha, +rising to receive her, conversed with her for an hour. From Cairo she +turned northwards, visiting Jaffa, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Her +travelling dress was of scarlet cloth trimmed with gold, and, when on +horseback, she wore over the whole a white-hooded and tasselled burnous. +Her maid, too, was forced, protesting, into trousers, though she +absolutely refused to ride astride. Poor Mrs. Fry had gone through +various and dreadful sufferings--shipwreck and starvation, rats and +black-beetles unspeakable--but she retained her equanimity. Whatever +her Ladyship might think fit to be, _she_ was an Englishwoman to the +last, and Philippaki was Philip Parker and Mustapha Mr. Farr. + +Outside Damascus, Lady Hester was warned that the town was the most +fanatical in Turkey, and that the scandal of a woman entering it in +man's clothes, unveiled, would be so great as to be dangerous. She was +begged to veil herself, and to make her entry under cover of darkness. +'I must take the bull by the horns,' she replied, and rode into the +city unveiled at midday. The population were thunderstruck; but at last +their amazement gave way to enthusiasm, and the incredible lady was +hailed everywhere as Queen, crowds followed her, coffee was poured out +before her, and the whole bazaar rose as she passed. Yet she was not +satisfied with her triumphs; she would do something still more glorious +and astonishing; she would plunge into the desert and visit the ruins of +Palmyra, which only half-a-dozen of the boldest travellers had ever +seen. The Pasha of Damascus offered her a military escort, but she +preferred to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Bedouin Arabs, +who, overcome by her horsemanship, her powers of sight, and her courage, +enrolled her a member of their tribe. After a week's journey in their +company, she reached Palmyra, where the inhabitants met her with wild +enthusiasm, and under the Corinthian columns of Zenobia's temple crowned +her head with flowers. This happened in March 1813; it was the apogee of +Lady Hester's life. Henceforward her fortunes gradually but steadily +declined. + +The rumour of her exploits had spread through Syria, and from the year +1813 onwards, her reputation was enormous. She was received everywhere +as a royal, almost as a supernatural, personage: she progressed from +town to town amid official prostrations and popular rejoicings. But she +herself was in a state of hesitation and discontent. Her future was +uncertain; she had grown scornful of the West--must she return to it? +The East alone was sympathetic, the East alone was tolerable--but could +she cut herself off for ever from the past? At Laodicea she was suddenly +struck down by the plague, and, after months of illness, it was borne in +upon her that all was vanity. She rented an empty monastery on the +slopes of Mount Lebanon, not far from Sayda (the ancient Sidon), and +took up her abode there. Then her mind took a new surprising turn; she +dashed to Ascalon, and, with the permission of the Sultan, began +excavations in a ruined temple with the object of discovering a hidden +treasure of three million pieces of gold. Having unearthed nothing but +an antique statue, which, in order to prove her disinterestedness, she +ordered her appalled doctor to break into little bits, she returned to +her monastery. Finally, in 1816, she moved to another house, further up +Mount Lebanon, and near the village of Djoun; and at Djoun she remained +until her death, more than twenty years later. + +Thus, almost accidentally as it seems, she came to the end of her +wanderings, and the last, long, strange, mythical period of her +existence began. Certainly the situation that she had chosen was +sublime. Her house, on the top of a high bare hill among great +mountains, was a one-storied group of buildings, with many ramifying +courts and out-houses, and a garden of several acres surrounded by a +rampart wall. The garden, which she herself had planted and tended with +the utmost care, commanded a glorious prospect. On every side but one +the vast mountains towered, but to the west there was an opening, +through which, in the far distance, the deep blue Mediterranean was +revealed. From this romantic hermitage, her singular renown spread over +the world. European travellers who had been admitted to her presence +brought back stories full of Eastern mystery; they told of a peculiar +grandeur, a marvellous prestige, an imperial power. The precise nature +of Lady Hester's empire was, indeed, dubious; she was in fact merely the +tenant of her Djoun establishment, for which she paid a rent of L20 a +year. But her dominion was not subject to such limitations. She ruled +imaginatively, transcendentally; the solid glory of Chatham had been +transmuted into the phantasy of an Arabian Night. No doubt she herself +believed that she was something more than a chimerical Empress. When a +French traveller was murdered in the desert, she issued orders for the +punishment of the offenders; punished they were, and Lady Hester +actually received the solemn thanks of the French Chamber. It seems +probable, however, that it was the Sultan's orders rather than Lady +Hester's which produced the desired effect. In her feud with her +terrible neighbour, the Emir Beshyr, she maintained an undaunted front. +She kept the tyrant at bay; but perhaps the Emir, who, so far as +physical force was concerned, held her in the hollow of his hand, might +have proceeded to extremities if he had not received a severe +admonishment from Stratford Canning at Constantinople. What is certain +is that the ignorant and superstitious populations around her feared and +loved her, and that she, reacting to her own mysterious prestige, became +at last even as they. She plunged into astrology and divination; she +awaited the moment when, in accordance with prophecy, she should enter +Jerusalem side by side with the Mahdi, the Messiah; she kept two sacred +horses, destined, by sure signs, to carry her and him to their last +triumph. The Orient had mastered her utterly. She was no longer an +Englishwoman, she declared; she loathed England; she would never go +there again; and if she went anywhere, it would be to Arabia, to 'her +own people.' + +Her expenses were immense--not only for herself but for others, for she +poured out her hospitality with a noble hand. She ran into debt, and was +swindled by the moneylenders; her steward cheated her, her servants +pilfered her; her distress was at last acute. She fell into fits of +terrible depression, bursting into dreadful tears and savage cries. Her +habits grew more and more eccentric. She lay in bed all day, and sat up +all night, talking unceasingly for hour upon hour to Dr. Meryon, who +alone of her English attendants remained with her, Mrs. Fry having +withdrawn to more congenial scenes long since. The doctor was a +poor-spirited and muddle-headed man, but he was a good listener; and +there he sat while that extraordinary talk flowed on--talk that scaled +the heavens and ransacked the earth, talk in which memories of an +abolished past--stories of Mr. Pitt and of George III., vituperations +against Mr. Canning, mimicries of the Duchess of Devonshire--mingled +phantasmagorically with doctrines of Fate and planetary influence, and +speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and +lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable +figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the +tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be +robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked +on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that +the time was coming when she should talk no more? + +Her melancholy deepened into a settled gloom when the news came of her +brother James's death. She had quarrelled with all her English friends, +except Lord Hardwicke--with her eldest brother, with her sister, whose +kind letters she left unanswered; she was at daggers drawn with the +English consul at Alexandria, who worried her about her debts. Ill and +harassed, she hardly moved from her bedroom, while her servants rifled +her belongings and reduced the house to a condition of indescribable +disorder and filth. Three dozen hungry cats ranged through the rooms, +filling the courts with frightful noises. Dr. Meryon, in the midst of it +all, knew not whether to cry or laugh. At moments the great lady +regained her ancient fire; her bells pealed tumultuously for hours +together; or she leapt up, and arraigned the whole trembling household +before her, with her Arab war-mace in her hand. Her finances grew more +and more involved--grew at length irremediable. It was in vain that the +faithful Lord Hardwicke pressed her to return to England to settle her +affairs. Return to England, indeed! To England, that ungrateful, +miserable country, where, so far as she could see, they had forgotten +the very name of Mr. Pitt! The final blow fell when a letter came from +the English authorities threatening to cut off her pension for the +payment of her debts. Upon that, after dispatching a series of furious +missives to Lord Palmerston, to Queen Victoria, to the Duke of +Wellington, she renounced the world. She commanded Dr. Meryon to return +to Europe, and he--how could he have done it?--obeyed her. Her health +was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, +absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her--we know +no more. She had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her +house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden--that beautiful garden +which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and +its bowers--and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her +servants immediately possessed themselves of every moveable object in +the house. But Lady Hester cared no longer: she was lying back in her +bed--inexplicable, grand, preposterous, with her nose in the air. + +1919. + + + + +MR. CREEVEY + + +Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone knows, +she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to +be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she +is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have +provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances +she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run +round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good +lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her +drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner. +They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of +the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose +function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events +and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is +Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio, +with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is +measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and +the little wretch did his job very well. + +It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of +the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round +belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was +educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years +of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a +habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. In +1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life--a member of +Parliament, a familiar figure in high society, an insatiable gossip +with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place +he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the +greater part of his life his income was less than L200 a year. But those +were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they +were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and +splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey, +penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into +Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the +country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole +political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of abuses, +he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and +ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was +relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but Mrs. +Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband, +and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence--without a house, +without servants, without property of any sort--wandering from country +mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at +last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with a +pleasant little post which brought him in about L600 a year. Apart from +these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was +static--static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always +on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor; +but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by +no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round +into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he would +gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the +wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was +before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an +observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his +tongue, and then--for so the Fates had decided--with his pen. He wrote +easily, spicily, and persistently; he had a favourite stepdaughter, +with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have +preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of +course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's +exhilarating _pas de chat_. + +Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There are +no great names in his vocabulary--only nicknames: George III. is 'Old +Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell +'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is +sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old +Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog +along on L40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of the great +Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his +scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his +own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course--Canning was all +perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual +confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious and +hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne +was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,' +'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them--they were either knaves or +imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides +passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership of +the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man. + +Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or other, it +was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick +of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, at +Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical +moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during +Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the +Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; +one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. Bluecher +and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing--the +nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't +think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the +Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, and +without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at +other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject. +'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he +speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not +ashamed to walk into the room with him.' + +When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was +inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in the +front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call +her Majesty, are characteristic: + + Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown + open, and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance + and manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe + she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is + therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest + resemblance I can recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy + which you used to call Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another + toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, + and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air. + The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of + the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once + into the House, made a _duck_ at the throne, another to the Peers, + and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. Her + dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, + &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white + veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near + to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and + inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling + ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their appearance + were not her Majesty's own property. + +Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the +presence of Royalty. + +But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of +his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat +pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself +extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest +during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose +hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable _verve_. 'This house,' he +says at Raby, 'is itself _by far_ the most magnificent and unique in +several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of +anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in +one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of +the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At Knowsley +'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height +that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are +two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles +over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about +the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground +floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow +furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which +cost L4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest yellow +satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and +there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and the +doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a +succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants +stuffed with pate de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient Ports. Wine +had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it +was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous +living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon +him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect. +Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a +little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for +a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain--except, to be sure, at King +Jog's. There, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved. This was +too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for +breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as +could be,' fairly lost his temper. + + My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell + me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he + replied in the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I + turned to Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the + fuss and jaw of the thing, I would leave the room and the house + this instant'; and dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He + hears every word you say': to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It + was a regular scene. + +A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding himself +in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a +piece--excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat +butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., +wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.' + +It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six Acts, +of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed, +could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious +of the existence--of the possibility--of any mode of living other than +his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, broiled +bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a +part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and +the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only +once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming, +something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The +occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes: + + I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is _insane._ He + quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in + support of this infernal nuisance--the loco-motive Monster, + carrying _eighty tons_ of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke + and sulphur, coming thro' every man's grounds between Manchester + and Liverpool. + +His perturbation grew. He attended the committee assiduously, but in +spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The +loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led +the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May +31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the +Monster. + + Well--this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we + had a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters + of the Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us. + +With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities of +which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having 12 +oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.' + +Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he +discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his silk +ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed to +increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr. +Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how +useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night +in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in +the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a +certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are +endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the +pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one +wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue +indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But +it could not be. + + Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame; + Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons. + +It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should catch +a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, laughing, eating, and +showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the +piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that was +preparing for very different characters, and with a very different style +of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey. + +1919. + + + + +INDEX + +Algarotti, 144, 145, 152 +Anne, Queen, 106 +Arnold, Matthew, 10 +Arouet. _See_ 'Voltaire' + +Bailey, Mr. John, 4-7, 9-12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22 +Balzac, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227 +Barres, M., 220, 21, 234 +Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 194-196 +Beddoes, Thos. Lovell, 193-216 +Beethoven, 237 +Berkeley, 106 +Bernhardt, 23 +Bernieres, Madame de, 96, 107 +Bernstorff, 76 +Berry, Miss, 67, 68 +Beshyr, Emir, 247 +Bessborough, Lady, 243 +Bevan, Mr. C.D., 196 +Beyle, Henri, 219-238 +Blake, 36, 63, 179-190 +Bluecher, 255 +Boileau, 62 +Bolingbroke, 99, 101, 103, 104, 111 +Bonaparte, 222 +Boswell, 59 +Boufflers, Comtesse de, 76 +Boufflers, Marquise de, 75 +Bourget, M., 220, 221 +Brandes, Dr., 43, 51 +Brink, Mr. Ten, 43 +Broome, Major, 101 +Brougham, 255 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 27-28 +Buffon, 80, 154 +Burke, 76 +Butler, Bishop, 29, 106 + +Canning, George, 243, 247, 255 +Canning, Stratford, 243, 247 +Caraccioli, 76 +Carlyle, 93, 137, 144, 160 +Caroline, Queen, 256 +Carteret, 106 +Castlereagh, 255 +Cellini, 68 +Chasot, 152, 153 +Chateaubriand, 225 +Chatelet, Madame du, 113, 141-143 +Chatham, Lady, 242 +Chatham, Lord, 241 +Chesterfield, Lord, 63 +Choiseul, Duc de, 79 +Choiseul, Duchesse de, 70, 85, 86 +Chuquet, M., 220, 221, 223, 238 +Cicero, 68 +Cimarosa, 230 +Claude, 17 +Coleridge, 16, 30, 62, 63 +Colles, Mr. Ramsay, 194, 195 +Collins, Anthony, 110, 111 +Collins, Churton, 93, 98, 103 +Condillac, 230 +Congreve, 101 +Conti, Prince de, 96 +Corneille, 80, 129 +Correggio, 231 +Cowley, 196 +Creevey, Mr., 253-260 + +D'Alembert, 70, 75, 131, 162, 166 +Dante, 10 +d'Argens, 152 +d'Argental, 72 +Darget, 152 +Daru, 222 +Davy, Sir Humphry, 195 +Deffand, Madame du, 67-89, 97 +Degen, 203 +d'Egmont, Madame, 72 +Denham, 62 +Denis, Madame, 149, 150 +d'Epinay, Madame, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171-174 +Descartes, 113 +Desnoiresterres 93 +Devonshire, Duchess of, 247 +d'Houdetot, Madame, 171 +Diderot, 70, 166-175 +Diogenes, 115 +Donne, 62 +Dowden, Prof., 42, 43, 45, 49, 51 +Dryden, 4, 22, 29, 62 +Durham, Lord, 255 + +Ecklin, Dr., 203, 204 +Edgeworth, Miss, 195, 196 +Euler, 154, 155 + +Falkener, Everard, 98 +Fielding, 80, 197 +Flaubert, 220, 221 +Fleury, Cardinal, 112 +Fontenelle, 73, 222 +Foulet, M. Lucien, 93, 94, 96, 98, 103, 105 +Fox, Charles James, 76, 78 +Frederick the Great, 137 +Fry, Mrs., 243, 244, 247 +Furnivall, Dr., 42, 43 + +Gautier, 225 +Gay, 102 +George III, 247, 255 +Gibbon, 29, 76, 80 +Gide, M. Andre, 219, 220, 227 +Goethe, 237 +Gollancz, Sir I., 43, 49 +Goncourts, De, 10 +Gosse, Mr., 27-31, 35, 115, 204, 205 +Gramont, Madame de, 79 +Granville, Lord, 242 +Gray, 60, 62 +Grey, Lord, 255 +Grimm, 166-174 + +Hardwicke, Lord, 248 +Hegetschweiler, 202 +Helvetius, 230 +Henault, 72, 75 +Herrick, 38 +Higginson, Edward, 100 +Hill, Dr. George Birkbeck, 59, 63 +Hill, Mr., 243 +Hugo, Victor, 62, 225 +Hume, 30, 112, 114, 167, 169 +Huskisson, 255 + +Ingres, 3 + +Johnson, Dr., 22, 28-30, 32, 59-63, 103, 221 +Jordan, 140 +Jourdain, Mr., 154 + +Keats, 211 +Kelsall, Thomas Forbes, 200, 203, 204, 209 +Klopstock, 186 +Koenig, 155 + +La Beaumelle, 154 +Lamb, Charles, 30, 188, 194 +Lambton, 258 +La Mettrie, 152-154, 158 +Lanson, M., 93, 100 +Latimer, 31 +Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 95 +Lee, Sir Sidney, 43 +Leibnitz, 155 +Lemaitre, M., 4-6, 17, 18 +Lemaur, 70 +Lespinasse, Mlle. de, 70, 71, 75, 86, 238 +Leveson Gower, Lord Granville, 242 +Locke, 29, 110, 112, 113, 115 +Louis Philippe, 222 +Louis XIV., 71 +Lulli, 70 +Luxembourg, Marechale de, 77, 83 + +Macaulay, 137 +Macdonald, Mrs. Frederika, 164-173 +Maine, Duchesse du, 71, 74 +Malherbe, 62 +Marlborough, Duke of, 105 +Marlborough, Duchess of, 101 +Marlowe, 197 +Massillon, 74 +Matignon, Marquis de, 84 +Maupertuis, 153-156, 158, 159, 161 +Mehemet Ali, 244 +Merimee, Prosper, 223 +Meryon, Dr., 243, 247, 248 +Middleton, 111 +Milton, 10, 16, 211 +Mirepoix, Bishop of, 142 +Mirepoix, Marechale de, 76 +Moliere, 134 +Moncrif, 72 +Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 241 +Montespan, Madame de, 74 +Montesquieu, 78, 107, 230, 238 +Moore, Sir John, 243 +Morley, Lord, 110, 167, 172 +Moses, 115 +Mozart, 23, 230 +Musset, 225 + +Napoleon, 67, 230, 231, 234, 238 +Necker, 84 +Nelson, 221 +Newton, Sir Isaac, 100, 106, 112, 113 + +Pascal, 36, 112 +Pater, 31 +Peterborough, Lord, 102, 103 +Pitt, William, the younger, 241-243, 247 +Plato, 185 +Poellnitz, 152 +Pompadour, Madame de, 143 +Pont-de-Veyle, 72, 75 +Pope, 4, 22, 34, 38, 103, 106, 211 +Prie, Madame de, 71, 94, 96 +Prior, 63 +Proctor, Bryan Waller, 200, 203 +Puffendorf, 76 + +Quinault, 70 + +Racine, 3-24, 80, 129-131, 225, 237 +Raleigh, Sir Walter, 45, 179, 183, 185 +Regent, the Prince, 255 +Reni, Guido, 231 +Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 30, 186, 188 +Richardson, 80 +Richelieu, 73 +Rohan-Chabot, Chevalier de, 94, 96, 98 +Rossetti, 183 +Rousseau, 85, 165-175, 230 +Rubens, 34 +Russell, Lord John, 255 + +Sainte-Beuve, 10, 12, 18, 61, 167, 220 +Saint-Lambert, 172 +Saint-Simon, 80, 179-183 +Sampson, Mr. John, 179-183 +Sanadon, Mlle., 84 +Shaftesbury, 110 +Shakespeare, 3, 4, 14, 34, 41-56, 80, 112, 132, 221, 225 +Shelley, 23, 38 +Sheridan, 257 +Sophocles, 132 +Spenser, 211 +Stanhope, Lady Hester, 241-249 +'Stendhal.' _See_ Beyle, Henri +Stephen, Sir James, 211 +Sully, Duc de, 95, 105 +Swift, 29, 101, 104, 106 +Swinburne, 184 + +Taine, 220, 221 +Thevenart, 70 +Thomson, 63 +Tindal, 111 +Toland, 110, 111 +Tolstoi, 228 +Toynbee, Mrs. Paget, 67-69, 75 +Turgot, 70, 169 + +Velasquez, 34 +Vigny, 225 +Virgil, 14, 23 +Voltaire, 69, 70, 72, 75, 79-81, 83, 93-117, 121-134, 137-162, 174, 188 + +Walpole, Horace, 30, 63, 67, 68, 69-71, 75, 76, 78-80, 86-89, 103, 104, 106 +Webster, 36 +Wellington, Duke of, 255 +White, W.A., 180 +Winckelmann, 237 +Wolf, 138 +Wollaston, 111 +Woolston, 111 +Wordsworth, 16, 62, 63, 184 +Wuertemberg, Duke of, 156 + +Yonge, Miss, 134 +Young, Dr., 101 + +Zola, 220, 227, 228 + + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Books and Characters, by Lytton Strachey + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND CHARACTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 12478.txt or 12478.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/4/7/12478/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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