diff options
Diffstat (limited to '1276.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 1276.txt | 2182 |
1 files changed, 2182 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/1276.txt b/1276.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e62ca8e --- /dev/null +++ b/1276.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2182 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Rhythm of Life, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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: The Rhythm of Life + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 14, 2005 [eBook #1276] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RHYTHM OF LIFE*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1893 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays + + +Contents + +The Rhythm of Life +Decivilised +A Remembrance +The Sun +The Flower +Unstable Equilibrium +The Unit of the World +By the Railway Side +Pocket Vocabularies +Pathos +The Point of Honour +Composure +Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes +James Russell Lowell +Domus Angusta +Rejection +The Lesson of Landscape +Mr. Coventry Patmore's Odes +Innocence and Experience +Penultimate Caricature + + + + +THE RHYTHM OF LIFE + + +If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity +rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the +orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, +velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the +recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it +does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. +Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the +mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods +towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards +recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday, and will be +intolerable tomorrow; today it is easy to bear, but the cause has not +passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to +leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse itself does not +remain--it returns. Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made +a course of notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and +would have had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such +observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, there +have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles. But +Thomas a Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not measure them. In +his cell alone with the elements--'What wouldst thou more than these? for +out of these were all things made'--he learnt the stay to be found in the +depth of the hour of bitterness, and the remembrance that restrains the +soul at the coming of the moment of delight, giving it a more conscious +welcome, but presaging for it an inexorable flight. And 'rarely, rarely +comest thou,' sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of +Delight. Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to +our service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial +violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus +compelled. _That_ flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or +hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what trysts with Time. + +It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the _Imitation_ should both +have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, and to guess +at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close touch with +the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate human rules, no +infractions of the liberty and law of the universal movement, kept from +them the knowledge of recurrences. _Eppur si muove_. They knew that +presence does not exist without absence; they knew that what is just upon +its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return. They knew +that what is approaching to the very touch is hastening towards +departure. 'O wind,' cried Shelley, in autumn, + + 'O wind, + If winter comes, can spring be far behind?' + +They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with +unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and +retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts +after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, +or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live +without either rest or full activity. The souls of certain of the +saints, being singularly simple and single, have been in the most +complete subjection to the law of periodicity. Ecstasy and desolation +visited them by seasons. They endured, during spaces of vacant time, the +interior loss of all for which they had sacrificed the world. They +rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness alighting in their +hearts. Like them are the poets whom, three times or ten times in the +course of a long life, the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken. +And yet hardly like them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared +for the departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few +poets have fully recognised the metrical absence of their Muse. For full +recognition is expressed in one only way--silence. + +It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship +the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes are +known to adore the sun, and not the moon. For the periodicity of the sun +is still in part a secret; but that of the moon is modestly apparent, +perpetually influential. On her depend the tides; and she is Selene, +mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that recurrently irrigate lands +where rain is rare. More than any other companion of earth is she the +Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages knew her by that name. Her +metrical phases are the symbol of the order of recurrence. Constancy in +approach and in departure is the reason of her inconstancies. Juliet +will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the moon; but Juliet did +not live to know that love itself has tidal times--lapses and ebbs which +are due to the metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the lover +vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in the beloved. +For man--except those elect already named--is hardly aware of +periodicity. The individual man either never learns it fully, or learns +it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a matter of cumulative +experience upon which cumulative evidence is lacking. It is in the after- +part of each life that the law is learnt so definitely as to do away with +the hope or fear of continuance. That young sorrow comes so near to +despair is a result of this young ignorance. So is the early hope of +great achievement. Life seems so long, and its capacity so great, to one +who knows nothing of all the intervals it needs must hold--intervals +between aspirations, between actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses +of sleep. And life looks impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware of +the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. It would be for their peace to +learn that there is a tide in the affairs of men, in a sense more +subtle--if it is not too audacious to add a meaning to Shakespeare--than +the phrase was meant to contain. Their joy is flying away from them on +its way home; their life will wax and wane; and if they would be wise, +they must wake and rest in its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the +law that commands all things--a sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs +of maternity. + + + + +DECIVILISED + + +The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with +decivilised man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity--sparing +him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge of +barbarism. Especially from new soil--transatlantic, colonial--he faces +you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded of his +own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches +and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature +and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. +He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own +artless slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very +articulate. The new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; +the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the +uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilising. American fancy +played long this pattering part of youth. The New-Englander hastened to +assure you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint and +feathers, that it became doubly difficult to communicate to him that you +had suspected him of nothing wilder than a second-hand dress coat. And +when it was a question not of rebuke, but of praise, the American was ill- +content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some delicate +successes in continuing something of the literature of England, something +of the art of France; he was more eager for the applause that stimulated +him to write romances and to paint panoramic landscape, after brief +training in academies of native inspiration. Even now English voices, +with violent commonplace, are constantly calling upon America to begin--to +begin, for the world is expectant. Whereas there is no beginning for +her, but instead a continuity which only a constant care can guide into +sustained refinement and can save from decivilisation. + +But decivilised man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, too, +knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a literature, an +art, a music, all his own--derived from many and various things of price. +Trash, in the fulness of its in simplicity and cheapness, is impossible +without a beautiful past. Its chief characteristic--which is futility, +not failure--could not be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory +reproduction, the quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, +especially the utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic +quality, purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the +antecedents of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of +them. And nothing can be much sadder than such a proof of what may +possibly be the failure of derivation. + +Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of time, +we may, indeed, choose backwards. We may give our thoughts noble +forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; they shall be +also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our inheritance, and not +our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our minds may trace upwards and +follow their ways to the best well-heads of the arts. The very habit of +our thoughts may be persuaded one way unawares by their antenatal +history. Their companions must be lovely, but need be no lovelier than +their ancestors; and being so fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may +be intrusted to keep the counsels of literature. + +Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel which of +us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers of subsequent +depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the contemporary +tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who +shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when +and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the +antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of +their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or +laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by +some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilised to blame as having +in their own persons possessed civilisation and marred it. They did not +possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an +inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can hardly +do other than continue. Nothing can look duller than the future of this +second-hand and multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because +they are many; but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, +what dulness in their future! To the eye that has reluctantly discovered +this truth--that the vulgarised are not _un_civilised, and that there is +no growth for them--it does not look like a future at all. More ballad- +concerts, more quaint English, more robustious barytone songs, more +piecemeal pictures, more anxious decoration, more colonial poetry, more +young nations with withered traditions. Yet it is before this prospect +that the provincial overseas lifts up his voice in a boast or a promise +common enough among the incapable young, but pardonable only in senility. +He promises the world a literature, an art, that shall be new because his +forest is untracked and his town just built. But what the newness is to +be he cannot tell. Certain words were dreadful once in the mouth of +desperate old age. Dreadful and pitiable as the threat of an impotent +king, what shall we name them when they are the promise of an impotent +people? 'I will do such things: what they are yet I know not.' + + + + +A REMEMBRANCE + + +When the memories of two or three persons now upon earth shall be rolled +up and sealed with their records within them, there will be no +remembrance left open, except this, of a man whose silence seems better +worth interpreting than the speech of many another. Of himself he has +left no vestiges. It was a common reproach against him that he never +acknowledged the obligation to any kind of restlessness. The kingdom of +heaven suffereth violence, but as he did none there was nothing for it +but that the kingdom of heaven should yield to his leisure. The +delicate, the abstinent, the reticent graces were his in the heroic +degree. Where shall I find a pen fastidious enough to define and limit +and enforce so many significant negatives? Words seem to offend by too +much assertion, and to check the suggestions of his reserve. That +reserve was life-long. Loving literature, he never lifted a pen except +to write a letter. He was not inarticulate, he was only silent. He had +an exquisite style from which to refrain. The things he abstained from +were all exquisite. They were brought from far to undergo his judgment, +if haply he might have selected them. Things ignoble never approached +near enough for his refusal; they had not with him so much as that +negative connexion. If I had to equip an author I should ask no better +than to arm him and invest him with precisely the riches that were +renounced by the man whose intellect, by integrity, had become a presence- +chamber. + +It was by holding session among so many implicit safeguards that he +taught, rather than by precepts. Few were these in his speech, but his +personality made laws for me. It was a subtle education, for it +persuaded insensibly to a conception of my own. How, if he would not +define, could I know what things were and what were not worthy of his +gentle and implacable judgment? I must needs judge them for myself, yet +he constrained me in the judging. Within that constraint and under that +stimulus, which seemed to touch the ultimate springs of thoughts before +they sprang, I began to discern all things in literature and in life--in +the chastity of letters and in the honour of life--that I was bound to +love. Not the things of one character only, but excellent things of +every character. There was no tyranny in such a method. His idleness +justified itself by the liberality it permitted to his taste. Never +having made his love of letters further a secondary purpose, never having +bound the literary genius--that delicate Ariel--to any kind of servitude, +never having so much as permitted himself a prejudice whereby some of his +delights should be stinted while others were indulged beyond the +sanctions of modest reason, he barely tolerated his own preferences, +which lay somewhat on the hither side of full effectiveness of style. +These the range of his reading confessed by certain exclusions. +Nevertheless it was not of deficiencies that he was patient: he did but +respect the power of pause, and he disliked violence chiefly because +violence is apt to confess its own limits. Perhaps, indeed, his own fine +negatives made him only the more sensible of any lack of those literary +qualities that are bound in their full complement to hold themselves at +the disposal of the consummate author--to stand and wait, if they may do +no more. + +Men said that he led a _dilettante_ life. They reproached him with the +selflessness that made him somewhat languid. Others, they seemed to +aver, were amateurs at this art or that; he was an amateur at living. So +it was, in the sense that he never grasped at happiness, and that many of +the things he had held slipped from his disinterested hands. So it was, +too, in this unintended sense; he loved life. How should he not have +loved a life that his living made honourable? How should he not have +loved all arts, in which his choice was delicate, liberal, instructed, +studious, docile, austere? An amateur man he might have been called, +too, because he was not discomposed by his own experiences, or shaken by +the discovery which life brings to us-that the negative quality of which +Buddhism seems to accuse all good is partaken by our happiness. He had +always prayed temperate prayers and harboured probable wishes. His +sensibility was extreme, but his thought was generalised. When he had +joy he tempered it not in the common way by meditation upon the general +sorrow but by a recollection of the general pleasure. It was his finest +distinction to desire no differences, no remembrance, but loss among the +innumerable forgotten. And when he suffered, it was with so quick a +nerve and yet so wide an apprehension that the race seemed to suffer in +him. He pitied not himself so tenderly as mankind, of whose capacity for +pain he was then feelingly persuaded. His darkening eyes said in the +extreme hour: 'I have compassion on the multitude.' + + + + +THE SUN + + +Nowhere else does the greater light so rule the day, so measure, so +divide, so reign, make so imperial laws, so visibly kindle, so +immediately quicken, so suddenly efface, so banish, so restore, as in a +plain like this of Suffolk with its enormous sky. The curious have an +insufficient motive for going to the mountains if they do it to see the +sunrise. The sun that leaps from a mountain peak is a sun past the dew +of his birth; he has walked some way towards the common fires of noon. +But on the flat country the uprising is early and fresh, the arc is wide, +the career is long. The most distant clouds, converging in the beautiful +and little-studied order of cloud-perspective (for most painters treat +clouds as though they formed perpendicular and not horizontal scenery), +are those that gather at the central point of sunrise. On the plain, and +there only, can the construction--but that is too little vital a word; I +should rather say the organism--the unity, the design, of a sky be +understood. The light wind that has been moving all night is seen to +have not worked at random. It has shepherded some small flocks of cloud +afield and folded others. There's husbandry in Heaven. And the order +has, or seems to have, the sun for its midst. Not a line, not a curve, +but confesses its membership in a design declared from horizon to +horizon. + +To see the system of a sky in fragments is to miss what I learn to look +for in all achieved works of Nature and art: the organism that is unity +and life. It is the unity and life of painting. The Early Victorian +picture--(the school is still in full career, but essentially it belongs +to that triumphal period)--is but a dull sum of things put together, in +concourse, not in relation; but the true picture is _one_, however +multitudinous it may be, for it is composed of relations gathered +together in the unity of perception, of intention, and of light. It is +organic. Moreover, how truly relation is the condition of life may be +understood from the extinct state of the English stage, which resembles +nothing so much as a Royal Academy picture. Even though the actors may +be added together with something like vivacity (though that is rare), +they have no vitality in common. They are not members one of another. If +the Church and Stage Guild be still in existence, it would do much for +the art by teaching that Scriptural maxim. I think, furthermore, that +the life of our bodies has never been defined so suggestively as by one +who named it a living relation of lifeless atoms. Could the value of +relation be more curiously set forth? And one might penetrate some way +towards a consideration of the vascular organism of a true literary style +in which there is a vital relation of otherwise lifeless word with word. +And wherein lies the progress of architecture from the stupidity of the +pyramid and the dead weight of the Cyclopean wall to the spring and the +flight of the ogival arch, but in a quasi-organic relation? But the way +of such thoughts might be intricate, and the sun rules me to simplicity. + +He reigns as centrally in the blue sky as in the clouds. One October of +late had days absolutely cloudless. I should not have certainly known it +had there been a hill in sight. The gradations of the blue are +incalculable, infinite, and they deepen from the central fire. As to the +earthly scenery, there are but two 'views' on the plain; for the aspect +of the light is the whole landscape. To look with the sun or against the +sun--this is the alternative splendour. To look with the sun is to face +a golden country, shadowless, serene, noble and strong in light, with a +certain lack of relief that suggests--to those who dream of landscape--the +country of a dream. The serried pines, and the lighted fields, and the +golden ricks of the farms are dyed with the sun as one might paint with a +colour. Bright as it is, the glow is rather the dye of sunlight than its +luminosity. For by a kind of paradox the luminous landscape is that +which is full of shadows--the landscape before you when you turn and face +the sun. Not only every reed and rush of the salt marshes, every +uncertain aspen-leaf of the few trees, but every particle of the October +air shows a shadow and makes a mystery of the light. There is nothing +but shadow and sun; colour is absorbed and the landscape is reduced to a +shining simplicity. Thus is the dominant sun sufficient for his day. His +passage kindles to unconsuming fires and quenches into living ashes. No +incidents save of his causing, no delight save of his giving: from the +sunrise, when the larks, not for pairing, but for play, sing the only +virginal song of the year--a heart younger than Spring's in the season of +decline--even to the sunset, when the herons scream together in the +shallows. And the sun dominates by his absence, compelling the low +country to sadness in the melancholy night. + + + + +THE FLOWER + + +There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed by +those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere witnesses, in +its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. In the shape of +the flower his own paltriness revisits him--his triviality, his sloth, +his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. +These return to him and wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the +tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country +lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have +sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a +cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal +and leaf--the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by +rote--are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and +insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all +imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed +for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is beset with flowers. It +blooms, a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron garden. The floor flourishes +with blossoms adust, poorly conventionalised into a kind of order; the +table-cover is ablaze with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper +is set with bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and +lilies in its very construction, over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig +is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the plaster +picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in the pediment +of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, in the +finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the 'grained' +door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale +inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the grate +but some blunt, black-leaded garland? The recital is wearisome, but the +retribution of the flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution +of man, the haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his +inconsiderable brain. + +The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling--subjection to the +smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap patterns is +no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain and transitory +author by the phrase. But I had rather learn my decoration of the +Japanese, and place against the blank wall one pot plain from the wheel, +holding one singular branch in blossom, in the attitude and accident of +growth. And I could wish abstention to exist, and even to be evident, in +my words. In literature as in all else man merits his subjection to +trivialities by a kind of economical greed. A condition for using justly +and gaily any decoration would seem to be a certain reluctance. +Ornament--strange as the doctrine sounds in a world decivilised--was in +the beginning intended to be something jocund; and jocundity was never to +be achieved but by postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the +prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has +something even more severe than moderation: she has an innumerable +singleness. Her butter-cup meadows are not prodigal; they show +multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace +of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who +has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes--the +prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous Fate that man +should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her answer every +time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the day when she +shall make the one tremendous difference among her gifts--and make it +perhaps in secret--by naming one of them the ultimate. What, for +novelty, what, for singleness, what, for separateness, can equal the +last? Of many thousand kisses the poor last--but even the kisses of your +mouth are all numbered. + + + + +UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM + + +It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of +man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the form of +man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is at least as +important as the scenery of geological structure, or the scenery of +architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the lovers of +mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have consented to +ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, inasmuch as it has the +finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing forms which, coming +at the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its +unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the +body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never +stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first +suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is +erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, +because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best +leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which +the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor +supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot, +with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious +instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should +no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of +piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive +of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they +are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly +possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when a bad writer +is praised for 'clothing his thought,' it is to modern raiment that one's +nimble fancy flies--fain of completing the beautiful metaphor! + +The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other than +the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the multiplication of +undignified forms that fill the streets, and demonstrate, and strike, and +listen to the democrat. For the undistinguished are very important by +their numbers. These are they who make the look of the artificial world. +They are man generalised; as units they inevitably lack something of +interest; all the more have they cumulative effect. It would be well if +we could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in +the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to be +changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are their +national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing of other +men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the reformed +dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have turned second- +hand. + + + + +THE UNIT OF THE WORLD + + +The quarrel of Art with Nature goes on apace. The painters have long +been talking of selecting, then of rejecting, or even, with Mr. Whistler, +of supplanting. And then Mr. Oscar Wilde, in the witty and delicate +series of inversions which he headed 'The Decay of Lying,' declared war +with all the irresponsibility naturally attending an act so serious. He +seems to affirm that Nature is less proportionate to man than is +architecture; that the house is built and the sofa is made measurable by +the unit measure of the body; but that the landscape is set to some other +scale. 'I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the +proper proportions. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper +sense of human dignity, is absolutely the result of indoor life.' +Nevertheless, before it is too late, let me assert that though nature is +not always clearly and obviously made to man's measure, he is yet the +unit by which she is measurable. The proportion may be far to seek at +times, but the proportion is there. Man's farms about the lower Alps, +his summer pastures aloft, have their relation to the whole construction +of the range; and the range is great because it is great in regard to the +village lodged in a steep valley in the foot hills. The relation of +flower and fruit to his hands and mouth, to his capacity and senses (I am +dealing with size, and nothing else), is a very commonplace of our +conditions in the world. The arm of man is sufficient to dig just as +deep as the harvest is to be sown. And if some of the cheerful little +evidences of the more popular forms of teleology are apt to be baffled, +or indefinitely postponed, by the retorts that suggest themselves to the +modern child, there remains the subtle and indisputable witness borne by +art itself: the body of man composes with the mass and the detail of the +world. The picture is irrefutable, and the picture arranges the figure +amongst its natural accessories in the landscape, and would not have them +otherwise. + +But there is one conspicuous thing in the world to which man has not +served as a unit of proportion, and that one thing is a popularly revered +triumph of that very art of architecture in which Mr. Oscar Wilde has +confidence for keeping things in scale. Human ingenuity in designing St. +Peter's on the Vatican, has achieved this one exception to the universal +harmony--a harmony enriched by discords, but always on one certain scale +of notes--which the body makes with the details of the earth. It is not +in the landscape, where Mr. Oscar Wilde has too rashly looked for +contempt and contumely, but in the art he holds precious as the minister +to man's egotism, that man's Ego is defied. St. Peter's is not +necessarily too large (though on other grounds its size might be liable +to correction); it is simply out of relation to the most vital thing on +the earth--the thing which has supplied some secret rod to measure the +waves withal, and the whales, the sea-wall cliffs, the ears of wheat, the +cedar-branches, pines and diamonds and apples. Now, Emerson would +certainly not have felt the soft shock and stimulus of delight to which +he confesses himself to be liable at the first touch of certain phrases, +had not the words in every case enclosed a promise of further truth and +of a second pleasure. One of these swift and fruitful experiences +visited him with the saying--grown popular through him--that an architect +should have a knowledge of anatomy. There is assuredly a germ and a +promise in the phrase. It delights us, first, because it seems to +recognise the organic, as distinct from the merely constructive, +character of finely civilised architecture; and next, it persuades us +that Vitruvius had in truth discovered the key to size--the unit that is +sometimes so obscurely, yet always so absolutely, the measure of what is +great and small among things animate and inanimate. And in spite of +themselves the architects of St. Peter's were constrained to take +something from man; they refused his height for their scale, but they +tried to use his shape for their ornament. And so in the blankest dearth +of fancy that ever befel architect or builder they imagined human beings +bigger than the human beings of experience; and by means of these, carved +in stone and inlaid in mosaic, they set up a relation of their own. The +basilica was related to the colossal figure (as a church more wisely +measured would have been to living man), and so ceased to be large; and +nothing more important was finally achieved than transposal of the whole +work into another scale of proportions--a scale in which the body of man +was not the unit. The pile of stones that make St. Peter's is a very +little thing in comparison with Soracte; but man, and man's wife, and the +unequal statures of his children, are in touch with the structure of the +mountain rather than with that of the church which has been conceived +without reference to the vital and fundamental rule of his inches. + +Is there no egotism, ministering to his dignity, that man, having the law +of the organism of the world written in his members, can take with him, +out of the room that has been built to accord with him, into the +landscape that stands only a little further away? He has deliberately +made the smoking chair and the table; there is nothing to surprise him in +their ministrations. But what profounder homage is rendered by the +multitudinous Nature going about the interests and the business of which +he knows so little, and yet throughout confessing him! His eyes have +seen her and his ears have heard, but it would never have entered into +his heart to conceive her. His is not the fancy that could have achieved +these woods, this little flush of summer from the innumerable flowering +of grasses, the cyclic recreation of seasons. And yet he knows that he +is imposed upon all he sees. His stature gives laws. His labour only is +needful--not a greater strength. And the sun and the showers are made +sufficient for him. His furniture must surely be adjudged to pay him but +a coarse flattery in comparison with the subjection, yet the aloofness, +of all this wild world. This is no flattery. The grass is lumpy, as Mr. +Oscar Wilde remarks with truth: Nature is not man's lacquey, and has no +preoccupation about his more commonplace comforts. These he gives +himself indoors; and who prizes, with any self-respect, the things +carefully provided by self-love? But when that _farouche_ Nature, who +has never spoken to him, and to whom he has never had the opportunity of +hinting his wishes or his tastes--when she reveals the suggestions of his +form and the desire of his eyes, and amongst her numberless purposes lets +him surprise in her the purpose to accord with him, and lets him suspect +further harmonies which he has not yet learnt to understand--then man +becomes conscious of having received a token from her lowliness, and a +favour from her loveliness, compared with which the care wherewith his +tailor himself has fitted him might leave his gratitude cool. + + + + +BY THE RAILWAY SIDE + + +My train drew near to the Via Reggio platform on a day between two of the +harvests of a hot September; the sea was burning blue, and there were a +sombreness and a gravity in the very excesses of the sun as his fires +brooded deeply over the serried, hardy, shabby, seaside ilex-woods. I +had come out of Tuscany and was on my way to the Genovesato: the steep +country with its profiles, bay by bay, of successive mountains grey with +olive-trees, between the flashes of the Mediterranean and the sky; the +country through the which there sounds the twanging Genoese language, a +thin Italian mingled with a little Arabic, more Portuguese, and much +French. I was regretful at leaving the elastic Tuscan speech, canorous +in its vowels set in emphatic _l's_ and _m's_ and the vigorous soft +spring of the double consonants. But as the train arrived its noises +were drowned by a voice declaiming in the tongue I was not to hear again +for months--good Italian. The voice was so loud that one looked for the +audience: Whose ears was it seeking to reach by the violence done to +every syllable, and whose feelings would it touch by its insincerity? The +tones were insincere, but there was passion behind them; and most often +passion acts its own true character poorly, and consciously enough to +make good judges think it a mere counterfeit. Hamlet, being a little +mad, feigned madness. It is when I am angry that I pretend to be angry, +so as to present the truth in an obvious and intelligible form. Thus +even before the words were distinguishable it was manifest that they were +spoken by a man in serious trouble who had false ideas as to what is +convincing in elocution. + +When the voice became audibly articulate, it proved to be shouting +blasphemies from the broad chest of a middle-aged man--an Italian of the +type that grows stout and wears whiskers. The man was in _bourgeois_ +dress, and he stood with his hat off in front of the small station +building, shaking his thick fist at the sky. No one was on the platform +with him except the railway officials, who seemed in doubt as to their +duties in the matter, and two women. Of one of these there was nothing +to remark except her distress. She wept as she stood at the door of the +waiting-room. Like the second woman, she wore the dress of the +shopkeeping class throughout Europe, with the local black lace veil in +place of a bonnet over her hair. It is of the second woman--O +unfortunate creature!--that this record is made--a record without sequel, +without consequence; but there is nothing to be done in her regard except +so to remember her. And thus much I think I owe after having looked, +from the midst of the negative happiness that is given to so many for a +space of years, at some minutes of her despair. She was hanging on the +man's arm in her entreaties that he would stop the drama he was enacting. +She had wept so hard that her face was disfigured. Across her nose was +the dark purple that comes with overpowering fear. Haydon saw it on the +face of a woman whose child had just been run over in a London street. I +remembered the note in his journal as the woman at Via Reggio, in her +intolerable hour, turned her head my way, her sobs lifting it. She was +afraid that the man would throw himself under the train. She was afraid +that he would be damned for his blasphemies; and as to this her fear was +mortal fear. It was horrible, too, that she was humpbacked and a dwarf. + +Not until the train drew away from the station did we lose the clamour. +No one had tried to silence the man or to soothe the woman's horror. But +has any one who saw it forgotten her face? To me for the rest of the day +it was a sensible rather than a merely mental image. Constantly a red +blur rose before my eyes for a background, and against it appeared the +dwarf's head, lifted with sobs, under the provincial black lace veil. And +at night what emphasis it gained on the boundaries of sleep! Close to my +hotel there was a roofless theatre crammed with people, where they were +giving Offenbach. The operas of Offenbach still exist in Italy, and the +little town was placarded with announcements of _La Bella Elena_. The +peculiar vulgar rhythm of the music jigged audibly through half the hot +night, and the clapping of the town's-folk filled all its pauses. But +the persistent noise did but accompany, for me, the persistent vision of +those three figures at the Via Reggio station in the profound sunshine of +the day. + + + + +POCKET VOCABULARIES + + +A serviceable substitute for style in literature has been found in such a +collection of language ready for use as may be likened to a portable +vocabulary. It is suited to the manners of a day that has produced salad- +dressing in bottles, and many other devices for the saving of processes. +Fill me such a wallet full of 'graphic' things, of 'quaint' things and +'weird,' of 'crisp' or 'sturdy' Anglo-Saxon, of the material for 'word- +painting' (is not that the way of it?), and it will serve the turn. +Especially did the Teutonic fury fill full these common little hoards of +language. It seemed, doubtless, to the professor of the New Literature +that if anything could convince him of his own success it must be the +energy of his Teutonisms and his avoidance of languid Latin derivatives, +fit only for the pedants of the eighteenth century. Literature doubtless +is made of words. What then is needful, he seems to ask, besides a knack +of beautiful words? Unluckily for him, he has achieved, not style, but +slang. Unluckily for him, words are not style, phrases are not style. +'The man is style.' O good French language, cunning and good, that lets +me read the sentence in obverse or converse as I will! And I read it as +declaring that the whole man, the very whole of him, is his style. The +literature of a man of letters worthy the name is rooted in all his +qualities, with little fibres running invisibly into the smallest +qualities he has. He who is not a man of letters, simply is not one; it +is not too audacious a paradox to affirm that doing will not avail him +who fails in being. 'Lay your deadly doing down,' sang once some old +hymn known to Calvinists. Certain poets, a certain time ago, ransacked +the language for words full of life and beauty, made a vocabulary of +them, and out of wantonness wrote them to death. To change somewhat the +simile, they scented out a word--an earlyish word, by preference--ran it +to earth, unearthed it, dug it out, and killed it. And then their +followers bagged it. The very word that lives, 'new every morning,' +miraculously new, in the literature of a man of letters, they killed and +put into their bag. And, in like manner, the emotion that should have +caused the word is dead for those, and for those only, who abuse its +expression. For the maker of a portable vocabulary is not content to +turn his words up there: he turns up his feelings also, alphabetically or +otherwise. Wonderful how much sensibility is at hand in such round words +as the New Literature loves. Do you want a generous emotion? Pull forth +the little language. Find out moonshine, find out moonshine! + +Take, as an instance, Mr. Swinburne's 'hell.' There is, I fear, no doubt +whatever that Mr. Swinburne has put his 'hell' into a vocabulary, with +the inevitable consequences to the word. And when the minor men of his +school have occasion for a 'hell' (which may very well happen to any +young man practising authorship), I must not be accused of phantasy if I +say that they put their hands into Mr. Swinburne's vocabulary and pick +it. These vocabularies are made out of vigorous and blunt language. +'What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here?' Alas, they are +homespuns from the factory, machine-made in uncostly quantities. +Obviously, power needs to make use of no such storage. The property of +power is to use phrases, whether strange or familiar, as though it +created them. But even more than lack of power is lack of humour the +cause of all the rankness and the staleness, of all the Anglo-Saxon of +commerce, of all the weary 'quaintness'--that quaintness of which one is +moved to exclaim with Cassio: 'Hither comes the bauble!' Lack of a sense +of humour betrays a man into that perpetual too-much whereby he tries to +make amends for a currency debased. No more than any other can a witty +writer dispense with a sense of humour. In his moments of sentiment the +lack is distressing; in his moments of wit it is at least perceptible. A +sense of humour cannot be always present, it may be urged. Why, no; it +is the lack of it that is--importunate. Other absences, such as the +absence of passion, the absence of delicacy, are, if grievous negatives, +still mere negatives. These qualities may or may not be there at call, +ready for a summons; we are not obliged to know; we are not momentarily +aware, unless they ought to be in action, whether their action is +possible. But want of power and want of a sense of the ridiculous: these +are lacks wherefrom there is no escaping, deficiencies that are +all-influential, defects that assert themselves, vacancies that proclaim +themselves, absences from the presence whereof there is no flying; what +other paradoxes can I adventure? Without power--no style. Without a +possible humour,--no style. The weakling has no confidence in himself to +keep him from grasping at words that he fancies hold within them the true +passions of the race, ready for the uses of his egoism. And with a sense +of humour a man will not steal from a shelf the precious treasure of the +language and put it in his pocket. + + + + +PATHOS + + +A fugitive writer wrote but lately on the fugitive page of a minor +magazine: 'For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is the most +real personage of the piece, and not without some hints of the pathos +that is worked out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and +Malvolio.' Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the +Weltschmerz and the other things compared to which 'le spleen' was gay, +done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free +from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what +the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced +of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive +sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the +joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely Snug who stirs their +emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they can see through that: but the +Snug within, the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in +that latent form which is the more appealing; and discouraging questions +arise as to the end of old Double; and Argan in his nightcap is the +tragic figure of Monomania; and human nature shudders at the petrifaction +of the intellect of Mr. F.'s aunt. _Et patati, et patata_. + +It may be only too true that the actual world is 'with pathos delicately +edged.' For Malvolio living we should have had living sympathies: so +much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a +credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a +chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached +for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource +condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. +But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the +privilege of literature to make selection and to treat things singly, +without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of +the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this reason, our refuge? +Fortunately unreal is his world when he will have it so; and there we may +laugh with open heart at a grotesque man: without misgiving, without +remorse, without reluctance. If great creating Nature has not assumed +for herself she has assuredly secured to the great creating poet the +right of partiality, of limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of +taking one impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and +Nature are separate, complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with +one another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the +corner, as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the flat--(the +borrowing of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; but let this +pass, as it is apt)--is but another sign of the general lack of a sense +of the separation between Nature and the sentient mirror in the mind. In +some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is as Nature herself, +all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in comedy--he is partial, he is +impressionary, he refuses to know what is not to his purpose, he is an +artist. And in that gay, wilful world it is that he gives us--or used to +give us, for even the world is obsolete--the pleasure of _oubliance_. + +Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have caught him +a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those like-minded will +assuredly also continue to show how much more completely human, how much +more sensitive, how much more responsible, is the art of the critic than +the world has ever dreamt till now. And, superior in so much, they will +still count their superior weeping as the choicest of their gifts. And +Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his +admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud by +the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears of it +are wet. + + + + +THE POINT OF HONOUR + + +Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. In +Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicity if not +explicity, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; he +made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own +candour and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the +chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and +when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour. +Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced +the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply +asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his +word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of +a share in his responsibility. Somewhat unrefined, in comparison to his +lofty and simple claim to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner +painter's production of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of +ordinary experience, his self-defence against the suspicion of making +irresponsible mysteries in art. 'You can see for yourself,' the lesser +man seems to say to the world, 'thus things are, and I render them in +such manner that your intelligence may be satisfied.' This is an appeal +to average experience--at the best the cumulative experience; and with +the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal without derogation. The +Spaniard seems to say: 'Thus things are in my pictorial sight. Trust me, +I apprehend them so.' We are not excluded from his counsels, but we are +asked to attribute a certain authority to him, master of the craft as he +is, master of that art of seeing pictorially which is the beginning and +not far from the end--not far short of the whole--of the art of painting. +So little indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great +Impressionist's impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some +degree his colleagues. Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take +praise from the praised: He leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the +work. He respects my responsibility no less--though he respects it less +explicitly--than I do his. What he allows me would not be granted by a +meaner master. If he does not hold himself bound to prove his own truth, +he returns thanks for my trust. It is as though he used his countrymen's +courteous hyperbole and called his house my own. In a sense of the most +noble hostship he does me the honours of his picture. + +Because Impressionism is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. Because +there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. To +undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing its +obligations--or at least without confessing them up to the point of +honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities precisely where +there are duties, and an advantage where there is a bond. A very mob of +men have taken Impressionism upon themselves in this our later day. It +is against all probabilities that more than a few among these have within +them the point of honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim +distrust. And to distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How +many of these landscape-painters, deliberately rash, are painting the +truth of their own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is +easily answered; truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the +intelligence of the common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the +_dubium_ concerns not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that +their sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate +equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are +enough? Now Impressionists of late have told us things as to their +impressions--as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this man +and upon the mood of that--which should not be asserted except on the +artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but they +should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the +general judgment, but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals +to the last judgment, which is the judgment within. There is too much +reason to divine that a certain number of those who aspire to derive from +the greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point +of view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth +waylaying. And to be, _de parti pris_, an Impressionist without +these! O Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach +in her own things. An author, here and there, will make as though he had +a word worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to +withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is +all too probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is +the craft and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture, +so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved +that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. May the gods guard us from +the further popularising of Impressionism; for the point of honour is the +simple secret of the few. + + + + +COMPOSURE + + +Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure do +these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness +of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly. +In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an +aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble +English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some +courteous, deferent distance from the centre of that human heart, in the +very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in +language such an educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is +a persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note +indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, teaches a +temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the tone--the +voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter-change, replies to +the writer's touch or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his +note. Much has always been said, many things to the purpose have been +thought, of the power and the responsibility of the note. Of the +legislation and influence of the tone I have been led to think by +comparing the tranquillity of Johnson and the composure of Canning with +the stimulated and close emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers +who have entered as disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English. + +For if every language be a school, more significantly and more +educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that +part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is made +implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French author is +without these. They are of all the heritages of the English writer the +most important. He receives a language of dual derivation. He may +submit himself to either University, whither he will take his impulse and +his character, where he will leave their influence, and whence he will +accept their education. The Frenchman has certainly a style to develop +within definite limits; but he does not subject himself to suggestions +tending mainly hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of various race +within one literature. Such a choice of subjection is the singular +opportunity of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the necessary +mingling. Happily that mingling has been done once for all for us all. +Nay, one of the most charming things that a master of English can achieve +is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so +exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools are made +to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove them at +once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world knew they +were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as to which +school of words shall have the place of honour in the great and sensitive +moments of an author's style: which school shall be used for +conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And the choice +being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses of so many hearts +quickened in thought and feeling in this day suggests to me a deliberate +return to the recollectedness of the more tranquil language. 'Doubtless +there is a place of peace.' + +A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to charge +some of the moralists of the last century with an indifference into which +they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes educated +them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable of +coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is no +knowing to what distance the removal of the 'appropriate sentiment' from +the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal in +language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed +eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the +'pleasing hope,' the 'fond desire;' and the touch of war was distant from +him who conceived his 'repulsed battalions' and his 'doubtful battle.' +What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored once +more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too eager to go +into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable raptures over the +mere making of common words. 'A hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword! +Beautiful!' they cried; and for the love of German the youngest daughter +of Chrysale herself might have consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It +seemed to be forgotten that a language with all its construction visible +is a language little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that +its images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain +spiritualising and subtilising effect of alien derivations is a privilege +and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half of the language +within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions are at play +is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue, without the death. + +But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most beautiful +and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare. +'Superfluous kings,' 'A lass unparalleled,' 'Multitudinous seas:' we +needed not to wait for the eighteenth century or for the nineteenth to +learn the splendour of such encounters, of such differences, of such +nuptial unlikeness and union. But it is well that we should learn them +afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic +reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a +reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell +the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and the +pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement +expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse might render +us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with a touch a +modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for his son. +But it should not be attempted without a distinct intention of submission +on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against, trespassed +upon, shaken off, is like a law outstripped, defied--to the dignity +neither of the rebel nor of the rule. To Letters do we look now for the +guidance and direction which the very closeness of the emotion taking us +by the heart makes necessary. Shall not the Thing more and more, as we +compose ourselves to literature, assume the honour, the hesitation, the +leisure, the reconciliation of the Word? + + + + +DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + +It is good to go, now and again--let the American phrase be +permitted--'back of' some of our contemporaries. We never desired them +as coevals. We never wished to share an age with them; we share nothing +else with them. And we deliver ourselves from them by passing, in +literature, into the company of an author who wrote before their time, +and yet is familiarly modern. To read Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, then, +is to go behind the New Humorist--into a time before he was, or his +Humour. Obviously we go in like manner behind many another, but the +funny writer of the magazines is suggested because in reference to him +our act has a special significance. We connect him with Dr. Holmes by a +reluctant ancestry, by an impertinent descent. It may be objected that +such a connection is but a trivial thing to attribute, as a conspicuous +incident, to a man of letters. So it is. But the triviality has wide +allusions. It is often a question which of several significant +trivialities a critic shall choose in his communication with a reader who +does not insist that all the grave things shall be told him. And, by the +way, are we ever sufficiently grateful for that reader, whom the last few +years have given to us, or to whom we have been given by the last few +years? A trivial connexion has remote and negative issues. To go to Dr. +Oliver Wendell Holmes's period is to get rid of many things; to go to +himself is especially to get rid of the New Humour, yet to stand at its +unprophetic source. And we love such authors as Dickens and this +American for their own sake, refusing to be aware of their corrupt +following. We would make haste to ignore their posterity, and to assure +them that we absolve them from any fault of theirs in the bastardy. + +Humour is the most conspicuous thing in the world, which must explain why +the little humour in _Elsie Venner_ and the _Breakfast Table_ series +is not only the first thing the critic touches but the thing whereby he +relates this author to his following and to the world. The young man +John, Colonel Sprowle with his 'social entertainment,' the Landlady and +her daughter, and the Poor Relation, almost make up the sum of the comic +personages, and fifty per cent. of the things they say--no more--are good +enough to remain after the bloom of their vulgarity has worn off. But +that half is excellent, keen, jolly, temperate; and because of that +temperance--the most stimulating and fecundating of qualities--the humour +of it has set the literature of a hemisphere to the tune of mirth. Like +Mr. Lowell's it was humour in dialect--not Irish dialect nor negro, but +American; and it made New England aware of her comedy. Until then she +had felt within herself that there was nothing to laugh at. 'Nature is +in earnest when she makes a woman,' says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. +Rather, she takes herself seriously when she makes the average spiritual +woman: as seriously as that woman takes herself when she makes a novel. +And in a like mood Nature made New England and endowed her with purpose, +with mortuary frivolities, with long views, with energetic provincialism. + +If we remember best _The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay_, we do so in +spite of the religious and pathetic motive of the greater part of Dr. +Holmes's work, and of his fancy, which should be at least as conspicuous +as his humour. It is fancy rather than imagination; but it is more +perfect, more definite, more fit, than the larger art of imagery, which +is apt to be vague, because it is intellectual and adult. No grown man +makes quite so definite mental images as does a child; when the mind ages +it thinks stronger thoughts in vaguer pictures. The young mind of Dr. +Holmes has less intellectual imagination than intelligent fancy. For +example: 'If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird after him, you will get +an image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable +plumage flaps heavily along his straightforward course, while the other +sails round him, over him, under him, leaves him, comes back again, +tweaks out a black feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight of +him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same time the crow +does;' but the comparison goes on after this at needless length, with +explanations. Again: 'That blessed clairvoyance which sees into things +without opening them: that glorious licence which, having shut the door +and driven the reporter from the keyhole, calls upon Truth, majestic +Virgin! to get off from her pedestal and drop her academic _poses_.' And +this, of the Landlady: 'She told me her story once; it was as if a grain +that had been ground and bolted had tried to individualise itself by a +special narrative.' 'The riotous tumult of a laugh, which, I take it, is +the mob-law of the features.' 'Think of the Old World--that part of it +which is the seat of ancient civilisation! . . . A man cannot help +marching in step with his kind in the rear of such a procession.' 'Young +folk look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with any given +little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation.' And that +exquisitely sensitive passage on the nervous outward movement and the +inward tranquillity of the woods. Such things are the best this good +author gives us, whether they go gay with metaphor, or be bare thoughts +shapely with their own truth. + +Part of the charm of Dr. Holmes's comment on life, and of the phrase +wherein he secures it, arises from his singular vigilance. He has +unpreoccupied and alert eyes. Strangely enough, by the way, this +watchfulness is for once as much at fault as would be the slovenly +observation of an ordinary man, in the description of a horse's gallop, +'skimming along within a yard of the ground.' Who shall trust a man's +nimble eyes after this, when habit and credulity have taught him? Not an +inch nearer the ground goes the horse of fact at a gallop than at a walk. +But Dr. Holmes's vigilance helps him to somewhat squalid purpose in his +studies of New England inland life. Much careful literature besides has +been spent, after the example of _Elsie Venner_ and the _Autocrat_, +upon the cottage worldliness, the routine of abundant and common comforts +achieved by a distressing household industry, the shrillness, the unrest, +the best-parlour emulation, the ungraceful vanity, of Americans of the +country-side and the country-town; upon their affections made vulgar by +undemonstrativeness, and their consciences made vulgar by +demonstrativeness--their kindness by reticence, and their religion by +candour. + +As for the question of heredity and of individual responsibility which +Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes proposes in _Elsie Venner_, it is strange +that a man whom it had sincerely disquieted should present it--not in its +own insolubility but--in caricature. As though the secrets of the +inherited body and soul needed to be heightened by a bit of burlesque +physiology! It is in spite of our protest against the invention of +Elsie's horrible plight--a conception and invention which Dr. Oliver +Wendell Holmes should feel to be essentially frivolous--that the serpent- +maiden moves us deeply by her last 'Good night,' and by the gentle phrase +that tells us 'Elsie wept.' But now, if Dr. Holmes shall succeed in +proposing the question of separate responsibility so as to convince every +civilised mind of his doubts, there will be curiously little change +wrought thereby in the discipline of the world. For Dr. Holmes +incidentally lets us know that he cherishes and values the instinct of +intolerance and destructiveness in presence of the cruel, the +self-loving, and the false. Negation of separate moral responsibility, +when that negation is tempered by a working instinct of intolerance and +destructiveness, will deal with the felon, after all, very much in the +manner achieved by the present prevalent judicialness, unscientific +though it may be. And to say this is to confess that Dr. Oliver Wendell +Holmes has worked, through a number of books, to futile purpose. His +books are justified by something quite apart from his purpose. + + + + +JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL + + +The United States have produced authors not a few; among some names not +the most famous, perhaps, on the popular tongue, are two or three names +of their poets; but they have hardly given to the world more than one man +of letters--judicious, judicial, disinterested, patient, happy, +temperate, delighted. The colonial days, with the 'painful' divines who +brought the parish into the wilderness; the experimental period of +ambition and attempts at a literature that should be young as the soil +and much younger than the race; the civil-war years, with a literature +that matched the self-conscious and inexpert heroism of the army;--none +of these periods of the national life could fitly be represented by a man +of letters. And though James Russell Lowell was the contemporary of the +'transcendentalists,' and a man of middle age when the South seceded, and +though indeed his fame as a Yankee humourist is to be discerned through +the smoke and the dust, through the gravity and the burlesque, of the +war, clear upon the other side, yet he was virtually the child of +national leisure, of moderation and education, an American of the +seventies and onwards. He represented the little-recognised fact that in +ripeness, not in rawness, consists the excellence of Americans--an +excellence they must be content to share with contemporary nations, +however much it may cost them to abandon we know not what bounding +ambitions which they have never succeeded in definitely describing in +words. Mr. Lowell was a refutation of the fallacy that an American can +never be American enough. He ranked with the students and the critics +among all nations, and nothing marks his transatlantic conditions except, +perhaps, that his scholarliness is a little anxious and would not seem +so; he enriches his phrases busily, and yet would seem composed; he makes +his allusions tread closely one upon another, and there is an assumed +carelessness, and an ill-concealed vigilance, as to the effect their +number and their erudition will produce upon the reader. The American +sensitiveness takes with him that pleasantest of forms; his style +confesses more than he thinks of the loveable weakness of national +vanity, and asks of the stranger now and again, 'Well, what do you think +of my country?' + +Declining, as I do, to separate style in expression from style in the +thought that informs it--for they who make such a separation can hardly +know that style should be in the very conception of a phrase, in its +antenatal history, else the word is neither choice nor authentic--I +recognise in Mr. Lowell, as a prose author, a sense of proportion and a +delicacy of selection not surpassed in the critical work of this critical +century. Those small volumes, _Among My Books_ and _My Study +Windows_, are all pure literature. A fault in criticism is the rarest +thing in them. I call none to mind except the strange judgment on Dr. +Johnson: 'Our present concern with the Saxons is chiefly a literary one. +. . Take Dr. Johnson as an instance. The Saxon, as it appears to me, has +never shown any capacity for art,' and so forth. One wonders how Lowell +read the passage on Iona, and the letter to Lord Chesterfield, and the +Preface to the Dictionary without conviction of the great English +writer's supreme art--art that declares itself and would not be hidden. +But take the essay on Pope, that on Chaucer, and that on one Percival, a +writer of American verse of whom English readers are not aware, and they +prove Lowell to have been as clear in judging as he was exquisite in +sentencing. His essay 'On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners' is +famous, but an equal fame is due to 'My Garden Acquaintance' and 'A Good +Word for Winter.' His talk about the weather is so full of wit that one +wonders how prattlers at a loss for a topic dare attempt one so rich. The +birds that nest in his syringas seem to be not his pensioners only, but +his parishioners, so charmingly local, so intent upon his chronicle does +he become when he is minded to play White of Selborne with a smile. And +all the while it is the word that he is intent upon. You may trace his +reading by some fine word that has not escaped him, but has been garnered +for use when his fan has been quick to purge away the chaff of +commonplace. He is thus fastidious and alert in many languages. You +wonder at the delicacy of the sense whereby he perceives a choice rhyme +in the Anglo-Norman of Marie de France or a clang of arms in the brief +verse of Peire de Bergerac, or touches sensitively a word whereby Dante +has transcended something sweet in Bernard de Ventadour, or Virgil +somewhat noble in Homer. In his own use, and within his own English, he +has the abstinence and the freshness of intention that keep every word +new for the day's work. He gave to the language, and did not take from +it; it gained by him, and lost not. There are writers of English now at +work who almost convince us of their greatness until we convict them on +that charge: they have succeeded at an unpardonable cost; they are +glorified, but they have beggared the phrases they leave behind them. + +Nevertheless Lowell was no poet. To accept his verse as a poet's would +be to confess a lack of instinct, and there is no more grievous lack in a +lover of poetry. Reason, we grant, makes for the full acceptance of his +poems, and perhaps so judicial a mind as his may be forgiven for having +trusted to reason and to criticism. His trust was justified--if such +justification avails--by the admiration of fairly educated people who +apparently hold him to have been a poet first, a humourist in the second +place, and an essayist incidentally. It is hard to believe that he +failed in instinct about himself. More probably he was content to forego +it when he found the ode, the lyric, and the narrative verse all so +willing. They made no difficulty, and he made none; why then are we +reluctant to acknowledge the manifest stateliness of this verse and the +evident grace of that, and the fine thought finely worded? Such +reluctance justifies itself. Nor would I attempt to back it by the cheap +sanctions of prophecy. Nay, it is quite possible that Lowell's poems may +live; I have no commands for futurity. Enough that he enriched the +present with the example of a scholarly, linguistic, verbal love of +literature, with a studiousness full of heart. + + + + +DOMUS ANGUSTA + + +The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for its +slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but their +complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, of the human +lot. A disproportion--all in favour of man--between man and his destiny +is one of the things to be taken for granted in literature: so frequent +and so easy is the utterance of the habitual lamentation as to the +trouble of a 'vain capacity,' so well explained has it ever been. + + 'Thou hast not half the power to do me harm + That I have to be hurt,' + +discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the brave +Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow house. +Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution is there, little +argument or definition, little explicitness. And yet for every vain +capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain destinies, for every +liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. It is the trouble of the wide +house we hear of, clamorous of its disappointments and desires. The +narrow house has no echoes; yet its pathetic shortcoming might well move +pity. On that strait stage is acted a generous tragedy; to that +inadequate soul is intrusted an enormous sorrow; a tempest of movement +makes its home within that slender nature; and heroic happiness seeks +that timorous heart. + +We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its +inarticulateness--not, certainly, its fewness of words, but its +inadequacy and imprecision of speech. For, doubtless, right language +enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. Who, for +instance, but trusts more nobly for knowing the full word of his +confidence? Who but loves more penetratingly for possessing the ultimate +syllable of his tenderness? There is a 'pledging of the word,' in +another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and promise. The poet +pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and finds therein a peculiar +sanction. And I suppose that even physical pain takes on an edge when it +not only enforces a pang but whispers a phrase. Consciousness and the +word are almost as closely united as thought and the word. Almost--not +quite; in spite of its inexpressive speech, the narrow house is aware and +sensitive beyond, as it were, its poor power. + +But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, we know +it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; love is +great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic virtue; and +to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, submissive in the +indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the vulgar, secret in the +familiar. It is destructive because it not only closes but contradicts +life. Unlikely people die. The one certain thing, it is also the one +improbable. A dreadful paradox is perhaps wrought upon a little nature +that is incapable of death and yet is constrained to die. That is a true +destruction, and the thought of it is obscure. + +Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal pause. +It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical conclusion. Mrs. +Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. Considering her mental powers, +by the way, an illogical conclusion for her would be manifestly +inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having seen a life whole, sees it to +an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the +audacity that, having kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the +grotesque man in literature is immortal, and with something more +significant than the immortality awarded to him in the sayings of +rhetoric; he is predurable because he is not completed. His humours are +strangely matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; +for there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be +mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I thank +my fellow-mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke that the +French so pleasantly call _une joyeusete_; these are to smile at. But +the gay injustice of laughter is between me and the book. + +That narrow house--there is sometimes a message from its living windows. +Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by moments from eyes +that are apt to express none but common things. There are allusions +unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief glances. Far from me and +from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks in reply to pain +of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive and to hurt the foolish +and the stolid--wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? Not I, by +this heavenly light. + + + + +REJECTION + + +Simplicity is not virginal in the modern world. She has a penitential or +a vidual singleness. We can conceive an antique world in which life, +art, and letters were simple because of the absence of many things; for +us now they can be simple only because of our rejection of many things. +We are constrained to such a vigilance as will not let even a master's +work pass unfanned and unpurged. Even among his phrases one shall be +taken and the other left. For he may unawares have allowed the +habitualness that besets this multitudinous life to take the pen from his +hand and to write for him a page or a word; and habitualness compels our +refusals. Or he may have allowed the easy impulse of exaggeration to +force a sentence which the mere truth, sensitively and powerfully +pausing, would well have become. Exaggeration has played a part of its +own in human history. By depreciating our language it has stimulated +change, and has kept the circulating word in exercise. Our rejection +must be alert and expert to overtake exaggeration and arrest it. It +makes us shrewder than we wish to be. And, indeed, the whole endless +action of refusal shortens the life we could desire to live. Much of our +resolution is used up in the repeated mental gesture of adverse decision. +Our tacit and implicit distaste is made explicit, who shall say with what +loss to our treasury of quietness? We are defrauded of our interior +ignorance, which should be a place of peace. We are forced to confess +more articulately than befits our convention with ourselves. We are +hurried out of our reluctances. We are made too much aware. Nay, more: +we are tempted to the outward activity of destruction; reviewing becomes +almost inevitable. As for the spiritual life--O weary, weary act of +refusal! O waste but necessary hours, vigil and wakefulness of fear! 'We +live by admiration' only a shortened life who live so much in the +iteration of rejection and repulse. And in the very touch of joy there +hides I know not what ultimate denial; if not on one side, on the other. +If joy is given to us without reserve, not so do we give ourselves to +joy. We withhold, we close. Having denied many things that have +approached us, we deny ourselves to many things. Thus does _il gran +rifiuto_ divide and rule our world. + +Simplicity is worth the sacrifice; but all is not sacrifice. Rejection +has its pleasures, the more secret the more unmeasured. When we garnish +a house we refuse more furniture, and furniture more various, than might +haunt the dreams of decorators. There is no limit to our rejections. And +the unconsciousness of the decorators is in itself a cause of pleasure to +a mind generous, forbearing, and delicate. When we dress, no fancy may +count the things we will none of. When we write, what hinders that we +should refrain from Style past reckoning? When we marry--. Moreover, if +simplicity is no longer set in a world having the great and beautiful +quality of fewness, we can provide an equally fair setting in the quality +of refinement. And refinement is not to be achieved but by rejection. +One who suggests to me that refinement is apt to be a mere negative has +offered up a singular blunder in honour of robustiousness. Refinement is +not negative, because it must be compassed by many negations. It is a +thing of price as well as of value; it demands immolations, it exacts +experience. No slight or easy charge, then, is committed to such of us +as, having apprehension of these things, fulfil the office of exclusion. +Never before was a time when derogation was always so near, a daily +danger, or when the reward of resisting it was so great. The simplicity +of literature, more sensitive, more threatened, and more important than +other simplicities, needs a guard of honour, who shall never relax the +good will nor lose the good heart of their intolerance. + + + + +THE LESSON OF LANDSCAPE + + +The landscape, like our literature, is apt to grow and to get itself +formed under too luxurious ideals. This is the evil work of that +_little more_ which makes its insensible but persistent additions to +styles, to the arts, to the ornaments of life--to nature, when unluckily +man becomes too explicitly conscious of her beauty, and too deliberate in +his arrangement of it. The landscape has need of moderation, of that +fast-disappearing grace of unconsciousness, and, in short, of a return +towards the ascetic temper. The English way of landowning, above all, +has made for luxury. Naturally the country is fat. The trees are thick +and round--a world of leaves; the hills are round; the forms are all +blunt; and the grass is so deep as to have almost the effect of snow in +smoothing off all points and curving away all abruptness. England is +almost as blunt as a machine-made moulding or a piece of Early-Victorian +cast-iron work. And on all this we have, of set purpose, improved by our +invention of the country park. There all is curves and masses. A little +more is added to the greenness and the softness of the forest glade, and +for increase of ornament the fat land is devoted to idleness. Not a tree +that is not impenetrable, inarticulate. Thick soil below and thick +growth above cover up all the bones of the land, which in more delicate +countries show brows and hollows resembling those of a fine face after +mental experience. By a very intelligible paradox, it is only in a +landscape made up for beauty that beauty is so ill achieved. Much beauty +there must needs be where there are vegetation and the seasons. But even +the seasons, in park scenery, are marred by the _little too much_: +too complete a winter, too emphatic a spring, an ostentatious summer, an +autumn too demonstrative. + +'Seek to have less rather than more.' It is a counsel of perfection in +_The Imitation of Christ_. And here, undoubtedly, is the secret of +all that is virile and classic in the art of man, and of all in nature +that is most harmonious with that art. Moreover, this is the secret of +Italy. How little do the tourists and the poets grasp this latter truth, +by the way--and the artists! The legend of Italy is to be gorgeous, and +they have her legend by rote. But Italy is slim and all articulate; her +most characteristic trees are those that are distinct and distinguished, +with lines that suggest the etching-point rather than a brush loaded with +paint. Cypresses shaped like flames, tall pines with the abrupt flatness +of their tops, thin canes in the brakes, sharp aloes by the road-side, +and olives with the delicate acuteness of the leaf--these make keen lines +of slender vegetation. And they own the seasons by a gentle confession. +Rather than be overpowered by the clamorous proclamation of summer in the +English woods, we would follow June to this subtler South: even to the +Campagna, where the cycle of the seasons passes within such narrow +limitations that insensitive eyes scarcely recognise it. In early spring +there is a fresher touch of green on all the spaces of grass, the +distance grows less mellow and more radiant; by the coming of May the +green has been imperceptibly dimmed again; it blushes with the mingled +colours of minute and numberless flowers--a dust of flowers, in lines +longer than those of ocean billows. This is the desert blossoming like a +rose: not the obvious rose of gardens, but the multitudinous and various +flower that gathers once in the year in every hand's-breadth of the +wilderness. When June comes the sun has burnt all to leagues of +harmonious seed, coloured with a hint of the colour of harvest, which is +gradually changed to the lighter harmonies of winter. All this fine +chromatic scale passes within such modest boundaries that it is accused +as a monotony. But those who find its modesty delightful may have a +still more delicate pleasure in the blooming and blossoming of the sea. +The passing from the winter blue to the summer blue, from the cold colour +to the colour that has in it the fire of the sun, the kindling of the +sapphire of the Mediterranean--the significance of these sea-seasons, so +far from the pasture and the harvest, is imperceptible to ordinary +senses, as appears from the fact that so few stay to see it all +fulfilled. And if the tourist stayed, he would no doubt violate all that +is lovely and moderate by the insistence of his descriptions. He would +find adjectives for the blue sea, but probably he would refuse to search +for words for the white. A white Mediterranean is not in the legend. +Nevertheless it blooms, now and then, pale as an opal; the white sea is +the flower of the breathless midsummer. And in its clear, silent waters, +a few days, in the culmination of the heat, bring forth translucent +living creatures, many-shaped jelly-fish, coloured like mother-of-pearl. + +But without going so far from the landscape of daily life, it is in +agricultural Italy that the _little less_ makes so undesignedly, and as +it were so inevitably, for beauty. The country that is formed for use +and purpose only is immeasurably the loveliest. What a lesson in +literature! How feelingly it persuades us that all except a very little +of the ornament of letters and of life makes the dulness of the world. +The tenderness of colour, the beauty of series and perspective, and the +variety of surface, produced by the small culture of vegetables, are +among the charms that come unsought, and that are not to be found by +seeking--are never to be achieved if they are sought for their own sake. +And another of the delights of the useful laborious land is its vitality. +The soil may be thin and dry, but man's life is added to its own. He has +embanked the hill to make little platforms for the growth of wheat in the +light shadows of olive leaves. Thanks to the metayer land-tenure, man's +heart, as well as his strength, is given to the ground, with his hope and +his honour. Louis Blanc's 'point of honour of industry' is a conscious +impulse--it is not too much to say--with most of the Tuscan contadini; +but as each effort they make for their master they make also for the +bread of their children, it is no wonder that the land they cultivate has +a look of life. But in all colour, in all luxury, and in all that gives +material for picturesque English, this lovely scenery for food and wine +and raiment has that _little less_ to which we desire to recall a +rhetorical world. + + + + +MR. COVENTRY PATMORE'S ODES + + +To most of the great poets no greater praise can be given than praise of +their imagery. Imagery is the natural language of their poetry. Without +a parable she hardly speaks. But undoubtedly there is now and then a +poet who touches the thing, not its likeness, too vitally, too +sensitively, for even such a pause as the verse makes for love of the +beautiful image. Those rare moments are simple, and their simplicity +makes one of the reader's keenest experiences. Other simplicities may be +achieved by lesser art, but this is transcendent simplicity. There is +nothing in the world more costly. It vouches for the beauty which it +transcends; it answer for the riches it forbears; it implies the art +which it fulfils. All abundance ministers to it, though it is so single. +And here we get the sacrificial quality which is the well-kept secret of +art at this perfection. All the faculties of the poet are used for +preparing this naked greatness--are used and fruitfully spent and shed. +The loveliness that stands and waits on the simplicity of certain of Mr. +Coventry Patmore's Odes, the fervours and splendours that are there, only +to be put to silence--to silence of a kind that would be impossible were +they less glorious--are testimonies to the difference between sacrifice +and waste. + +But does it seem less than reasonable to begin a review of a poet's work +with praise of an infrequent mood? Infrequent such a mood must needs be, +yet it is in a profound sense characteristic. To have attained it once +or twice is to have proved such gift and grace as a true history of +literature would show to be above price, even gauged by the rude measure +of rarity. Transcendent simplicity could not possibly be habitual. Man +lives within garments and veils, and art is chiefly concerned with making +mysteries of these for the loveliness of his life; when they are rent +asunder it is impossible not to be aware that an overwhelming human +emotion has been in action. Thus _Departure_, _If I were Dead_, +_A Farewell_, _Eurydice_, _The Toys_, _St. Valentine's +Day_--though here there is in the exquisite imaginative play a +mitigation of the bare vitality of feeling--group themselves apart as the +innermost of the poet's achievements. + +Second to these come the Odes that have splendid thought in great images, +and display--rather than, as do the poems first glanced at, betray--the +beauties of poetic art. Emotion is here, too, and in shocks and throes, +never frantic when almost intolerable. It is mortal pathos. If any +other poet has filled a cup with a draught so unalloyed, we do not know +it. Love and sorrow are pure in _The Unknown Eros_; and its author +has not refused even the cup of terror. Against love often, against +sorrow nearly always, against fear always, men of sensibility +instantaneously guard the quick of their hearts. It is only the approach +of the pang that they will endure; from the pang itself, dividing soul +and spirit, a man who is conscious of a profound capacity for passion +defends himself in the twinkling of an eye. But through nearly the whole +of Coventry Patmore's poetry there is an endurance of the mortal touch. +Nay, more, he has the endurance of the immortal touch. That is, his +capacity for all the things that men elude for their greatness is more +than the capacity of other men. He endures therefore what they could but +will not endure and, besides this, degrees that they cannot apprehend. +Thus, to have studied _The Unknown Eros_ is to have had a certain +experience--at least the impassioned experience of a compassion; but it +is also to have recognised a soul beyond our compassion. + +What some of the Odes have to sing of, their author does not insist upon +our knowing. He leaves more liberty for a well-intentioned reader's +error than makes for peace and recollection of mind in reading. That the +general purpose of the poems is obscure is inevitable. It has the +obscurity of profound clear waters. What the poet chiefly secures to us +is the understanding that love and its bonds, its bestowal and reception, +does but rehearse the action of the union of God with humanity--that +there is no essential man save Christ, and no essential woman except the +soul of mankind. When the singer of a Song of Songs seems to borrow the +phrase of human love, it is rather that human love had first borrowed the +truths of the love of God. The thought grows gay in the three _Psyche_ +odes, or attempts a gaiety--the reader at least being somewhat reluctant. +How is it? Mr. Coventry Patmore's play more often than not wins you to +but a slow participation. Perhaps because some thrust of his has left +you still tremulous. + +But the inequality of equal lovers, sung in these Odes with a Divine +allusion, is a most familiar truth. Love that is passionate has much of +the impulse of gravitation--gravitation that is not falling, as there is +no downfall in the precipitation of the sidereal skies. The love of the +great for the small is the passionate love; the upward love hesitates and +is fugitive. St. Francis Xavier asked that the day of his ecstasy might +be shortened; Imogen, the wife of all poetry, 'prays forbearance;' the +child is 'fretted with sallies of his mothers kisses.' It might be +drawing an image too insistently to call this a centrifugal impulse. + +The art that utters an intellectual action so courageous, an emotion so +authentic, as that of Mr. Coventry Patmore's poetry, cannot be otherwise +than consummate. Often the word has a fulness of significance that gives +the reader a shock of appreciation. This is always so in those simplest +odes which we have taken as the heart of the author's work. Without such +wonderful rightness, simplicity of course is impossible. Nor is that +beautiful precision less in passages of description, such as the +landscape lines in _Amelia_ and elsewhere. The words are used to the +uttermost yet with composure. And a certain justness of utterance +increases the provocation of what we take leave to call unjust thought in +the few poems that proclaim an intemperate scorn--political, social, +literary. The poems are but two or three; they are to be known by their +subjects--we might as well do something to justify their scorn by using +the most modern of adjectives--and call them topical. Here assuredly +there is no composure. Never before did superiority bear itself with so +little of its proper, signal, and peculiar grace--reluctance. + +If Mr. Patmore really intends that his Odes shall be read with minim, or +crochet, or quaver rests, to fill up a measure of beaten time, we are +free to hold that he rather arbitrarily applies to liberal verse the laws +of verse set for use--cradle verse and march-marking verse (we are, of +course, not considering verse set to music, and thus compelled into the +musical time). Liberal verse, dramatic, narrative, meditative, can +surely be bound by no time measures--if for no other reason, for this: +that to prescribe pauses is also to forbid any pauses unprescribed. +Granting, however, his principle of catalexis, we still doubt whether the +irregular metre of _The Unknown Eros_ is happily used except for the +large sweep of the flight of the Ode more properly so called. _Lycidas_, +the _Mrs. Anne Killigrew_, the _Intimations_, and Emerson's +_Threnody_, considered merely for their versification, fulfil their laws +so perfectly that they certainly move without checks as without haste. So +with the graver Odes--much in the majority--of Mr. Coventry Patmore's +series. A more lovely dignity of extension and restriction, a more +touching sweetness of simple and frequent rhyme, a truer impetus of pulse +and impulse, English verse could hardly yield than are to be found in his +versification. And what movement of words has ever expressed flight, +distance, mystery, and wonderful approach, as they are expressed in a +celestial line--the eighth in the ode _To the Unknown Eros_? When +we are sensible of a metrical cheek it is in this way: To the English ear +the heroic line is the unit of metre, and when two lines of various +length undesignedly add together to form a heroic line, they have to be +separated with something of a jerk. And this adding--as, for instance, +of a line of four syllables preceding or following one of six--occurs now +and then, and even in such a masterly measure of music as _A Farewell_. +It is as when a sail suddenly flaps windless in the fetching about of a +boat. In _The Angel in the House_, and other earlier poems, Mr. +Coventry Patmore used the octosyllabic stanza perfectly, inasmuch as he +never left it either heavily or thinly packed. Moreover those first +poems had a composure which was the prelude to the peace of the Odes. And +even in his slightest work he proves himself the master--that is, the +owner--of words that, owned by him, are unprofaned, are as though they +had never been profaned; the capturer of an art so quick and close that +it is the voice less of a poet than of the very Muse. + + + + +INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE + + +I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words in +union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union in the +art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are for each +poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to take the +cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in place of the +virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly consent to take them +for ordering even the most habitual of daily affairs--is to forego +Innocence and Experience at once and together. Obviously, Experience can +be nothing except personal and separate; and Innocence of a singularly +solitary quality is his who does not dip his hands into other men's +histories, and does not give to his own word the common sanction of other +men's summaries and conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and +Experience in one, and take them as a sign of the necessary and noble +isolation of man from man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to +forego that manner of personal separateness, and to use the things of +others, I think I would rather appropriate their future than their past. +Let me put on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must +borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified +ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my memory +with an unjustifiable history. + +And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love-poetry +consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no reluctance in +adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom they have not even +been introduced. Their verse is full of ready-made memories, various, +numerous, and cruel. No single life--supposing it to be a liberal life +concerned with something besides sex--could quite suffice for so much +experience, so much disillusion, so much _deception_. To achieve that +tone in its fulness it is necessary to take for one's own the +_praeterita_ (say) of Alfred de Musset and of the men who helped him--not +to live but--to have lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than +any man lives, and to make a common hoard of erotic remembrances with all +kinds of poets. + +As the Franciscans wear each other's old habits, and one Friar goes about +darned because of another's rending, so the poet of a certain order grows +cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not otherwise will the +resultant verse succeed in implying so much--or rather so many, in the +feminine plural. The man of very sensitive individuality might hesitate +at the adoption. The Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness +and to overcome it. But these poets so triumph over their repugnance +that it does not appear. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather +to make use of one's fellowmen's old shoes than put their old secrets to +use, and dress one's art in a motley of past passions. Moreover, to +utilise the mental experience of many is inevitably to use their verse +and phrase. For the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are +familiar enough. One of them is the absence of the word of promise and +pledge, the loss of the earliest and simplest of the impulses of love: +which is the vow. 'Till death!' 'For ever!' are cries too simple and too +natural to be commonplace, and in their denial there is the least +tolerable of banalities--that of other men's disillusions. + +Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature a +delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of assumption, +of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose love-poetry were +thus true, and whose _pudeur_ of personality thus simple and inviolate. +This is the private man, in other words the gentleman, who will neither +love nor remember in public. + + + + +PENULTIMATE CARICATURE + + +There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, of a +certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century and +earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its notice the +vulgarising of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas Jerrold +for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that humourist's serial, +_Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_, which were presumably considered +good comic reading in the _Punch_ of that time, and to make acquaintance +with a certain ideal of the grotesque. Obviously to make a serious +comment on anything which others consider or have considered humorous is +to put one's-self at a disadvantage. He who sees the joke holds himself +somewhat the superior of the man who would see it, such as it is, if he +thought it worth his eyesight. The last-named has to bear the least +tolerable of modern reproaches; but he need not always care. Now to turn +over Douglas Jerrold's monologues is to find that people in the +mid-century took their mirth principally from the life of the _arriere +boutique_. On that shabby stage was enacted the comedy of literature. +Therefore we must take something of the vulgarity of Jerrold as a +circumstance of the social ranks wherein he delighted. But the essential +vulgarity is that of the woman. There is in some old _Punch_ volume a +drawing by Leech--whom one is weary of hearing named the gentle, the +refined--where the work of the artist has vied with the spirit of the +letter-press. Douglas Jerrold treats of the woman's jealousy, Leech of +her stays. They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And +page by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that time +there was, moreover, one great humourist; he bore his part willingly in +vulgarising the woman; and the part that fell to him was the vulgarising +of the act of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing man at the law for +evading her fatuous companionship, woman incoherent, woman abandoned +without restraint to violence and temper, woman feigning sensibility--in +none of these ignominies is woman so common, foul, and foolish for +Dickens as she is in child-bearing. + +I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are +humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is +moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is that +her husband--himself wearisome enough to die of--is weary of her, finds +the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him that she should +furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, to the annoyance of her +husband, and that her husband should have no desire to adorn her, and +that her mother should be intolerable. It pleases him that her baby, +with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette in its hat--a burlesque +baby--should be a grotesque object of her love, for that too makes subtly +for her abasement. Charles Keene, again--another contemporary, though he +lived into a later and different time. He saw little else than common +forms of human ignominy--indignities of civic physique, of stupid +prosperity, of dress, of bearing. He transmits these things in greater +proportion than he found them--whether for love of the humour of them, or +by a kind of inverted disgust that is as eager as delight--one is not +sure which is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities is rendered +with a completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain +sensitiveness of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get +convinced that real apprehension--real apprehensiveness--would not have +insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through almost +a whole career. There is one drawing in the _Punch_ of years ago, in +which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible to even the +invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual broadcloth, has +gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and his umbrella open, and +the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when she awakes, the wife asleep +at his side in a nightcap. Every one who knows Keene's work can imagine +how the huge well-fed figure was drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across +the back, and how the bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene +drawing is matched by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, +ignominies of married life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old +common jape against the mother-in-law; ill-dressed men with whisky--ill- +dressed women with tempers; everything that is underbred and decivilised; +abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom with shambling sidelong +legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, +'No, never was.' In all these things there is very little humour. Where +Keene achieved fun was in the figures of his schoolboys. The hint of +tenderness which in really fine work could never be absent from a man's +thought of a child or from his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the +subject in hand, is absolutely lacking in Keene's designs; nevertheless, +we acknowledge that here is humour. It is also in some of his clerical +figures when they are not caricatures, and certainly in 'Robert,' the +City waiter of _Punch_. But so irresistible is the derision of the woman +that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent +centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, +never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; +but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon +whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is +the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, what then is she? + +This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular form +of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the habit by which +some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, whereas a silly man is +not reproached through his sex. But the vulgarity of which I have +written here was distinctively English--the most English thing that +England had in days when she bragged of many another--and it was not able +to survive an increased commerce of manners and letters with France. It +was the chief immorality destroyed by French fiction. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RHYTHM OF LIFE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1276.txt or 1276.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/7/1276 + + + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: +https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + |