diff options
Diffstat (limited to '1491-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 1491-0.txt | 4125 |
1 files changed, 4125 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/1491-0.txt b/1491-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98c7da4 --- /dev/null +++ b/1491-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4125 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Letters to Dead Authors, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Letters to Dead Authors + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: September 14, 2014 [eBook #1491] +[This file was first posted on 10 August 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1886 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + LETTERS + TO + DEAD AUTHORS + + + BY + ANDREW LANG + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + LONDON + LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. + 1886 + + _All rights reserved_ + + * * * * * + + TO + + MISS THACKERAY + + THESE EXERCISES + + IN THE ART OF DIPPING + + ARE DEDICATED + + * * * * * + + + + +PREFACE. + + +SIXTEEN of these Letters, which were written at the suggestion of the +Editor of the “St. James’s Gazette,” appeared in that journal, from which +they are now reprinted, by the Editor’s kind permission. They have been +somewhat emended, and a few additions have been made. The Letters to +Horace, Byron, Isaak Walton, Chapelain, Ronsard, and Theocritus have not +been published before. + +The gem on the title-page, now engraved for the first time, is a red +cornelian in the British Museum, probably Græco-Roman, and treated in an +archaistic style. It represents Hermes Psychagogos, with a Soul, and has +some likeness to the Baptism of Our Lord, as usually shown in art. +Perhaps it may be post-Christian. The gem was selected by Mr. A. S. +Murray. + +It is, perhaps, superfluous to add that some of the Letters are written +rather to suit the Correspondent than to express the writer’s own taste +or opinions. The Epistle to Lord Byron, especially, is “writ in a manner +which is my aversion.” + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE + I. TO W. M. THACKERAY 1 + II. TO CHARLES DICKENS 10 + III. TO PIERRE DE RONSARD 22 + IV. TO HERODOTUS 34 + V. EPISTLE TO MR. ALEXANDER POPE 46 + VI. TO LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 55 + VII. TO MAÎTRE FRANÇOYS RABELAIS 66 + VIII. TO JANE AUSTEN 75 + IX. TO MASTER ISAAK WALTON 86 + X. TO M. CHAPELAIN 98 + XI. TO SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, KT. 110 + XII. TO ALEXANDRE DUMAS 119 + XIII. TO THEOCRITUS 130 + XIV. TO EDGAR ALLAN POE 140 + XV. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 152 + XVI. TO EUSEBIUS OF CÆSAREA 162 + XVII. TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 173 + XVIII. TO MONSIEUR DE MOLIÈRE, VALET DE CHAMBRE DU ROI 184 + XIX. TO ROBERT BURNS 195 + XX. TO LORD BYRON 205 + XXI. TO OMAR KHAYYÂM 216 + XXII. TO Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS 223 + + + + +I. +_To W. M. Thackeray_. + + +SIR,—There are many things that stand in the way of the critic when he +has a mind to praise the living. He may dread the charge of writing +rather to vex a rival than to exalt the subject of his applause. He +shuns the appearance of seeking the favour of the famous, and would not +willingly be regarded as one of the many parasites who now advertise each +movement and action of contemporary genius. “Such and such men of +letters are passing their summer holidays in the Val d’Aosta,” or the +Mountains of the Moon, or the Suliman Range, as it may happen. So +reports our literary “Court Circular,” and all our _Précieuses_ read the +tidings with enthusiasm. Lastly, if the critic be quite new to the world +of letters, he may superfluously fear to vex a poet or a novelist by the +abundance of his eulogy. No such doubts perplex us when, with all our +hearts, we would commend the departed; for they have passed almost beyond +the reach even of envy; and to those pale cheeks of theirs no +commendation can bring the red. + +You, above all others, were and remain without a rival in your many-sided +excellence, and praise of you strikes at none of those who have survived +your day. The increase of time only mellows your renown, and each year +that passes and brings you no successor does but sharpen the keenness of +our sense of loss. In what other novelist, since Scott was worn down by +the burden of a forlorn endeavour, and died for honour’s sake, has the +world found so many of the fairest gifts combined? If we may not call +you a poet (for the first of English writers of light verse did not seek +that crown), who that was less than a poet ever saw life with a glance so +keen as yours, so steady, and so sane? Your pathos was never cheap, your +laughter never forced; your sigh was never the pulpit trick of the +preacher. Your funny people—your Costigans and Fokers—were not mere +characters of trick and catch-word, were not empty comic masks. Behind +each the human heart was beating; and ever and again we were allowed to +see the features of the man. + +Thus fiction in your hands was not simply a profession, like another, but +a constant reflection of the whole surface of life: a repeated echo of +its laughter and its complaint. Others have written, and not written +badly, with the stolid professional regularity of the clerk at his desk; +you, like the Scholar Gipsy, might have said that “it needs heaven-sent +moments for this skill.” There are, it will not surprise you, some +honourable women and a few men who call you a cynic; who speak of “the +withered world of Thackerayan satire;” who think your eyes were ever +turned to the sordid aspects of life—to the mother-in-law who threatens +to “take away her silver bread-basket;” to the intriguer, the sneak, the +termagant; to the Beckys, and Barnes Newcomes, and Mrs. Mackenzies of +this world. The quarrel of these sentimentalists is really with life, +not with you; they might as wisely blame Monsieur Buffon because there +are snakes in his Natural History. Had you not impaled certain noxious +human insects, you would have better pleased Mr. Ruskin; had you confined +yourself to such performances, you would have been more dear to the +Neo-Balzacian school in fiction. + +You are accused of never having drawn a good woman who was not a doll, +but the ladies that bring this charge seldom remind us either of Lady +Castlewood or of Theo or Hetty Lambert. The best women can pardon you +Becky Sharp and Blanche Amory; they find it harder to forgive you Emmy +Sedley and Helen Pendennis. Yet what man does not know in his heart that +the best women—God bless them—lean, in their characters, either to the +sweet passiveness of Emmy or to the sensitive and jealous affections of +Helen? ’Tis Heaven, not you, that made them so; and they are easily +pardoned, both for being a very little lower than the angels and for +their gentle ambition to be painted, as by Guido or Guercino, with wings +and harps and haloes. So ladies have occasionally seen their own faces +in the glass of fancy, and, thus inspired, have drawn Romola and +Consuelo. Yet when these fair idealists, Mdme. Sand and George Eliot, +designed Rosamund Vincy and Horace, was there not a spice of malice in +the portraits which we miss in your least favourable studies? + +That the creator of Colonel Newcome and of Henry Esmond was a snarling +cynic; that he who designed Rachel Esmond could not draw a good woman: +these are the chief charges (all indifferent now to you, who were once so +sensitive) that your admirers have to contend against. A French critic, +M. Taine, also protests that you do preach too much. Did any author but +yourself so frequently break the thread (seldom a strong thread) of his +plot to converse with his reader and moralise his tale, we also might be +offended. But who that loves Montaigne and Pascal, who that likes the +wise trifling of the one and can bear with the melancholy of the other, +but prefers your preaching to another’s playing! + +Your thoughts come in, like the intervention of the Greek Chorus, as an +ornament and source of fresh delight. Like the songs of the Chorus, they +bid us pause a moment over the wider laws and actions of human fate and +human life, and we turn from your persons to yourself, and again from +yourself to your persons, as from the odes of Sophocles or Aristophanes +to the action of their characters on the stage. Nor, to my taste, does +the mere music and melancholy dignity of your style in these passages of +meditation fall far below the highest efforts of poetry. I remember that +scene where Clive, at Barnes Newcome’s Lecture on the Poetry of the +Affections, sees Ethel who is lost to him. “And the past and its dear +histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and tones and looks for +ever echoing in the heart and present in the memory—these, no doubt, poor +Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time, and +parting and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many years.” + +_For ever echoing in the heart and present in the memory_: who has not +heard these tones, who does not hear them as he turns over your books +that, for so many years, have been his companions and comforters? We +have been young and old, we have been sad and merry with you, we have +listened to the midnight chimes with Pen and Warrington, have stood with +you beside the death-bed, have mourned at that yet more awful funeral of +lost love, and with you have prayed in the inmost chapel sacred to our +old and immortal affections, _à léal souvenir_! And whenever you speak +for yourself, and speak in earnest, how magical, how rare, how lonely in +our literature is the beauty of your sentences! “I can’t express the +charm of them” (so you write of George Sand; so we may write of you): +“they seem to me like the sound of country bells, provoking I don’t know +what vein of music and meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the +ear.” Surely that style, so fresh, so rich, so full of surprises—that +style which stamps as classical your fragments of slang, and perpetually +astonishes and delights—would alone give immortality to an author, even +had he little to say. But you, with your whole wide world of fops and +fools, of good women and brave men, of honest absurdities and cheery +adventurers: you who created the Steynes and Newcomes, the Beckys and +Blanches, Captain Costigan and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong—all that +host of friends imperishable—you must survive with Shakespeare and +Cervantes in the memory and affection of men. + + + + +II. +_To Charles Dickens_. + + +SIR,—It has been said that every man is born a Platonist or an +Aristotelian, though the enormous majority of us, to be sure, live and +die without being conscious of any invidious philosophic partiality +whatever. With more truth (though that does not imply very much) every +Englishman who reads may be said to be a partisan of yourself or of Mr. +Thackeray. Why should there be any partisanship in the matter; and why, +having two such good things as your novels and those of your +contemporary, should we not be silently happy in the possession? Well, +men are made so, and must needs fight and argue over their tastes in +enjoyment. For myself, I may say that in this matter I am what the +Americans do _not_ call a “Mugwump,” what English politicians dub a +“superior person”—that is, I take no side, and attempt to enjoy the best +of both. + +It must be owned that this attitude is sometimes made a little difficult +by the vigour of your special devotees. They have ceased, indeed, thank +Heaven! to imitate you; and even in “descriptive articles” the touch of +Mr. Gigadibs, of him whom “we almost took for the true Dickens,” has +disappeared. The young lions of the Press no longer mimic your less +admirable mannerisms—do not strain so much after fantastic comparisons, +do not (in your manner and Mr. Carlyle’s) give people nick-names derived +from their teeth, or their complexion; and, generally, we are spared +second-hand copies of all that in your style was least to be commended. +But, though improved by lapse of time in this respect, your devotees +still put on little conscious airs of virtue, robust manliness, and so +forth, which would have irritated you very much, and there survive some +press men who seem to have read you a little (especially your later +works), and never to have read anything else. Now familiarity with the +pages of “Our Mutual Friend” and “Dombey and Son” does not precisely +constitute a liberal education, and the assumption that it does is apt +(quite unreasonably) to prejudice people against the greatest comic +genius of modern times. + +On the other hand, Time is at last beginning to sift the true admirers of +Dickens from the false. Yours, Sir, in the best sense of the word, is a +popular success, a popular reputation. For example, I know that, in a +remote and even Pictish part of this kingdom, a rural household, humble +and under the shadow of a sorrow inevitably approaching, has found in +“David Copperfield” oblivion of winter, of sorrow, and of sickness. On +the other hand, people are now picking up heart to say that “they cannot +read Dickens,” and that they particularly detest “Pickwick.” I believe +it was young ladies who first had the courage of their convictions in +this respect. “Tout sied aux belles,” and the fair, in the confidence of +youth, often venture on remarkable confessions. In your “Natural History +of Young Ladies” I do not remember that you describe the Humorous Young +Lady. {13} She is a very rare bird indeed, and humour generally is at a +deplorably low level in England. + +Hence come all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and it may be +said that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with Irish murder and +arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric Buddhism, and a score +of other plagues, including what was once called Æstheticism, are all, +primarily, due to want of humour. People discuss, with the gravest +faces, matters which properly should only be stated as the wildest +paradoxes. It naturally follows that, in a period almost destitute of +humour, many respectable persons “cannot read Dickens,” and are not +ashamed to glory in their shame. We ought not to be angry with others +for their misfortunes; and yet when one meets the _crétins_ who boast +that they cannot read Dickens, one certainly does feel much as Mr. Samuel +Weller felt when he encountered Mr. Job Trotter. + +How very singular has been the history of the decline of humour! Is +there any profound psychological truth to be gathered from consideration +of the fact that humour has gone out with cruelty? A hundred years ago, +eighty years ago—nay, fifty years ago—we were a cruel but also a humorous +people. We had bull-baitings, and badger-drawings, and hustings, and +prize-fights, and cock-fights; we went to see men hanged; the pillory and +the stocks were no empty “terrors unto evil-doers,” for there was +commonly a malefactor occupying each of these institutions. With all +this we had a broad-blown comic sense. We had Hogarth, and Bunbury, and +George Cruikshank, and Gilray; we had Leech and Surtees, and the creator +of Tittlebat Titmouse; we had the Shepherd of the “Noctes,” and, above +all, we had _you_. + +From the old giants of English fun—burly persons delighting in broad +caricature, in decided colours, in cockney jokes, in swashing blows at +the more prominent and obvious human follies—from these you derived the +splendid high spirits and unhesitating mirth of your earlier works. Mr. +Squeers, and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and all the Pickwickians, and Mr. +Dowler, and John Browdie—these and their immortal companions were reared, +so to speak, on the beef and beer of that naughty, fox-hunting, +badger-baiting old England, which we have improved out of existence. And +these characters, assuredly, are your best; by them, though stupid people +cannot read about them, you will live while there is a laugh left among +us. Perhaps that does not assure you a very prolonged existence, but +only the future can show. + +The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last for ever and +a day. Honest old Laughter, the true _lutin_ of your inspiration, must +have life left in him yet, and cannot die; though it is true that the +taste for your pathos, and your melodrama, and plots constructed after +your favourite fashion (“Great Expectations” and the “Tale of Two Cities” +are exceptions) may go by and never be regretted. Were people simpler, +or only less clear-sighted, as far as your pathos is concerned, a +generation ago? Jeffrey, the hard-headed shallow critic, who declared +that Wordsworth “would never do,” cried, “wept like anything,” over your +Little Nell. One still laughs as heartily as ever with Dick Swiveller; +but who can cry over Little Nell? + +Ah, Sir, how could you—who knew so intimately, who remembered so +strangely well the fancies, the dreams, the sufferings of childhood—how +could you “wallow naked in the pathetic,” and massacre holocausts of the +Innocents? To draw tears by gloating over a child’s death-bed, was it +worthy of you? Was it the kind of work over which our hearts should +melt? I confess that Little Nell might die a dozen times, and be +welcomed by whole legions of Angels, and I (like the bereaved fowl +mentioned by Pet Marjory) would remain unmoved. + + She was more than usual calm, + She did not give a single dam, + +wrote the astonishing child who diverted the leisure of Scott. Over your +Little Nell and your Little Dombey I remain more than usual calm; and +probably so do thousands of your most sincere admirers. But about matter +of this kind, and the unseating of the fountains of tears, who can argue? +Where is taste? where is truth? What tears are “manly, Sir, manly,” as +Fred Bayham has it; and of what lamentations ought we rather to be +ashamed? _Sunt lacrymæ rerum_; one has been moved in the cell where +Socrates tasted the hemlock; or by the river-banks where Syracusan arrows +slew the parched Athenians among the mire and blood; or, in fiction, when +Colonel Newcome says _Adsum_, or over the diary of Clare Doria Forey, or +where Aramis laments, with strange tears, the death of Porthos. But over +Dombey (the Son), or Little Nell, one declines to snivel. + +When an author deliberately sits down and says, “Now, let us have a good +cry,” he poisons the wells of sensibility and chokes, at least in many +breasts, the fountain of tears. Out of “Dombey and Son” there is little +we care to remember except the deathless Mr. Toots; just as we forget the +melodramatics of “Martin Chuzzlewit.” I have read in that book a score +of times; I never see it but I revel in it—in Pecksniff, and Mrs. Gamp, +and the Americans. But what the plot is all about, what Jonas did, what +Montagu Tigg had to make in the matter, what all the pictures with plenty +of shading illustrate, I have never been able to comprehend. In the same +way, one of your most thorough-going admirers has allowed (in the licence +of private conversation) that “Ralph Nickleby and Monk are too steep;” +and probably a cultivated taste will always find them a little +precipitous. + +“Too steep:”—the slang expresses that defect of an ardent genius, carried +above itself, and out of the air we breathe, both in its grotesque and in +its gloomy imaginations. To force the note, to press fantasy too hard, +to deepen the gloom with black over the indigo, that was the failing +which proved you mortal. To take an instance in little: when Pip went to +Mr. Pumblechook’s, the boy thought the seedsman “a very happy man to have +so many little drawers in his shop.” The reflection is thoroughly +boyish; but then you add, “I wondered whether the flower-seeds and bulbs +ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails and bloom.” That +is not boyish at all; that is the hard-driven, jaded literary fancy at +work. + +“So we arraign her; but she,” the Genius of Charles Dickens, how +brilliant, how kindly, how beneficent she is! dwelling by a fountain of +laughter imperishable; though there is something of an alien salt in the +neighbouring fountain of tears. How poor the world of fancy would be, +how “dispeopled of her dreams,” if, in some ruin of the social system, +the books of Dickens were lost; and if The Dodger, and Charley Bates, and +Mr. Crinkle, and Miss Squeers and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and Dick +Swiveller were to perish, or to vanish with Menander’s men and women! We +cannot think of our world without them; and, children of dreams as they +are, they seem more essential than great statesmen, artists, soldiers, +who have actually worn flesh and blood, ribbons and orders, gowns and +uniforms. May we not almost welcome “Free Education”? for every +Englishman who can read, unless he be an Ass, is a reader the more for +you. + +P.S.—Alas, how strangely are we tempered, and how strong is the national +bias! I have been saying things of you that I would not hear an enemy +say. When I read, in the criticism of an American novelist, about your +“hysterical emotionality” (for he writes in American), and your “waste of +verbiage,” I am almost tempted to deny that our Dickens has a single +fault, to deem you impeccable! + + + +III. +_To Pierre de Ronsard_ +(PRINCE OF POETS) + + +MASTER AND PRINCE OF POETS,—As we know what choice thou madest of a +sepulchre (a choice how ill fulfilled by the jealousy of Fate), so we +know well the manner of thy chosen immortality. In the Plains Elysian, +among the heroes and the ladies of old song, there was thy Love with thee +to enjoy her paradise in an eternal spring. + + _Là du plaisant Avril la saison immortelle_ + _Sans eschange le suit_, + _La terre sans labour, de sa grasse mamelle_, + _Toute chose y produit_; + _D’enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse_, + _Nous honorant sur tous_, + _Viendra nous saluer, s’estimant bien-heureuse_ + _De s’accointer de nous_. + +There thou dwellest, with the learned lovers of old days, with Belleau, +and Du Bellay, and Baïf, and the flower of the maidens of Anjou. Surely +no rumour reaches thee, in that happy place of reconciled affections, no +rumour of the rudeness of Time, the despite of men, and the change which +stole from thy locks, so early grey, the crown of laurels and of thine +own roses. How different from thy choice of a sepulchre have been the +fortunes of thy tomb! + + I will that none should break + The marble for my sake, + Wishful to make more fair + My sepulchre! + +So didst thou sing, or so thy sweet numbers run in my rude English. +Wearied of Courts and of priories, thou didst desire a grave beside thine +own Loire, not remote from + + The caves, the founts that fall + From the high mountain wall, + That fall and flash and fleet, + With silver feet. + + Only a laurel tree + Shall guard the grave of me; + Only Apollo’s bough + Shall shade me now! + +Far other has been thy sepulchre: not in the free air, among the field +flowers, but in thy priory of Saint Cosme, with marble for a monument, +and no green grass to cover thee. Restless wert thou in thy life; thy +dust was not to be restful in thy death. The Huguenots, _ces nouveaux +Chrétiens qui la France ont pillée_, destroyed thy tomb, and the warning +of the later monument, + + ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCUS HUMUM SACRA EST, + +has not scared away malicious men. The storm that passed over France a +hundred years ago, more terrible than the religious wars that thou didst +weep for, has swept the column from the tomb. The marble was broken by +violent hands, and the shattered sepulchre of the Prince of Poets gained +a dusty hospitality from the museum of a country town. Better had been +the laurel of thy desire, the creeping vine, and the ivy tree. + +Scarce more fortunate, for long, than thy monument was thy memory. Thou +hast not encountered, Master, in the Paradise of Poets, Messieurs +Malherbe, De Balzac, and Boileau—Boileau who spoke of thee as _Ce poète +orgueilleux trébuché de si haut_! + +These gallant gentlemen, I make no doubt, are happy after their own +fashion, backbiting each other and thee in the Paradise of Critics. In +their time they wrought thee much evil, grumbling that thou wrotest in +Greek and Latin (of which tongues certain of them had but little skill), +and blaming thy many lyric melodies and the free flow of thy lines. What +said M. de Balzac to M. Chapelain? “M. de Malherbe, M. de Grasse, and +yourself must be very little poets, if Ronsard be a great one.” Time has +brought in his revenges, and Messieurs Chapelain and De Grasse are as +well forgotten as thou art well remembered. Men could not always be deaf +to thy sweet old songs, nor blind to the beauty of thy roses and thy +loves. When they took the wax out of their ears that M. Boileau had +given them lest they should hear the singing of thy Sirens, then they +were deaf no longer, then they heard the old deaf poet singing and made +answer to his lays. Hast thou not heard these sounds? have they not +reached thee, the voices and the lyres of Théophile Gautier and Alfred de +Musset? Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old notes +were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to thine +ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and +Catullus. Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee. Thy monument has +perished, but not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his +own again in a glorious Restoration. + +Through the dust and smoke of ages, and through the centuries of wars we +strain our eyes and try to gain a glimpse of thee, Master, in thy good +days, when the Muses walked with thee. We seem to mark thee wandering +silent through some little village, or dreaming in the woods, or +loitering among thy lonely places, or in gardens where the roses blossom +among wilder flowers, or on river banks where the whispering poplars and +sighing reeds make answer to the murmur of the waters. Such a picture +hast thou drawn of thyself in the summer afternoons. + + Je m’en vais pourmener tantost parmy la plaine, + Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois, + Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois. + J’aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage, + J’aime le flot de l’eau qui gazoüille au rivage. + +Still, methinks, there was a book in the hand of the grave and learned +poet; still thou wouldst carry thy Horace, thy Catullus, thy Theocritus, +through the gem-like weather of the _Renouveau_, when the woods were +enamelled with flowers, and the young Spring was lodged, like a wandering +prince, in his great palaces hung with green: + + Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enflé de sa jeunesse, + Logé comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons! + +Thou sawest, in these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old +religion, Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard’st in the nightingale’s +music the plaint of Philomel. The ancient poets came back in the train +of thyself and of the Spring, and learning was scarce less dear to thee +than love; and thy ladies seemed fairer for the names they borrowed from +the beauties of forgotten days, Helen and Cassandra. How sweetly didst +thou sing to them thine old morality, and how gravely didst thou teach +the lesson of the Roses! Well didst thou know it, well didst thou love +the Rose, since thy nurse, carrying thee, an infant, to the holy font, +let fall on thee the sacred water brimmed with floating blossoms of the +Rose! + + Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose, + Qui ce matin avoit desclose + Sa robe de pourpre au soleil, + A point perdu ceste vespree + Les plis de sa robe pourpree, + Et son teint au votre pareil. + +And again, + + La belle Rose du Printemps, + Aubert, admoneste les hommes + Passer joyeusement le temps, + Et pendant que jeunes nous sommes, + Esbattre la fleur de nos ans. + +In the same mood, looking far down the future, thou sangest of thy lady’s +age, the most sad, the most beautiful of thy sad and beautiful lays; for +if thy bees gathered much honey ’twas somewhat bitter to taste, like that +of the Sardinian yews. How clearly we see the great hall, the grey lady +spinning and humming among her drowsy maids, and how they waken at the +word, and she sees her spring in their eyes, and they forecast their +winter in her face, when she murmurs “’Twas Ronsard sang of me.” + +Winter, and summer, and spring, how swiftly they pass, and how early time +brought thee his sorrows, and grief cast her dust upon thy head. + + Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes, + Jadis mes douces amourettes, + Adieu, je sens venir ma fin, + Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse + Ne m’accompagne en la vieillesse, + Que le feu, le lict et le vin. + +Wine, and a soft bed, and a bright fire: to this trinity of poor +pleasures we come soon, if, indeed, wine be left to us. Poetry herself +deserts us; is it not said that Bacchus never forgives a renegade? and +most of us turn recreants to Bacchus. Even the bright fire, I fear, was +not always there to warm thine old blood, Master, or, if fire there were, +the wood was not bought with thy book-seller’s money. When autumn was +drawing in during thine early old age, in 1584, didst thou not write that +thou hadst never received a sou at the hands of all the publishers who +vended thy books? And as thou wert about putting forth thy folio edition +of 1584, thou didst pray Buon, the bookseller, to give thee sixty crowns +to buy wood withal, and make thee a bright fire in winter weather, and +comfort thine old age with thy friend Gallandius. And if Buon will not +pay, then to try the other booksellers, “that wish to take everything and +give nothing.” + +Was it knowledge of this passage, Master, or ignorance of everything +else, that made certain of the common steadfast dunces of our days speak +of thee as if thou hadst been a starveling, neglected poetaster, jealous +forsooth of Maître Françoys Rabelais? See how ignorantly M. Fleury +writes, who teaches French literature withal to them of Muscovy, and hath +indited a Life of Rabelais. “Rabelais était revêtu d’un emploi +honorable; Ronsard était traité en subalterne,” quoth this wondrous +professor. What! Pierre de Ronsard, a gentleman of a noble house, +holding the revenue of many abbeys, the friend of Mary Stuart, of the Duc +d’Orléans, of Charles IX., _he_ is _traité en subalterne_, and is jealous +of a frocked or unfrocked _manant_ like Maître Françoys! And then this +amazing Fleury falls foul of thine epitaph on Maître Françoys and cries, +“Ronsard a voulu faire des vers méchants; il n’a fait que de méchants +vers.” More truly saith M. Sainte-Beuve, “If the good Rabelais had +returned to Meudon on the day when this epitaph was made over the wine, +he would, methinks, have laughed heartily.” But what shall be said of a +Professor like the egregious M. Fleury, who holds that Ronsard was +despised at Court? Was there a party at tennis when the king would not +fain have had thee on his side, declaring that he ever won when Ronsard +was his partner? Did he not give thee benefices, and many priories, and +call thee his father in Apollo, and even, so they say, bid thee sit down +beside him on his throne? Away, ye scandalous folk, who tell us that +there was strife between the Prince of Poets and the King of Mirth. +Naught have ye by way of proof of your slander but the talk of Jean +Bernier, a scurrilous, starveling apothecary, who put forth his fables in +1697, a century and a half after Maître Françoys died. Bayle quoted this +fellow in a note, and ye all steal the tattle one from another in your +dull manner, and know not whence it comes, nor even that Bayle would none +of it and mocked its author. With so little knowledge is history +written, and thus doth each chattering brook of a “Life” swell with its +tribute “that great Mississippi of falsehood,” Biography. + + + + +IV. +_To Herodotus_. + + +TO Herodotus of Halicarnassus, greeting.—Concerning the matters set forth +in your histories, and the tales you tell about both Greeks and +Barbarians, whether they be true, or whether they be false, men dispute +not little but a great deal. Wherefore I, being concerned to know the +verity, did set forth to make search in every manner, and came in my +quest even unto the ends of the earth. For there is an island of the +Cimmerians beyond the Straits of Heracles, some three days’ voyage to a +ship that hath a fair following wind in her sails; and there it is said +that men know many things from of old: thither, then, I came in my +inquiry. Now, the island is not small, but large, greater than the whole +of Hellas; and they call it Britain. In that island the east wind blows +for ten parts of the year, and the people know not how to cover +themselves from the cold. But for the other two months of the year the +sun shines fiercely, so that some of them die thereof, and others die of +the frozen mixed drinks; for they have ice even in the summer, and this +ice they put to their liquor. Through the whole of this island, from the +west even to the east, there flows a river called Thames: a great river +and a laborious, but not to be likened to the River of Egypt. + +The mouth of this river, where I stepped out from my ship, is exceedingly +foul and of an evil savour by reason of the city on the banks. Now this +city is several hundred parasangs in circumference. Yet a man that +needed not to breathe the air might go round it in one hour, in chariots +that run under the earth; and these chariots are drawn by creatures that +breathe smoke and sulphur, such as Orpheus mentions in his “Argonautica,” +if it be by Orpheus. The people of the town, when I inquired of them +concerning Herodotus of Halicarnassus, looked on me with amazement, and +went straightway about their business—namely, to seek out whatsoever new +thing is coming to pass all over the whole inhabited world, and as for +things old, they take no keep of them. + +Nevertheless, by diligence I learned that he who in this land knew most +concerning Herodotus was a priest, and dwelt in the priests’ city on the +river which is called the City of the Ford of the Ox. But whether Io, +when she wore a cow’s shape, had passed by that way in her wanderings, +and thence comes the name of that city, I could not (though I asked all +men I met) learn aught with certainty. But to me, considering this, it +seemed that Io must have come thither. And now farewell to Io. + +To the City of the Priests there are two roads: one by land; and one by +water, following the river. To a well-girdled man, the land journey is +but one day’s travel; by the river it is longer but more pleasant. Now +that river flows, as I said, from the west to the east. And there is in +it a fish called chub, which they catch; but they do not eat it, for a +certain sacred reason. Also there is a fish called trout, and this is +the manner of his catching. They build for this purpose great dams of +wood, which they call weirs. Having built the weir they sit upon it with +rods in their hands, and a line on the rod, and at the end of the line a +little fish. There then they “sit and spin in the sun,” as one of their +poets says, not for a short time but for many days, having rods in their +hands and eating and drinking. In this wise they angle for the fish +called trout; but whether they ever catch him or not, not having seen it, +I cannot say; for it is not pleasant to me to speak things concerning +which I know not the truth. + +Now, after sailing and rowing against the stream for certain days, I came +to the City of the Ford of the Ox. Here the river changes his name, and +is called Isis, after the name of the goddess of the Egyptians. But +whether the Britons brought the name from Egypt or whether the Egyptians +took it from the Britons, not knowing I prefer not to say. But to me it +seems that the Britons are a colony of the Egyptians, or the Egyptians a +colony of the Britons. Moreover, when I was in Egypt I saw certain +soldiers in white helmets, who were certainly British. But what they did +there (as Egypt neither belongs to Britain nor Britain to Egypt) I know +not, neither could they tell me. But one of them replied to me in that +line of Homer (if the Odyssey be Homer’s), “We have come to a sorry +Cyprus, and a sad Egypt.” Others told me that they once marched against +the Ethiopians, and having defeated them several times, then came back +again, leaving their property to the Ethiopians. But as to the truth of +this I leave it to every man to form his own opinion. + +Having come into the City of the Priests, I went forth into the street, +and found a priest of the baser sort, who for a piece of silver led me +hither and thither among the temples, discoursing of many things. + +Now it seemed to me a strange thing that the city was empty, and no man +dwelling therein, save a few priests only, and their wives, and their +children, who are drawn to and fro in little carriages dragged by women. +But the priest told me that during half the year the city was desolate, +for that there came somewhat called “The Long,” or “The Vac,” and drave +out the young priests. And he said that these did no other thing but row +boats, and throw balls from one to the other, and this they were made to +do, he said, that the young priests might learn to be humble, for they +are the proudest of men. But whether he spoke truth or not I know not, +only I set down what he told me. But to anyone considering it, this +appears rather to jump with his story—namely, that the young priests have +houses on the river, painted of divers colours, all of them empty. + +Then the priest, at my desire, brought me to one of the temples, that I +might seek out all things concerning Herodotus the Halicarnassian, from +one who knew. Now this temple is not the fairest in the city, but less +fair and goodly than the old temples, yet goodlier and more fair than the +new temples; and over the roof there is the image of an eagle made of +stone—no small marvel, but a great one, how men came to fashion him; and +that temple is called the House of Queens. Here they sacrifice a boar +once every year; and concerning this they tell a certain sacred story +which I know but will not utter. + +Then I was brought to the priest who had a name for knowing most about +Egypt, and the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, and the Cappadocians, and +all the kingdoms of the Great King. He came out to me, being attired in +a black robe, and wearing on his head a square cap. But why the priests +have square caps I know, and he who has been initiated into the mysteries +which they call “Matric” knows, but I prefer not to tell. Concerning the +square cap, then, let this be sufficient. Now, the priest received me +courteously, and when I asked him, concerning Herodotus, whether he were +a true man or not, he smiled and answered “Abu Goosh,” which, in the +tongue of the Arabians, means “The Father of Liars.” Then he went on to +speak concerning Herodotus, and he said in his discourse that Herodotus +not only told the thing which was not, but that he did so wilfully, as +one knowing the truth but concealing it. For example, quoth he, “Solon +never went to see Croesus, as Herodotus avers; nor did those about Xerxes +ever dream dreams; but Herodotus, out of his abundant wickedness, +invented these things.” + +“Now behold,” he went on, “how the curse of the Gods falls upon +Herodotus. For he pretends that he saw Cadmeian inscriptions at Thebes. +Now I do not believe there were any Cadmeian inscriptions there: +therefore Herodotus is most manifestly lying. Moreover, this Herodotus +never speaks of Sophocles the Athenian, and why not? Because he, being a +child at school, did not learn Sophocles by heart: for the tragedies of +Sophocles could not have been learned at school before they were written, +nor can any man quote a poet whom he never learned at school. Moreover, +as all those about Herodotus knew Sophocles well, he could not appear to +them to be learned by showing that he knew what they knew also.” Then I +thought the priest was making game and sport, saying first that Herodotus +could know no poet whom he had not learned at school, and then saying +that all the men of his time well knew this poet, “about whom everyone +was talking.” But the priest seemed not to know that Herodotus and +Sophocles were friends, which is proved by this, that Sophocles wrote an +ode in praise of Herodotus. + +Then he went on, and though I were to write with a hundred hands (like +Briareus, of whom Homer makes mention) I could not tell you all the +things that the priest said against Herodotus, speaking truly, or not +truly, or sometimes correctly and sometimes not, as often befalls mortal +men. For Herodotus, he said, was chiefly concerned to steal the lore of +those who came before him, such as Hecatæus, and then to escape notice as +having stolen it. Also he said that, being himself cunning and +deceitful, Herodotus was easily beguiled by the cunning of others, and +believed in things manifestly false, such as the story of the +Phoenix-bird. + +Then I spoke, and said that Herodotus himself declared that he could not +believe that story; but the priest regarded me not. And he said that +Herodotus had never caught a crocodile with cold pig, nor did he ever +visit Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Elephantine; but, saying that he had been +in these lands, said that which was not true. He also declared that +Herodotus, when he travelled, knew none of the Fat Ones of the Egyptians, +but only those of the baser sort. And he called Herodotus a thief and a +beguiler, and “the same with intent to deceive,” as one of their own +poets writes. And, to be short, Herodotus, I could not tell you in one +day all the charges which are now brought against you; but concerning the +truth of these things, _you_ know, not least, but most, as to yourself +being guilty or innocent. Wherefore, if you have anything to show or set +forth whereby you may be relieved from the burden of these accusations, +now is the time. Be no longer silent; but, whether through the Oracle of +the Dead, or the Oracle of Branchidæ, or that in Delphi, or Dodona, or of +Amphiaraus at Oropus, speak to your friends and lovers (whereof I am one +from of old) and let men know the very truth. + +Now, concerning the priests in the City of the Ford of the Ox, it is to +be said that of all men whom we know they receive strangers most gladly, +feasting them all day. Moreover, they have many drinks, cunningly mixed, +and of these the best is that they call Archdeacon, naming it from one of +the priests’ offices. Truly, as Homer says (if the Odyssey be Homer’s), +“when that draught is poured into the bowl then it is no pleasure to +refrain.” + +Drinking of this wine, or nectar, Herodotus, I pledge you, and pour forth +some deal on the ground, to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in the House of +Hades. + +And I wish you farewell, and good be with you. Whether the priest spoke +truly, or not truly, even so may such good things betide you as befall +dead men. + + + + +V. +_Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope_. + + + FROM mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope, + Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope? + Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame, + Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim, + Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance, + Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance, + Pursue the Poet, like Actæon’s Hounds, + Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds, + Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem, + Rend from the laurel’d Brows the Diadem, + And, if one Rag of Character they spare, + Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare! + + Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. + Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet’s Tomb, + With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line, + Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine! + Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends + To _interview_ the Drudges of your Friends. + Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high, + And still proclaims your Poems _Poetry_, + Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, + And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared! + + They say, “what say they?” Not in vain You ask; + To tell you what they say, behold my Task! + “Methinks already I your Tears survey” + As I repeat “the horrid Things they say.” {48a} + + Comes El-n first: I fancy you’ll agree + Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; + For El-n’s Introduction, crabbed and dry, + Like Churchill’s Cudgel’s {48b} marked with _Lie_, and _Lie_! + + “Too dull to know what his own System meant, + Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent; + A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends, + Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends; + His mind, like Flesh inflamed, {49} was raw and sore, + And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more! + Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right, + His Spirit sank when he was called to fight. + Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole, + Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole, + And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel, + Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele! + Still he denied the Letters he had writ, + And still mistook Indecency for Wit. + His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries, + ‘Detains the Reader, and at times defies!’” + + Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage, + And furious Foot-notes growl ’neath every Page: + See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, + Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail! + “Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South, + But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; {50} + Affected, hypocritical, and vain, + A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain; + A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour, + The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power, + Pope yet possessed”—(the Praise will make you start)— + “Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart! + And still we marvel at the Man, and still + Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill: + Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form, + Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm, + Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line + That from the Noble separates the Fine!” + + The Learned thus, and who can quite reply, + Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie? + You reap, in armèd Hates that haunt your Name, + Reap what you sowed, the Dragon’s Teeth of Fame: + You could not write, and from unenvious Time + Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme, + You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend, + And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend! + + The Pity of it! And the changing Taste + Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste! + My Childhood fled your Couplet’s clarion tone, + And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn. + Still through the Dust of that dim Prose appears + The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears; + Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel, + And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel! + But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence, + Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence, + And great Achilles’ Eloquence doth show + As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau! + + Again, your Verse is orderly,—and more,— + “The Waves behind impel the Waves before;” + Monotonously musical they glide, + Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied. + But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep! + Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; + This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, + Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, + Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all + Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, + The next with silver Murmur dies away, + Like Tides that falter to Calypso’s Bay! + + Thus Time, with sordid Alchemy and dread, + Turns half the Glory of your Gold to Lead; + Thus Time,—at Ronsard’s wreath that vainly bit,— + Has marred the Poet to preserve the Wit, + Who almost left on Addison a stain, + Whose Knife cut cleanest with a poisoned pain,— + Yet Thou (strange Fate that clings to all of Thine!) + When most a Wit dost most a Poet shine. + In Poetry thy Dunciad expires, + When Wit has shot “her momentary Fires.” + ’Tis Tragedy that watches by the Bed + “Where tawdry Yellow strove with dirty Red,” + And Men, remembering all, can scarce deny + To lay the Laurel where thine Ashes lie! + + + + +VI. +_To Lucian of Samosata_. + + +IN what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are you +now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty, and the +brave? In that clear and tranquil climate, whose air breathes of “violet +and lily, myrtle, and the flower of the vine,” + + _Where the daisies are rose-scented_, + _And the Rose herself has got_ + _Perfume which on earth is not_, + +among the music of all birds, and the wind-blown notes of flutes hanging +on the trees, methinks that your laughter sounds most silvery sweet, and +that Helen and fair Charmides are still of your company. Master of +mirth, and Soul the best contented of all that have seen the world’s ways +clearly, most clear-sighted of all that have made tranquillity their +bride, what other laughers dwell with you, where the crystal and fragrant +waters wander round the shining palaces and the temples of amethyst? + +Heine surely is with you; if, indeed, it was not one Syrian soul that +dwelt among alien men, Germans and Romans, in the bodily tabernacles of +Heine and of Lucian. But he was fallen on evil times and evil tongues; +while Lucian, as witty as he, as bitter in mockery, as happily dowered +with the magic of words, lived long and happily and honoured, imprisoned +in no “mattress-grave.” Without Rabelais, without Voltaire, without +Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands +lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came by your way, none of the ancients +could meet you in the lists of sportive dialogue. + +There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more excellent +than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds bring you +flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed come and go, +beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in a land that +knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon, where the +silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth does not wax +spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned the Prince of the +Paradise of Mirth. + +Who would bring you, if he had the power, from the banquet where Homer +sings: Homer, who, in mockery of commentators, past and to come, German +and Greek, informed you that he was by birth a Babylonian? Yet, if you, +who first wrote Dialogues of the Dead, could hear the prayer of an +epistle wafted to “lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of West,” you +might visit once more a world so worthy of such a mocker, so like the +world you knew so well of old. + +Ah, Lucian, we have need of you, of your sense and of your mockery! +Here, where faith is sick and superstition is waking afresh; where gods +come rarely, and spectres appear at five shillings an interview; where +science is popular, and philosophy cries aloud in the market-place, and +clamour does duty for government, and Thais and Lais are names of +power—here, Lucian, is room and scope for you. Can I not imagine a new +“Auction of Philosophers,” and what wealth might be made by him who +bought these popular sages and lecturers at his estimate, and vended them +at their own? + +HERMES: Whom shall we put first up to auction? + +ZEUS: That German in spectacles; he seems a highly respectable man. + +HERMES: Ho, Pessimist, come down and let the public view you. + +ZEUS: Go on, put him up and have done with him. + +HERMES: Who bids for the Life Miserable, for extreme, complete, perfect, +unredeemable perdition? What offers for the universal extinction of the +species, and the collapse of the Conscious? + +A PURCHASER: He does not look at all a bad lot. May one put him through +his paces? + +HERMES: Certainly; try your luck. + +PURCHASER: What is your name? + +PESSIMIST: Hartmann. + +PURCHASER: What can you teach me? + +PESSIMIST: That Life is not worth Living. + +PURCHASER: Wonderful! Most edifying! How much for this lot? + +HERMES: Two hundred pounds. + +PURCHASER: I will write you a cheque for the money. Come home, +Pessimist, and begin your lessons without more ado. + +HERMES: Attention! Here is a magnificent article—the Positive Life, the +Scientific Life, the Enthusiastic Life. Who bids for a possible place in +the Calendar of the Future? + +PURCHASER: What does he call himself? he has a very French air. + +HERMES: Put your own questions. + +PURCHASER: What’s your pedigree, my Philosopher, and previous +performances? + +POSITIVIST: I am by Rousseau out of Catholicism, with a strain of the +Evolution blood. + +PURCHASER: What do you believe in? + +POSITIVIST: In Man, with a large M. + +PURCHASER: Not in individual Man? + +POSITIVIST: By no means; not even always in Mr. Gladstone. All men, all +Churches, all parties, all philosophies, and even the other sect of our +own Church, are perpetually in the wrong. Buy me, and listen to me, and +you will always be in the right. + +PURCHASER: And, after this life, what have you to offer me? + +POSITIVIST: A distinguished position in the Choir Invisible; but not, of +course, conscious immortality. + +PURCHASER: Take him away, and put up another lot. + +Then the Hegelian, with his Notion, and the Darwinian, with his notions, +and the Lotzian, with his Broad Church mixture of Religion and Evolution, +and the Spencerian, with that Absolute which is a sort of a something, +might all be offered with their divers wares; and cheaply enough, Lucian, +you would value them in this auction of Sects. “There is but one way to +Corinth,” as of old; but which that way may be, oh master of Hermotimus, +we know no more than he did of old; and still we find, of all +philosophies, that the Stoic route is most to be recommended. But we +have our Cyrenaics too, though they are no longer “clothed in purple, and +crowned with flowers, and fond of drink and of female flute-players.” +Ah, here too, you might laugh, and fail to see where the Pleasure lies, +when the Cyrenaics are no “judges of cakes” (nor of ale, for that +matter), and are strangers in the Courts of Princes. “To despise all +things, to make use of all things, in all things to follow pleasure +only:” that is not the manner of the new, if it were the secret of the +older Hedonism. + +Then, turning from the philosophers to the seekers after a sign, what +change, Lucian, would you find in them and their ways? None; they are +quite unaltered. Still our Peregrinus, and our Peregrina too, come to us +from the East, or, if from the West, they take India on their way—India, +that secular home of drivelling creeds, and of religion in its +sacerdotage. Still they prattle of Brahmins and Buddhism; though, unlike +Peregrinus, they do not publicly burn themselves on pyres, at Epsom +Downs, after the Derby. We are not so fortunate in the demise of our +Theosophists; and our police, less wise than the Hellenodicæ, would +probably not permit the Immolation of the Quack. Like your Alexander, +they deal in marvels and miracles, oracles and warnings. All such bogy +stories as those of your “Philopseudes,” and the ghost of the lady who +took to table-rapping because one of her best slippers had not been +burned with her body, are gravely investigated by the Psychical Society. + +Even your ignorant Bibliophile is still with us—the man without a tinge +of letters, who buys up old manuscripts “because they are stained and +gnawed, and who goes, for proof of valued antiquity, to the testimony of +the book-worms.” And the rich Bibliophile now, as in your satire, +clothes his volumes in purple morocco and gay _dorures_, while their +contents are sealed to him. + +As to the topics of satire and gay curiosity which occupy the lady known +as “Gyp,” and M. Halévy in his “Les Petites Cardinal,” if you had not +exhausted the matter in your “Dialogues of Hetairai,” you would be amused +to find the same old traits surviving without a touch of change. One +reads, in Halévy’s French, of Madame Cardinal, and, in your Greek, of the +mother of Philinna, and marvels that eighteen hundred years have not in +one single trifle altered the mould. Still the old shabby light-loves, +the old greed, the old luxury and squalor. Still the unconquerable +superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your +time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical “bull-roarer” or +_turndun_. {64} + +Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of +unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and at +whom you smiled. Nay, our very “social question” is not altered. Do you +not write, in “The Runaways,” “The artisans will abandon their workshops, +and leave their trades, when they see that, with all the labour that bows +their bodies from dawn to dark, they make a petty and starveling +pittance, while men that toil not nor spin are floating in Pactolus”? + +They begin to see this again as of yore; but whether the end of their +vision will be a laughing matter, you, fortunate Lucian, do not need to +care. Hail to you, and farewell! + + + + +VII. +_To Maître Françoys Rabelais_. +OF THE COMING OF THE COQCIGRUES. + + +MASTER,—In the Boreal and Septentrional lands, turned aside from the +noonday and the sun, there dwelt of old (as thou knowest, and as Olaus +voucheth) a race of men, brave, strong, nimble, and adventurous, who had +no other care but to fight and drink. There, by reason of the cold (as +Virgil witnesseth), men break wine with axes. To their minds, when once +they were dead and gotten to Valhalla, or the place of their Gods, there +would be no other pleasure but to swig, tipple, drink, and boose till the +coming of that last darkness and Twilight, wherein they, with their +deities, should do battle against the enemies of all mankind; which day +they rather desired than dreaded. + +So chanced it also with Pantagruel and Brother John and their company, +after they had once partaken of the secret of the _Dive Bouteille_. +Thereafter they searched no longer; but, abiding at their ease, were +merry, frolic, jolly, gay, glad, and wise; only that they always and ever +did expect the awful Coming of the Coqcigrues. Now concerning the day of +that coming, and the nature of them that should come, they knew nothing; +and for his part Panurge was all the more adread, as Aristotle testifieth +that men (and Panurge above others) most fear that which they know least. +Now it chanced one day, as they sat at meat, with viands rare, dainty, +and precious as ever Apicius dreamed of, that there fluttered on the air +a faint sound as of sermons, speeches, orations, addresses, discourses, +lectures, and the like; whereat Panurge, pricking up his ears, cried, +“Methinks this wind bloweth from Midlothian,” and so fell a trembling. + +Next, to their aural orifices, and the avenues audient of the brain, was +borne a very melancholy sound as of harmoniums, hymns, organ-pianos, +psalteries, and the like, all playing different airs, in a kind most +hateful to the Muses. Then said Panurge, as well as he might for the +chattering of his teeth: “May I never drink if here come not the +Coqcigrues!” and this saying and prophecy of his was true and inspired. +But thereon the others began to mock, flout, and gird at Panurge for his +cowardice. “Here am I!” cried Brother John, “well-armed and ready to +stand a siege; being entrenched, fortified, hemmed-in and surrounded with +great pasties, huge pieces of salted beef, salads, fricassees, hams, +tongues, pies, and a wilderness of pleasant little tarts, jellies, +pastries, trifles, and fruits of all kinds, and I shall not thirst while +I have good wells, founts, springs, and sources of Bordeaux wine, +Burgundy, wine of the Champagne country, sack and Canary. A fig for thy +Coqcigrues!” + +But even as he spoke there ran up suddenly a whole legion, or rather +army, of physicians, each armed with laryngoscopes, stethoscopes, +horoscopes, microscopes, weighing machines, and such other tools, +engines, and arms as they had who, after thy time, persecuted Monsieur de +Pourceaugnac! And they all, rushing on Brother John, cried out to him, +“Abstain! Abstain!” And one said, “I have well diagnosed thee, and thou +art in a fair way to have the gout.” “I never did better in my days,” +said Brother John. “Away with thy meats and drinks!” they cried. And +one said, “He must to Royat;” and another, “Hence with him to Aix;” and a +third, “Banish him to Wiesbaden;” and a fourth, “Hale him to Gastein;” +and yet another, “To Barbouille with him in chains!” + +And while others felt his pulse and looked at his tongue, they all wrote +prescriptions for him like men mad. “For thy eating,” cried he that +seemed to be their leader, “No soup!” “No soup!” quoth Brother John; and +those cheeks of his, whereat you might have warmed your two hands in the +winter solstice, grew white as lilies. “Nay! and no salmon, nor any beef +nor mutton! A little chicken by times, _pericolo tuo_! Nor any game, +such as grouse, partridge, pheasant, capercailzie, wild duck; nor any +cheese, nor fruit, nor pastry, nor coffee, nor _eau de vie_; and avoid +all sweets. No veal, pork, nor made dishes of any kind.” “Then what may +I eat?” quoth the good Brother, whose valour had oozed out of the soles +of his sandals. “A little cold bacon at breakfast—no eggs,” quoth the +leader of the strange folk, “and a slice of toast without butter.” “And +for thy drink”—(“What?” gasped Brother John)—“one dessert-spoonful of +whisky, with a pint of the water of Apollinaris at luncheon and dinner. +No more!” At this Brother John fainted, falling like a great buttress of +a hill, such as Taygetus or Erymanthus. + +While they were busy with him, others of the frantic folk had built great +platforms of wood, whereon they all stood and spoke at once, both men and +women. And of these some wore red crosses on their garments, which +meaneth “Salvation;” and others wore white crosses, with a little black +button of crape, to signify “Purity;” and others bits of blue to mean +“Abstinence.” While some of these pursued Panurge others did beset +Pantagruel; asking him very long questions, whereunto he gave but short +answers. Thus they asked:— + +Have ye Local Option here?—Pan.: What? + +May one man drink if his neighbour be not athirst?—Pan.: Yea! + +Have ye Free Education?—Pan.: What? + +Must they that have, pay to school them that have not?—Pan.: Nay! + +Have ye free land?—Pan.: What? + +Have ye taken the land from the farmer, and given it to the tailor out of +work and the candlemaker masterless?—Pan.: Nay! + +Have your women folk votes?—Pan.: Bosh! + +Have ye got religion?—Pan.: How? + +Do you go about the streets at night, brawling, blowing a trumpet before +you, and making long prayers?—Pan.: Nay! + +Have you manhood suffrage?—Pan.: Eh? + +Is Jack as good as his master?—Pan.: Nay! + +Have you joined the Arbitration Society?—Pan.: _Quoy_? + +Will you let another kick you, and will you ask his neighbour if you +deserve the same?—Pan.: Nay! + +Do you eat what you list?—Pan.: Ay! + +Do you drink when you are athirst?—Pan.: Ay! + +Are you governed by the free expression of the popular will?—Pan.: How? + +Are you servants of priests, pulpits, and penny papers?—Pan.: NO! + +Now, when they heard these answers of Pantagruel they all fell, some a +weeping, some a praying, some a swearing, some an arbitrating, some a +lecturing, some a caucussing, some a preaching, some a faith-healing, +some a miracle-working, some a hypnotising, some a writing to the daily +press; and while they were thus busy, like folk distraught, “reforming +the island,” Pantagruel burst out a laughing; whereat they were greatly +dismayed; for laughter killeth the whole race of Coqcigrues, and they may +not endure it. + +Then Pantagruel and his company stole aboard a barque that Panurge had +ready in the harbour. And having provisioned her well with store of meat +and good drink, they set sail for the kingdom of Entelechy, where, having +landed, they were kindly entreated; and there abide to this day; drinking +of the sweet and eating of the fat, under the protection of that +intellectual sphere which hath in all places its centre and nowhere its +circumference. + +Such was their destiny; there was their end appointed, and thither the +Coqcigrues can never come. For all the air of that land is full of +laughter, which killeth Coqcigrues; and there aboundeth the herb +Pantagruelion. But for thee, Master Françoys, thou art not well liked in +this island of ours, where the Coqcigrues are abundant, very fierce, +cruel, and tyrannical. Yet thou hast thy friends, that meet and drink to +thee, and wish thee well wheresoever thou hast found thy _grand +peut-être_. + + + + +VIII. +_To Jane Austen_. + + +MADAM,—If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view of +the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were the +thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it +is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature +will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious +topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled +“literary shop.” For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some +inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, +raised to its highest pitch of perfection. + +As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is +wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone +in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular +author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; +or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of +our generation. ’Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation +of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of +your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did +not always take your witticisms, and he added others which were too +unmistakably his own. While the injudicious were disappointed by the +absence of your exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more +convinced of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) +you gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient; +for your books you reserved matter and expression which are imperishable. +Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all persons of taste, who, +in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the rule, or shake off the +habit, which commonly confines them to but temperate laudation. + +’Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the +succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the manners of +to-day, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott “slow,” think Miss +Austen “prim” and “dreary.” Yet, even could you return among us, I +scarcely believe that, speaking the language of the hour, as you might, +and versed in its habits, you would win the general admiration. For how +tame, madam, are your characters, especially your favourite heroines! how +limited the life which you knew and described! how narrow the range of +your incidents! how correct your grammar! + +As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth, and +Catherine: women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for the +degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and the +parish’s concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with +vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can engage his fancy with +their match-makings and the conduct of their affections, when so many +daring and dazzling heroines approach and solicit his regard? + +Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden +fleurs-de-lys—ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who count their +roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and even their +husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical importance. With +these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians—maids +whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and +whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Dædalus and +Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study +of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round +the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of Dukes, where +are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor satisfy +the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific fiction, which is +greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as well as in France and +at home. + +You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia and +Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost +insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have gone +far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your time, to +the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even now, in the +circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of the roof, first +beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he climbed up by a ladder to +her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung on gates together, met at odd +seasons, in strange places, and finally eloped: all this might have been +put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would +not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you +cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly +over the thickness of Mary’s legs and the softness of Kitty’s cheeks, and +the blonde fluffiness of Wickham’s whiskers, you would have left a +romance still dear to young ladies. + +Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you concentrated +your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry Crawford. These +should have been the chief figures of “Mansfield Park.” But you timidly +decline to tackle Passion. “Let other pens,” you write, “dwell on guilt +and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.” Ah, _there_ +is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and +narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I +scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and +these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in +society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we +get lords (and very queer lords) even from Republican authors, born in a +country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. I have +heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity of +the notice which your characters give each other when they offer +invitations to dinner. “An invitation to dinner next day was +despatched,” and this demonstrates that your acquaintance “went out” very +little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one of your +heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy “keep his breath to cool his porridge.” I +blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your characters are +debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of England as by +law established. The Dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides +from Esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the Higher +Pantheism to the Higher Paganism, we look for in vain among your studies +of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound to you; +so how can you help us in the stress of the soul’s travailings? + +You may say that the soul’s travailings are no affair of yours; proving +thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the +novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that +controversy which occupies the chief of our attention—the great +controversy on Creation or Evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: “I have no +idea of there being so much Design in the world as some persons imagine.” +Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the Land Laws, save when +Mrs. Bennet appears as a Land Reformer, and rails bitterly against the +cruelty “of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in +favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.” There, madam, in that +cruelly unjust performance, what a text you had for a _tendenz-romanz_. +Nay, you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had been flogged, +without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But you formally +declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, “with solemn +specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story.” No +“padding” for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were born before +Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence, +or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your +literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines +are not passionate, we do not see their red wet cheeks, and tresses +dishevelled in the manner of our frank young Mænads. What says your best +successor, a lady who adds fresh lustre to a name that in fiction equals +yours? She says of Miss Austen: “Her heroines have a stamp of their own. +_They have a certain gentle self-respect and humour and hardness of +heart_ . . . Love with them does not mean a passion as much as an +interest, deep and silent.” I think one prefers them so, and that +Englishwomen should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. “All +the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when +existence or when hope is gone,” said Anne; perhaps she insisted on a +monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a relief it +is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the follies of to-day +in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How fine, nay, how noble is +your art in its delicate reserve, never insisting, never forcing the +note, never pushing the sketch into the caricature! You worked, without +thinking of it, in the spirit of Greece, on a labour happily limited, and +exquisitely organised. “Dear books,” we say, with Miss Thackeray—“dear +books, bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely +heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting.” + + + + +IX. +_To Master Isaak Walton_. + + +FATHER ISAAK,—When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom to +carry in my wallet thy pretty book, “The Compleat Angler.” Here, +methinks, if I find not trout I shall find content, and good company, and +sweet songs, fair milkmaids, and country mirth. For you are to know that +trout be now scarce and whereas he was ever a fearful fish, he hath of +late become so wary that none but the cunningest anglers may be even with +him. + +It is not as it was in your time, Father, when a man might leave his shop +in Fleet Street, of a holiday, and, when he had stretched his legs up +Tottenham Hill, come lightly to meadows chequered with waterlilies and +lady-smocks, and so fall to his sport. Nay, now have the houses so much +increased, like a spreading sore (through the breaking of that excellent +law of the Conscientious King and blessed Martyr, whereby building beyond +the walls was forbidden), that the meadows are all swallowed up in +streets. And as to the River Lea, wherein you took many a good trout, I +read in the news sheets that “its bed is many inches thick in horrible +filth, and the air for more than half a mile on each side of it is +polluted with a horrible, sickening stench,” so that we stand in dread of +a new Plague, called the Cholera. And so it is all about London for many +miles, and if a man, at heavy charges, betake himself to the fields, lo +you, folk are grown so greedy that none will suffer a stranger to fish in +his water. + +So poor anglers are in sore straits. Unless a man be rich and can pay +great rents, he may not fish in England, and hence spring the discontents +of the times, for the angler is full of content, if he do but take trout, +but if he be driven from the waterside, he falls, perchance, into evil +company, and cries out to divide the property of the gentle folk. As +many now do, even among Parliament-men, whom you loved not, Father Isaak, +neither do I love them more than Reason and Scripture bid each of us be +kindly to his neighbour. But, behold, the causes of the ill content are +not yet all expressed, for even where a man hath licence to fish, he will +hardly take trout in our age, unless he be all the more cunning. For the +fish, harried this way and that by so many of your disciples, is +exceeding shy and artful, nor will he bite at a fly unless it falleth +lightly, just above his mouth, and floateth dry over him, for all the +world like the natural _ephemeris_. And we may no longer angle with worm +for him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the natural fly, as was your +manner, but only with the artificial, for the more difficulty the more +diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator in your book, “Master, I +can neither catch with the first nor second Angle: I have no fortune.” + +So we fare in England, but somewhat better north of the Tweed, where +trout are less wary, but for the most part small, except in the extreme +rough north, among horrid hills and lakes. Thither, Master, as methinks +you may remember, went Richard Franck, that called himself +_Philanthropus_, and was, as it were, the Columbus of anglers, +discovering for them a new Hyperborean world. But Franck, doubtless, is +now an angler in the Lake of Darkness, with Nero and other tyrants, for +he followed after Cromwell, the man of blood, in the old riding days. +How wickedly doth Franck boast of that leader of the giddy multitude, +“when they raged, and became restless to find out misery for themselves +and others, and the rabble would herd themselves together,” as you said, +“and endeavour to govern and act in spite of authority.” So you wrote; +and what said Franck, that recreant angler? Doth he not praise “Ireton, +Vane, Nevill, and Martin, and the most renowned, valorous, and victorious +conqueror, Oliver Cromwell”? Natheless, with all his sins on his head, +this Franck discovered Scotland for anglers, and my heart turns to him +when he praises “the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed.” + +In those wilds of Assynt and Loch Rannoch, Father, we, thy followers, may +yet take trout, and forget the evils of the times. But, to be done with +Franck, how harshly he speaks of thee and thy book. “For you may +dedicate your opinion to what scribbling putationer you please; the +_Compleat Angler_ if you will, who tells you of a tedious fly story, +extravagantly collected from antiquated authors, such as Gesner and +Dubravius.” Again he speaks of “Isaac Walton, whose authority to me +seems alike authentick, as is the general opinion of the vulgar prophet,” +&c. + +Certain I am that Franck, if a better angler than thou, was a worse man, +who, writing his “Dialogues Piscatorial” or “Northern Memoirs” five years +after the world welcomed thy “Compleat Angler,” was jealous of thy favour +with the people, and, may be, hated thee for thy loyalty and sound faith. +But, Master, like a peaceful man avoiding contention, thou didst never +answer this blustering Franck, but wentest quietly about thy quiet Lea, +and left him his roaring Brora and windy Assynt. How could this noisy +man know thee—and know thee he did, having argued with thee in +Stafford—and not love Isaak Walton? A pedant angler, I call him, a +plaguy angler, so let him huff away, and turn we to thee and to thy sweet +charm in fishing for men. + +How often, studying in thy book, have I hummed to myself that of Horace— + + _Laudis amore tumes? Sunt certa piacula quæ te_ + _Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello_. + +So healing a book for the frenzy of fame is thy discourse on meadows, and +pure streams, and the country life. How peaceful, men say, and blessed +must have been the life of this old man, how lapped in content, and +hedged about by his own humility from the world! They forget, who speak +thus, that thy years, which were many, were also evil, or would have +seemed evil to divers that had tasted of thy fortunes. Thou wert poor, +but that, to thee, was no sorrow, for greed of money was thy detestation. +Thou wert of lowly rank, in an age when gentle blood was alone held in +regard; yet thy virtues made thee hosts of friends, and chiefly among +religious men, bishops, and doctors of the Church. Thy private life was +not unacquainted with sorrow; thy first wife and all her fair children +were taken from thee like flowers in spring, though, in thine age, new +love and new offspring comforted thee like “the primrose of the later +year.” Thy private griefs might have made thee bitter, or melancholy, so +might the sorrows of the State and of the Church, which were deprived of +their heads by cruel men, despoiled of their wealth, the pious driven, +like thee, from their homes; fear everywhere, everywhere robbery and +confusion: all this ruin might have angered another temper. But thou, +Father, didst bear all with so much sweetness as perhaps neither natural +temperament, nor a firm faith, nor the love of angling could alone have +displayed. For we see many anglers (as witness Richard Franck aforesaid) +who are angry men, and myself, when I get my hooks entangled at every +cast in a tree, have come nigh to swear prophane. + +Also we see religious men that are sour and fanatical, no rare thing in +the party that professes godliness. But neither private sorrow nor +public grief could abate thy natural kindliness, nor shake a religion +which was not untried, but had, indeed, passed through the furnace like +fine gold. For if we find not Faith at all times easy, because of the +oppositions of Science, and the searching curiosity of men’s minds, +neither was Faith a matter of course in thy day. For the learned and +pious were greatly tossed about, like worthy Mr. Chillingworth, by doubts +wavering between the Church of Rome and the Reformed Church of England. +The humbler folk, also, were invited, now here, now there, by the +clamours of fanatical Nonconformists, who gave themselves out to be +somebody, while Atheism itself was not without many to witness to it. +Therefore, such a religion as thine was not, so to say, a mere innocence +of evil in the things of our Belief, but a reasonable and grounded faith, +strong in despite of oppositions. Happy was the man in whom temper, and +religion, and the love of the sweet country and an angler’s pastime so +conveniently combined; happy the long life which held in its hand that +threefold clue through the labyrinth of human fortunes! Around thee +Church and State might fall in ruins, and might be rebuilded, and thy +tears would not be bitter, nor thy triumph cruel. + +Thus, by God’s blessing, it befell thee + + _Nec turpem senectam_ + _Degere, nec cithara carentem_. + +I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems. Those +recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of Dr. Donne +and others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of thy kind heart +than thy fancy. But what or whose was the pastoral poem of “Thealma and +Clearchus,” which thou didst set about printing in 1678, and gavest to +the world in 1683? Thou gavest John Chalkhill for the author’s name, and +a John Chalkhill of thy kindred died at Winchester, being eighty years of +his age, in 1679. Now thou speakest of John Chalkhill as “a friend of +Edmund Spenser’s,” and how could this be? + +Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a friend, +borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to cover poetry of +thine own inditing? When Mr. Flatman writes of Chalkhill, ’tis in words +well fitted to thine own merit: + + Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows + Except himself, who charitably shows + The ready road to virtue and to praise, + The road to many long and happy days. + +However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green pastures, +thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we, who stray into +thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy hand, and listen +to thy cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, may our content be equal, +and our praise, therefore, none the less. Father, if Master Stoddard, +the great fisher of Tweedside, be with thee, greet him for me, and thank +him for those songs of his, and perchance he will troll thee a catch of +our dear River. + + Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound, + They know not, they dream not, who linger around, + How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin + From thee—the bliss withered within. + +Or perhaps thou wilt better love, + + The lanesome Tala and the Lyne, + And Manor wi’ its mountain rills, + An’ Etterick, whose waters twine + Wi’ Yarrow frae the forest hills; + An’ Gala, too, and Teviot bright, + An’ mony a stream o’ playfu’ speed, + Their kindred valleys a’ unite + Amang the braes o’ bonnie Tweed! + +So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old anglers, +like Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden age. + + + + +X. +_To M. Chapelain_. + + +MONSIEUR,—You were a popular poet, and an honourable, over-educated, +upright gentleman. Of the latter character you can never be deprived, +and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are, than the +laurels which flourished so gaily, and faded so soon. + + Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for a day, + But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May. + +I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but _your_ laurel +certainly outlived not May, nor can we hope that you dwell where Orpheus +and where Homer are. Some other crown, some other Paradise, we cannot +doubt it, awaited _un si bon homme_. But the moral excellence that even +Boileau admitted, _la foi, l’honneur, la probité_, do not in Parnassus +avail the popular poet, and some luckless Glatigny or Théophile, Regnier +or Gilbert, attains a kind of immortality denied to the man of many +contemporary editions, and of a great commercial success. + +If ever, for the confusion of Horace, any Poet was Made, you, Sir, should +have been that fortunately manufactured article. You were, in matters of +the Muses, the child of many prayers. Never, since Adam’s day, have any +parents but yours prayed for a poet-child. Then Destiny, that mocks the +desires of men in general, and fathers in particular, heard the appeal, +and presented M. Chapelain and Jeanne Corbière his wife with the future +author of “La Pucelle.” Oh futile hopes of men, _O pectora cæca_! All +was done that education could do for a genius which, among other +qualities, “especially lacked fire and imagination,” and an ear for +verse—sad defects these in a child of the Muses. Your training in all +the mechanics and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim, +like Rasselas, “Enough! Thou hast convinced me that no human being can +ever be a Poet.” Unhappily, you succeeded in convincing Cardinal +Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your powers, you received a +pension of one thousand crowns, and were made Captain of the Cardinal’s +Minstrels, as M. de Tréville was Captain of the King’s Musketeers. + +Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were more +richly endowed than ever is Research, even Research in Prehistoric +English, among us niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a Cardinal, or +even, as you did, a Prime Minister, who would praise and pension _me_; +but envy be still! Your existence was made happy indeed; you constructed +odes, corrected sonnets, presided at the Hôtel Rambouillet, while the +learned ladies were still young and fair, and you enjoyed a prodigious +celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished Epic. “Who, indeed,” says +a sympathetic author, M. Théophile Gautier, “who could expect less than a +miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of art—a perfect Turk in +the science of poetry, a person so well pensioned, and so favoured by the +great?” Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good faith to +advertise your merits. Hard must have been the heart that could resist +the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc de +Montausier, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and Monseigneur +Godeau, Bishop of Vence, and M. Colbert, who had such a genius for +finance. + +If bishops and politicians and Prime Ministers skilled in finance, and +some critics (Ménage and Sarrazin and Vaugelas), if ladies of birth and +taste, if all the world in fact, combined to tell you that you were a +great poet, how can we blame you for taking yourself seriously, and +appraising yourself at the public estimate? + +It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops +especially, and when every minor poet believes in himself on the +testimony of his own conceit, you may be acquitted of vanity if you +listened to the plaudits of your friends. Nay, you ventured to pronounce +judgment on contemporaries—whom Posterity has preferred to your +perfections. “Molière,” said you, “understands the genius of comedy, and +presents it in a natural style. The plot of his best pieces is borrowed, +but not without judgment; his _morale_ is fair, and he has only to avoid +scurrility.” + +Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain! + +Of yourself you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature, that +your “courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work not +absolutely good.” And yet you regarded “La Pucelle” with some +complacency. + +On the “Pucelle” you were occupied during a generation of mortal men. I +marvel not at the length of your labours, as you received a yearly +pension till the Epic was finished, but your Muse was no Alcmena, and no +Hercules was the result of that prolonged night of creation. First you +gravely wrote out all the composition in prose: the task occupied you for +five whole years. Ah, why did you not leave it in that commonplace but +appropriate medium? What says the Précieuse about you in Boileau’s +satire? + + In Chapelain, for all his foes have said, + She finds but one defect, he can’t be read; + Yet thinks the world might taste his Maiden’s woes, + If only he would turn his verse to prose! + +The verse had been prose, and prose, perhaps, it should have remained. +Yet for this precious “Pucelle,” in the age when “Paradise Lost” was sold +for five pounds, you are believed to have received about four thousand. +Horace was wrong, mediocre poets may exist (now and then), and he was a +wise man who first spoke of _aurea mediocritas_. At length the great +work was achieved, a work thrice blessed in its theme, that divine Maiden +to whom France owes all, and whom you and Voltaire have recompensed so +strangely. In folio, in italics, with a score of portraits and +engravings, and _culs de lampe_, the great work was given to the world, +and had a success. Six editions in eighteen months are figures which +fill the poetic heart with envy and admiration. And then, alas! the +bubble burst. A great lady, Madame de Longueville, hearing the “Pucelle” +read aloud, murmured that it was “perfect indeed, but perfectly +wearisome.” Then the satires began, and the satirists never left you +till your poetic reputation was a rag, till the mildest Abbé at Ménage’s +had his cheap sneer for Chapelain. + +I make no doubt, Sir, that envy and jealousy had much to do with the +onslaught on your “Pucelle.” These qualities, alas! are not strange to +literary minds; does not even Hesiod tell us that “potter hates potter, +and poet hates poet”? But contemporary spites do not harm true genius. +Who suffered more than Molière from cabals? Yet neither the court nor +the town ever deserted him, and he is still the joy of the world. I +admit that his adversaries were weaker than yours. What were Boursault +and Le Boulanger, and Thomas Corneille and De Visé, what were they all +compared to your enemy, Boileau? Brossette tells a story which really +makes a man pity you. You remember M. de Puimorin, who, to be in the +fashion, laughed at your once popular Epic. “It is all very well,” said +you, “for a man to laugh who cannot even read.” Whereon M. de Puimorin +replied: “Qu’il n’avoit que trop sû lire, depuis que Chapelain s’étoit +avisé de faire imprimer.” A new horror had been added to the +accomplishment of reading since Chapelain had published. This repartee +was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried to turn it into an epigram. He +did complete the last couplet, + + Hélas! pour mes péchés, je n’ai sû que trop lire + Depuis que tu fais imprimer. + +But by no labour would M. de Puimorin achieve the first two lines of his +epigram. Then you remember what great allies came to his assistance. I +almost blush to think that M. Despréaux, M. Racine, and M. de Molière, +the three most renowned wits of the time, conspired to complete the poor +jest, and assail you. Well, bubble as your poetry was, you may be proud +that it needed all these sharpest of pens to prick the bubble. Other +poets, as popular as you, have been annihilated by an article. Macaulay +put forth his hand, and “Satan Montgomery” was no more. It did not need +a Macaulay, the laughter of a mob of little critics was enough to blow +him into space; but you probably have met Montgomery, and of contemporary +failures or successes I do not speak. + +I wonder, sometimes, whether the consensus of criticism ever made you +doubt for a moment whether, after all, you were not a false child of +Apollo? Was your complacency tortured, as the complacency of true poets +has occasionally been, by doubts? Did you expect posterity to reverse +the verdict of the satirists, and to do you justice? You answered your +earliest assailant, Linière, and, by a few changes of words, turned his +epigrams into flattery. But I fancy, on the whole, you remained calm, +unmoved, wrapped up in admiration of yourself. According to M. de +Marivaux, who reviewed, as I am doing, the spirits of the mighty dead, +you “conceived, on the strength of your reputation, a great and serious +veneration for yourself and your genius.” Probably you were protected by +the invulnerable armour of an honest vanity, probably you declared that +mere jealousy dictated the lines of Boileau, and that Chapelain’s real +fault was his popularity, and his pecuniary success, + + Qu’il soit le mieux renté de tous les beaux-esprits. + +This, you would avow, was your offence, and perhaps you were not +altogether mistaken. Yet posterity declines to read a line of yours, +and, as we think of you, we are again set face to face with that eternal +problem, how far is popularity a test of poetry? Burns was a poet: and +popular. Byron was a popular poet, and the world agrees in the verdict +of their own generations. But Montgomery, though he sold so well, was no +poet, nor, Sir, I fear, was your verse made of the stuff of immortality. +Criticism cannot hurt what is truly great; the Cardinal and the Academy +left Chimène as fair as ever, and as adorable. It is only pinchbeck that +perishes under the acids of satire: gold defies them. Yet I sometimes +ask myself, does the existence of popularity like yours justify the +malignity of satire, which blesses neither him who gives, nor him who +takes? Are poisoned arrows fair against a bad poet? I doubt it, Sir, +holding that, even unpricked, a poetic bubble must soon burst by its own +nature. Yet satire will assuredly be written so long as bad poets are +successful, and bad poets will assuredly reflect that their assailants +are merely envious, and (while their vogue lasts) that the purchasing +public is the only judge. After all, the bad poet who is popular and +“sells” is not a whit worse than the bad poets who are unpopular, and who +deride his songs. + + Monsieur, + + Votre très-humble serviteur, &c. + + + + +XI. +_To Sir John Maundeville_, _Kt._ +(OF THE WAYS INTO YNDE.) + + +SIR JOHN,—Wit you well that men holden you but light, and some clepen you +a Liar. And they say that you never were born in Englond, in the town of +Seynt Albones, nor have seen and gone through manye diverse Londes. And +there goeth an old knight at arms, and one that connes Latyn, and hath +been beyond the sea, and hath seen Prester John’s country. And he hath +been in an Yle that men clepen Burmah, and there bin women bearded. Now +men call him Colonel Henry Yule, and he hath writ of thee in his great +booke, Sir John, and he holds thee but lightly. For he saith that ye did +pill your tales out of Odoric his book, and that ye never saw snails with +shells as big as houses, nor never met no Devyls, but part of that ye +say, ye took it out of William of Boldensele his book, yet ye took not +his wisdom, withal, but put in thine own foolishness. Nevertheless, Sir +John, for the frailty of Mankynde, ye are held a good fellow, and a +merry; so now, come, let me tell you of the new ways into Ynde. + +In that Lond they have a Queen that governeth all the Lond, and all they +ben obeyssant to her. And she is the Queen of Englond; for Englishmen +have taken all the Lond of Ynde. For they were right good werryoures of +old, and wyse, noble, and worthy. But of late hath risen a new sort of +Englishman very puny and fearful, and these men clepen Radicals. And +they go ever in fear, and they scream on high for dread in the streets +and the houses, and they fain would flee away from all that their fathers +gat them with the sword. And this sort men call Scuttleres, but the mean +folk and certain of the baser sort hear them gladly, and they say ever +that Englishmen should flee out of Ynde. + +Fro Englond men gon to Ynde by many dyverse Contreyes. For Englishmen +ben very stirring and nymble. For they ben in the seventh climate, that +is of the Moon. And the Moon (ye have said it yourself, Sir John, +natheless, is it true) is of lightly moving, for to go diverse ways, and +see strange things, and other diversities of the Worlde. Wherefore +Englishmen be lightly moving, and far wandering. And they gon to Ynde by +the great Sea Ocean. First come they to Gibraltar, that was the point of +Spain, and builded upon a rock; and there ben apes, and it is so strong +that no man may take it. Natheless did Englishmen take it fro the +Spanyard, and all to hold the way to Ynde. For ye may sail all about +Africa, and past the Cape men clepen of Good Hope, but that way unto Ynde +is long and the sea is weary. Wherefore men rather go by the Midland +sea, and Englishmen have taken many Yles in that sea. + +For first they have taken an Yle that is clept Malta; and therein built +they great castles, to hold it against them of Fraunce, and Italy, and of +Spain. And from this Ile of Malta Men gon to Cipre. And Cipre is right +a good Yle, and a fair, and a great, and it hath 4 principal Cytees +within him. And at Famagost is one of the principal Havens of the sea +that is in the world, and Englishmen have but a lytel while gone won that +Yle from the Sarazynes. Yet say that sort of Englishmen where of I told +you, that is puny and sore adread, that the Lond is poisonous and barren +and of no avail, for that Lond is much more hotter than it is here. Yet +the Englishmen that ben werryoures dwell there in tents, and the skill is +that they may ben the more fresh. + +From Cypre, Men gon to the Lond of Egypte, and in a Day and a Night he +that hath a good wind may come to the Haven of Alessandrie. Now the Lond +of Egypt longeth to the Soudan, yet the Soudan longeth not to the Lond of +Egypt. And when I say this, I do jape with words, and may hap ye +understond me not. Now Englishmen went in shippes to Alessandrie, and +brent it, and over ran the Lond, and their soudyours warred agen the +Bedoynes, and all to hold the way to Ynde. For it is not long past since +Frenchmen let dig a dyke, through the narrow spit of lond, from the +Midland sea to the Red sea, wherein was Pharaoh drowned. So this is the +shortest way to Ynde there may be, to sail through that dyke, if men gon +by sea. + +But all the Lond of Egypt is clepen the Vale enchaunted; for no man may +do his business well that goes thither, but always fares he evil, and +therefore clepen they Egypt the Vale perilous, and the sepulchre of +reputations. And men say there that is one of the entrees of Helle. In +that Vale is plentiful lack of Gold and Silver, for many misbelieving +men, and many Christian men also, have gone often time for to take of the +Thresoure that there was of old, and have pilled the Thresoure, wherefore +there is none left. And Englishmen have let carry thither great store of +our Thresoure, 9,000,000 of Pounds sterling, and whether they will see it +agen I misdoubt me. For that Vale is alle fulle of Develes and Fiendes +that men clepen Bondholderes, for that Egypt from of olde is the Lond of +Bondage. And whatsoever Thresoure cometh into the Lond, these Devyls of +Bondholders grabben the same. Natheless by that Vale do Englishmen go +unto Ynde, and they gon by Aden, even to Kurrachee, at the mouth of the +Flood of Ynde. Thereby they send their souldyours, when they are adread +of them of Muscovy. + +For, look you, there is another way into Ynde, and thereby the men of +Muscovy are fain to come, if the Englishmen let them not. That way +cometh by Desert and Wildernesse, from the sea that is clept Caspian, +even to Khiva, and so to Merv; and then come ye to Zulfikar and Penjdeh, +and anon to Herat, that is called the Key of the Gates of Ynde. Then ye +win the lond of the Emir of the Afghauns, a great prince and a rich, and +he hath in his Thresoure more crosses, and stars, and coats that captains +wearen, than any other man on earth. + +For all they of Muscovy, and all Englishmen maken him gifts, and he +keepeth the gifts, and he keepeth his own counsel. For his lond lieth +between Ynde and the folk of Muscovy, wherefore both Englishmen and men +of Muscovy would fain have him friendly, yea, and independent. Wherefore +they of both parties give him clocks, and watches, and stars, and +crosses, and culverins, and now and again they let cut the throats of his +men some deal, and pill his country. Thereby they both set up their rest +that the Emir will be independent, yea, and friendly. But his men love +him not, neither love they the English, nor the Muscovy folk, for they +are worshippers of Mahound, and endure not Christian men. And they love +not them that cut their throats, and burn their country. + +Now they of Muscovy ben Devyls, and they ben subtle for to make a thing +seme otherwise than it is, for to deceive mankind. Wherefore Englishmen +putten no trust in them of Muscovy, save only the Englishmen clept +Radicals, for they make as if they loved these Develes, out of the fear +and dread of war wherein they go, and would be slaves sooner than fight. +But the folk of Ynde know not what shall befall, nor whether they of +Muscovy will take the Lond, or Englishmen shall keep it, so that their +hearts may not enduren for drede. And methinks that soon shall +Englishmen and Muscovy folk put their bodies in adventure, and war one +with another, and all for the way to Ynde. + +But St. George for Englond, I say, and so enough; and may the Seyntes +hele thee, Sir John, of thy Gowtes Artetykes, that thee tormenten. But +to thy Boke I list not to give no credence. + + + + +XII. +_To Alexandre Dumas_. + + +SIR,—There are moments when the wheels of life, even of such a life as +yours, run slow, and when mistrust and doubt overshadow even the most +intrepid disposition. In such a moment, towards the ending of your days, +you said to your son, M. Alexandre Dumas, “I seem to see myself set on a +pedestal which trembles as if it were founded on the sands.” These +sands, your uncounted volumes, are all of gold, and make a foundation +more solid than the rock. As well might the singer of Odysseus, or the +authors of the “Arabian Nights,” or the first inventors of the stories of +Boccaccio, believe that their works were perishable (their names, indeed, +have perished), as the creator of “Les Trois Mousquetaires” alarm himself +with the thought that the world could ever forget Alexandre Dumas. + +Than yours there has been no greater nor more kindly and beneficent force +in modern letters. To Scott, indeed, you owed the first impulse of your +genius; but, once set in motion, what miracles could it not accomplish? +Our dear Porthos was overcome, at last, by a super-human burden; but your +imaginative strength never found a task too great for it. What an +extraordinary vigour, what health, what an overflow of force was yours! +It is good, in a day of small and laborious ingenuities, to breathe the +free air of your books, and dwell in the company of Dumas’s men—so +gallant, so frank, so indomitable, such swordsmen, and such trenchermen. +Like M. de Rochefort in “Vingt Ans Après,” like that prisoner of the +Bastille, your genius “n’est que d’un parti, c’est du parti du grand +air.” + +There seems to radiate from you a still persistent energy and enjoyment; +in that current of strength not only your characters live, frolic, +kindly, and sane, but even your very collaborators were animated by the +virtue which went out of you. How else can we explain it, the dreary +charge which feeble and envious tongues have brought against you, in +England and at home? They say you employed in your novels and dramas +that vicarious aid which, in the slang of the studio, the “sculptor’s +ghost” is fabled to afford. + +Well, let it be so; these ghosts, when uninspired by you, were faint and +impotent as “the strengthless tribes of the dead” in Homer’s Hades, +before Odysseus had poured forth the blood that gave them a momentary +valour. It was from you and your inexhaustible vitality that these +collaborating spectres drew what life they possessed; and when they +parted from you they shuddered back into their nothingness. Where are +the plays, where the romances which Maquet and the rest wrote in their +own strength? They are forgotten with last year’s snows; they have +passed into the wide waste-paper basket of the world. You say of +D’Artagnan, when severed from his three friends—from Porthos, Athos, and +Aramis—“he felt that he could do nothing, save on the condition that each +of these companions yielded to him, if one may so speak, a share of that +electric fluid which was his gift from heaven.” + +No man of letters ever had so great a measure of that gift as you; none +gave of it more freely to all who came—to the chance associate of the +hour, as to the characters, all so burly and full-blooded, who flocked +from your brain. Thus it was that you failed when you approached the +supernatural. Your ghosts had too much flesh and blood, more than the +living persons of feebler fancies. A writer so fertile, so rapid, so +masterly in the ease with which he worked, could not escape the +reproaches of barren envy. Because you overflowed with wit, you could +not be “serious;” because you created with a word, you were said to scamp +your work; because you were never dull, never pedantic, incapable of +greed, you were to be censured as desultory, inaccurate, and prodigal. + +A generation suffering from mental and physical anæmia—a generation +devoted to the “chiselled phrase,” to accumulated “documents,” to +microscopic porings over human baseness, to minute and disgustful records +of what in humanity is least human—may readily bring these unregarded and +railing accusations. Like one of the great and good-humoured Giants of +Rabelais, you may hear the murmurs from afar, and smile with disdain. To +you, who can amuse the world—to you who offer it the fresh air of the +highway, the battlefield, and the sea—the world must always return: +escaping gladly from the boudoirs and the _bouges_, from the surgeries +and hospitals, and dead rooms, of M. Daudet and M. Zola and of the +wearisome De Goncourt. + +With all your frankness, and with that queer morality of the Camp which, +if it swallows a camel now and again, never strains at a gnat, how +healthy and wholesome, and even pure, are your romances! You never gloat +over sin, nor dabble with an ugly curiosity in the corruptions of sense. +The passions in your tales are honourable and brave, the motives are +clearly human. Honour, Love, Friendship make the threefold cord, the +clue your knights and dames follow through how delightful a labyrinth of +adventures! Your greatest books, I take the liberty to maintain, are the +Cycle of the Valois (“La Reine Margot,” “La Dame de Montsoreau,” “Les +Quarante-cinq”), and the Cycle of Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze (“Les +Trois Mousquetaires,” “Vingt Ans Après,” “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne”); +and, beside these two trilogies—a lonely monument, like the sphinx hard +by the three pyramids—“Monte Cristo.” + +In these romances how easy it would have been for you to burn incense to +that great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your people worship. +You had Brantôme, you had Tallemant, you had Rétif, and a dozen others, +to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would +have outdone even the present _naturalistes_. From these alcoves of “Les +Dames Galantes,” and from the torture chambers (M. Zola would not have +spared us one starting sinew of brave La Mole on the rack) you turned, as +Scott would have turned, without a thought of their profitable literary +uses. You had other metal to work on: you gave us that superstitious and +tragical true love of La Mole’s, that devotion—how tender and how +pure!—of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau. You gave us the valour of +D’Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the melancholy nobility of Athos: +Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters are real +people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the end of +“Bragelonne,” and to part with them for ever. “Suppose Porthos, Athos, +and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their +moustaches.” How we would welcome them, forgiving D’Artagnan even his +hateful _fourberie_ in the case of Milady. The brilliance of your +dialogue has never been approached: there is wit everywhere; repartees +glitter and ring like the flash and clink of small-swords. Then what +duels are yours! and what inimitable battle-pieces! I know four good +fights of one against a multitude, in literature. These are the Death of +Gretir the Strong, the Death of Gunnar of Lithend, the Death of Hereward +the Wake, the Death of Bussy d’Amboise. We can compare the strokes of +the heroic fighting-times with those described in later days; and, upon +my word, I do not know that the short sword of Gretir, or the bill of +Skarphedin, or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the rapier of +your Bussy or the sword and shield of Kingsley’s Hereward. + +They say your fencing is unhistorical; no doubt it is so, and you knew +it. La Mole could not have lunged on Coconnas “after deceiving circle;” +for the parry was not invented except by your immortal Chicot, a genius +in advance of his time. Even so Hamlet and Laertes would have fought +with shields and axes, not with small swords. But what matters this +pedantry? In your works we hear the Homeric Muse again, rejoicing in the +clash of steel; and even, at times, your very phrases are unconsciously +Homeric. + +Look at these men of murder, on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, who flee in +terror from the Queen’s chamber, and “find the door too narrow for their +flight:” the very words were anticipated in a line of the “Odyssey” +concerning the massacre of the Wooers. And the picture of Catherine de +Médicis, prowling “like a wolf among the bodies and the blood,” in a +passage of the Louvre—the picture is taken unwittingly from the “Iliad.” +There was in you that reserve of primitive force, that epic grandeur and +simplicity of diction. This is the force that animates “Monte Cristo,” +the earlier chapters, the prison, and the escape. In later volumes of +that romance, methinks, you stoop your wing. Of your dramas I have +little room, and less skill, to speak. “Antony,” they tell me, was “the +greatest literary event of its time,” was a restoration of the stage. +“While Victor Hugo needs the cast-off clothes of history, the wardrobe +and costume, the sepulchre of Charlemagne, the ghost of Barbarossa, the +coffins of Lucretia Borgia, Alexandre Dumas requires no more than a room +in an inn, where people meet in riding cloaks, to move the soul with the +last degree of terror and of pity.” + +The reproach of being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame—for a moment. +The shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast; and when “La Curée” and +“Pot-Bouille” are more forgotten than “Le Grand Cyrus,” men and +women—and, above all, boys—will laugh and weep over the page of Alexandre +Dumas. Like Scott himself, you take us captive in our childhood. I +remember a very idle little boy who was busy with the “Three Musketeers” +when he should have been occupied with “Wilkins’s Latin Prose.” “Twenty +years after” (alas! and more) he is still constant to that gallant +company; and, at this very moment, is breathlessly wondering whether +Grimaud will steal M. de Beaufort out of the Cardinal’s prison. + + + + +XIII. +_To Theocritus_. + + +“SWEET, methinks, is the whispering sound of yonder pine-tree,” so, +Theocritus, with that sweet word ἁδύ, didst thou begin and strike the +keynote of thy songs. “Sweet,” and didst thou find aught of sweet, when +thou, like thy Daphnis, didst “go down the stream, when the whirling wave +closed over the man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the Nymphs”? +Perchance below those waters of death thou didst find, like thine own +Hylas, the lovely Nereids waiting thee, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia +with her April eyes. In the House of Hades, Theocritus, doth there dwell +aught that is fair, and can the low light on the fields of asphodel make +thee forget thy Sicily? Nay, methinks thou hast not forgotten, and +perchance for poets dead there is prepared a place more beautiful than +their dreams. It was well for the later minstrels of another day, it was +well for Ronsard and Du Bellay to desire a dim Elysium of their own, +where the sunlight comes faintly through the shadow of the earth, where +the poplars are duskier, and the waters more pale than in the meadows of +Anjou. + +There, in that restful twilight, far remote from war and plot, from sword +and fire, and from religions that sharpened the steel and lit the torch, +there these learned singers would fain have wandered with their learned +ladies, satiated with life and in love with an unearthly quiet. But to +thee, Theocritus, no twilight of the Hollow Land was dear, but the high +suns of Sicily and the brown cheeks of the country maidens were happiness +enough. For thee, therefore, methinks, surely is reserved an Elysium +beneath the summer of a far-off system, with stars not ours and alien +seasons. There, as Bion prayed, shall Spring, the thrice desirable, be +with thee the whole year through, where there is neither frost, nor is +the heat so heavy on men, but all is fruitful, and all sweet things +blossom, and evenly meted are darkness and dawn. Space is wide, and +there be many worlds, and suns enow, and the Sun-god surely has had a +care of his own. Little didst thou need, in thy native land, the isle of +the three capes, little didst thou need but sunlight on land and sea. +Death can have shown thee naught dearer than the fragrant shadow of the +pines, where the dry needles of the fir are strewn, or glades where +feathered ferns make “a couch more soft than Sleep.” The short grass of +the cliffs, too, thou didst love, where thou wouldst lie, and watch, with +the tunny watcher till the deep blue sea was broken by the burnished +sides of the tunny shoal, and afoam with their gambols in the brine. +There the Muses met thee, and the Nymphs, and there Apollo, remembering +his old thraldom with Admetus, would lead once more a mortal’s flocks, +and listen and learn, Theocritus, while thou, like thine own Comatas, +“didst sweetly sing.” + +There, methinks, I see thee as in thy happy days, “reclined on deep beds +of fragrant lentisk, lowly strewn, and rejoicing in new stript leaves of +the vine, while far above thy head waved many a poplar, many an elm-tree, +and close at hand the sacred waters sang from the mouth of the cavern of +the nymphs.” And when night came, methinks thou wouldst flee from the +merry company and the dancing girls, from the fading crowns of roses or +white violets, from the cottabos, and the minstrelsy, and the Bibline +wine, from these thou wouldst slip away into the summer night. Then the +beauty of life and of the summer would keep thee from thy couch, and +wandering away from Syracuse by the sandhills and the sea, thou wouldst +watch the low cabin, roofed with grass, where the fishing-rods of reed +were leaning against the door, while the Mediterranean floated up her +waves, and filled the waste with sound. There didst thou see thine +ancient fishermen rising ere the dawn from their bed of dry seaweed, and +heardst them stirring, drowsy, among their fishing gear, and heardst them +tell their dreams. + +Or again thou wouldst wander with dusty feet through the ways that the +dust makes silent, while the breath of the kine, as they were driven +forth with the morning, came fresh to thee, and the trailing dewy branch +of honeysuckle struck sudden on thy cheek. Thou wouldst see the Dawn +awake in rose and saffron across the waters, and Etna, grey and pale +against the sky, and the setting crescent would dip strangely in the +glow, on her way to the sea. Then, methinks, thou wouldst murmur, like +thine own Simaetha, the love-lorn witch, “Farewell, Selene, bright and +fair; farewell, ye other stars, that follow the wheels of the quiet +Night.” Nay, surely it was in such an hour that thou didst behold the +girl as she burned the laurel leaves and the barley grain, and melted the +waxen image, and called on Selene to bring her lover home. Even so, even +now, in the islands of Greece, the setting Moon may listen to the prayers +of maidens. ‘Bright golden Moon, that now art near the waters, go thou +and salute my lover, he that stole my love, and that kissed me, saying +“Never will I leave thee.” And lo, he hath left me as men leave a field +reaped and gleaned, like a church where none cometh to pray, like a city +desolate.’ + +So the girls still sing in Greece, for though the Temples have fallen, +and the wandering shepherds sleep beneath the broken columns of the god’s +house in Selinus, yet these ancient fires burn still to the old +divinities in the shrines of the hearths of the peasants. It is none of +the new creeds that cry, in the dirge of the Sicilian shepherds of our +time, “Ah, light of mine eyes, what gift shall I send thee, what offering +to the other world? The apple fadeth, the quince decayeth, and one by +one they perish, the petals of the rose. I will send thee my tears shed +on a napkin, and what though it burneth in the flame, if my tears reach +thee at the last.” + +Yes, little is altered, Theocritus, on these shores beneath the sun, +where thou didst wear a tawny skin stripped from the roughest of +he-goats, and about thy breast an old cloak buckled with a plaited belt. +Thou wert happier there, in Sicily, methinks, and among vines and shadowy +lime-trees of Cos, than in the dust, and heat, and noise of Alexandria. +What love of fame, what lust of gold tempted thee away from the red +cliffs, and grey olives, and wells of black water wreathed with +maidenhair? + + The music of thy rustic flute + Kept not for long its happy country tone; + Lost it too soon, and learned a stormy note + Of men contention tost, of men who groan, + Which tasked thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat— + It failed, and thou wast mute! + +What hadst thou to make in cities, and what could Ptolemies and Princes +give thee better than the goat-milk cheese and the Ptelean wine? Thy +Muses were meant to be the delight of peaceful men, not of tyrants and +wealthy merchants, to whom they vainly went on a begging errand. “Who +will open his door and gladly receive our Muses within his house, who is +there that will not send them back again without a gift? And they with +naked feet and looks askance come homewards, and sorely they upbraid me +when they have gone on a vain journey, and listless again in the bottom +of their empty coffer they dwell with heads bowed over their chilly +knees, where is their drear abode, when portionless they return.” How +far happier was the prisoned goat-herd, Comatas, in the fragrant cedar +chest where the blunt-faced bees from the meadow fed him with food of +tender flowers, because still the Muse dropped sweet nectar on his lips! + +Thou didst leave the neat-herds and the kine, and the oaks of Himera, the +galingale hummed over by the bees, and the pine that dropped her cones, +and Amaryllis in her cave, and Bombyca with her feet of carven ivory. +Thou soughtest the City, and strife with other singers, and the learned +write still on thy quarrels with Apollonius and Callimachus, and +Antagoras of Rhodes. So ancient are the hatreds of poets, envy, +jealousy, and all unkindness. + +Not to the wits of Courts couldst thou teach thy rural song, though all +these centuries, more than two thousand years, they have laboured to vie +with thee. There has come no new pastoral poet, though Virgil copied +thee, and Pope, and Phillips, and all the buckram band of the teacup +time; and all the modish swains of France have sung against thee, as the +_sow challenged Athene_. They never knew the shepherd’s life, the long +winter nights on dried heather by the fire, the long summer days, when +over the parched grass all is quiet, and only the insects hum, and the +shrunken burn whispers a silver tune. Swains in high-heeled shoon, and +lace, shepherdesses in rouge and diamonds, the world is weary of all +concerning them, save their images in porcelain, effigies how unlike thy +golden figures, dedicate to Aphrodite, of Bombyca and Battus! Somewhat, +Theocritus, thou hast to answer for, thou that first of men brought the +shepherd to Court, and made courtiers wild to go a Maying with the +shepherds. + + + + +XIV. +_To Edgar Allan Poe_. + + +SIR,—Your English readers, better acquainted with your poems and romances +than with your criticisms, have long wondered at the indefatigable hatred +which pursues your memory. You, who knew the men, will not marvel that +certain microbes of letters, the survivors of your own generation, still +harass your name with their malevolence, while old women twitter out +their incredible and unheeded slanders in the literary papers of New +York. But their persistent animosity does not quite suffice to explain +the dislike with which many American critics regard the greatest poet, +perhaps the greatest literary genius, of their country. With a +commendable patriotism, they are not apt to rate native merit too low; +and you, I think, are the only example of an American prophet almost +without honour in his own country. + +The recent publication of a cold, careful, and in many respects admirable +study of your career (“Edgar Allan Poe,” by George Woodberry: Houghton, +Mifflin and Co., Boston) reminds English readers who have forgotten it, +and teaches those who never knew it, that you were, unfortunately, a +Reviewer. How unhappy were the necessities, how deplorable the vein, +that compelled or seduced a man of your eminence into the dusty and stony +ways of contemporary criticism! About the writers of his own generation +a leader of that generation should hold his peace. He should neither +praise nor blame nor defend his equals; he should not strike one blow at +the buzzing ephemeræ of letters. The breath of their life is in the +columns of “Literary Gossip;” and they should be allowed to perish with +the weekly advertisements on which they pasture. Reviewing, of course, +there must needs be; but great minds should only criticise the great who +have passed beyond the reach of eulogy or fault-finding. + +Unhappily, taste and circumstances combined to make you a censor; you +vexed a continent, and you are still unforgiven. What “irritation of a +sensitive nature, chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong,” drove you +(in Mr. Longfellow’s own words) to attack his pure and beneficent Muse we +may never ascertain. But Mr. Longfellow forgave you easily; for pardon +comes easily to the great. It was the smaller men, the Daweses, +Griswolds, and the like, that knew not how to forget. “The New Yorkers +never forgave him,” says your latest biographer; and one scarcely marvels +at the inveteracy of their malice. It was not individual vanity alone, +but the whole literary class that you assailed. “As a literary people,” +you wrote, “we are one vast perambulating humbug.” After that +declaration of war you died, and left your reputation to the vanities yet +writhing beneath your scorn. They are writhing and writing still. He +who knows them need not linger over the attacks and defences of your +personal character; he will not waste time on calumnies, tale-bearing, +private letters, and all the noisome dust which takes so long in settling +above your tomb. + +For us it is enough to know that you were compelled to live by your pen, +and that in an age when the author of “To Helen” and “The Cask of +Amontillado” was paid at the rate of a dollar a column. When such +poverty was the mate of such pride as yours, a misery more deep than that +of Burns, an agony longer than Chatterton’s, were inevitable and assured. +No man was less fortunate than you in the moment of his birth—_infelix +opportunitate vitæ_. Had you lived a generation later, honour, wealth, +applause, success in Europe and at home, would all have been yours. +Within thirty years so great a change has passed over the profession of +letters in America; and it is impossible to estimate the rewards which +would have fallen to Edgar Poe, had chance made him the contemporary of +Mark Twain and of “Called Back.” It may be that your criticisms helped +to bring in the new era, and to lift letters out of the reach of quite +unlettered scribblers. Though not a scholar, at least you had a respect +for scholarship. You might still marvel over such words as “objectional” +in the new biography of yourself, and might ask what is meant by such a +sentence as “his connection with it had inured to his own benefit by the +frequent puffs of himself,” and so forth. + +Best known in your own day as a critic, it is as a poet and a writer of +short tales that you must live. But to discuss your few and elaborate +poems is a waste of time, so completely does your own brief definition of +poetry, “the rhythmic creation of the beautiful,” exhaust your theory, +and so perfectly is the theory illustrated by the poems. Natural bent, +and reaction against the example of Mr. Longfellow, combined to make you +too intolerant of what you call the “didactic” element in verse. Even if +morality be not seven-eighths of our life (the exact proportion as at +present estimated), there was a place even on the Hellenic Parnassus for +gnomic bards, and theirs in the nature of the case must always be the +largest public. + +“Music is the perfection of the soul or the idea of poetry,” so you +wrote; “the vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air (which should +be indefinite and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we +should aim at in poetry.” You aimed at that mark, and struck it again +and again, notably in “Helen, thy beauty is to me,” in “The Haunted +Palace,” “The Valley of Unrest,” and “The City in the Sea.” But by some +Nemesis which might, perhaps, have been foreseen, you are, to the world, +the poet of one poem—“The Raven:” a piece in which the music is highly +artificial, and the “exaltation” (what there is of it) by no means +particularly “vague.” So a portion of the public know little of Shelley +but the “Skylark,” and those two incongruous birds, the lark and the +raven, bear each of them a poet’s name, _vivu’ per ora virum_. Your +theory of poetry, if accepted, would make you (after the author of “Kubla +Khan”) the foremost of the poets of the world; at no long distance would +come Mr. William Morris as he was when he wrote “Golden Wings,” “The Blue +Closet,” and “The Sailing of the Sword;” and, close up, Mr. Lear, the +author of “The Yongi Bongi Bo,” an the lay of the “Jumblies.” + +On the other hand Homer would sink into the limbo to which you consigned +Molière. If we may judge a theory by its results, when compared with the +deliberate verdict of the world, your æsthetic does not seem to hold +water. The “Odyssey” is not really inferior to “Ulalume,” as it ought to +be if your doctrine of poetry were correct, nor “Le Festin de Pierre” to +“Undine.” Yet you deserve the praise of having been constant, in your +poetic practice, to your poetic principles—principles commonly deserted +by poets who, like Wordsworth, have published their æsthetic system. +Your pieces are few; and Dr. Johnson would have called you, like +Fielding, “a barren rascal.” But how can a writer’s verses be numerous +if with him, as with you, “poetry is not a pursuit but a passion . . . +which cannot at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations +or the more paltry commendations of mankind!” Of you it may be said, +more truly than Shelley said it of himself, that “to ask you for anything +human, is like asking at a gin-shop for a leg of mutton.” + +Humanity must always be, to the majority of men, the true stuff of +poetry; and only a minority will thank you for that rare music which +(like the strains of the fiddler in the story) is touched on a single +string, and on an instrument fashioned from the spoils of the grave. You +chose, or you were destined + + To vary from the kindly race of men; + +and the consequences, which wasted your life, pursue your reputation. + +For your stories has been reserved a boundless popularity, and that +highest success—the success of a perfectly sympathetic translation. By +this time, of course, you have made the acquaintance of your translator, +M. Charles Baudelaire, who so strenuously shared your views about Mr. +Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and who so energetically resisted all +those ideas of “progress” which “came from Hell or Boston.” On this +point, however, the world continues to differ from you and M. Baudelaire, +and perhaps there is only the choice between our optimism and universal +suicide or universal opium-eating. But to discuss your ultimate ideas is +perhaps a profitless digression from the topic of your prose romances. + +An English critic (probably a Northerner at heart) has described them as +“Hawthorne and delirium tremens.” I am not aware that extreme +orderliness, masterly elaboration, and unchecked progress towards a +predetermined effect are characteristics of the visions of delirium. If +they be, then there is a deal of truth in the criticism, and a good deal +of delirium tremens in your style. But your ingenuity, your +completeness, your occasional luxuriance of fancy and wealth of +jewel-like words, are not, perhaps, gifts which Mr. Hawthorne had at his +command. He was a great writer—the greatest writer in prose fiction whom +America has produced. But you and he have not much in common, except a +certain mortuary turn of mind and a taste for gloomy allegories about the +workings of conscience. + +I forbear to anticipate your verdict about the latest essays of American +fiction. These by no means follow in the lines which you laid down about +brevity and the steady working to one single effect. Probably you would +not be very tolerant (tolerance was not your leading virtue) of Mr. Roe, +now your countrymen’s favourite novelist. He is long, he is didactic, he +is eminently uninspired. In the works of one who is, what you were +called yourself, a Bostonian, you would admire, at least, the acute +observation, the subtlety, and the unfailing distinction. But, destitute +of humour as you unhappily but undeniably were, you would miss, I fear, +the charm of “Daisy Miller.” You would admit the unity of effect secured +in “Washington Square,” though that effect is as remote as possible from +the terror of “The House of Usher” or the vindictive triumph of “The Cask +of Amontillado.” + +Farewell, farewell, thou sombre and solitary spirit: a genius tethered to +the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among _canaille_, a poet among +poetasters, dowered with a scholar’s taste without a scholar’s training, +embittered by his sensitive scorn, and all unsupported by his +consolations. + + + + +XV. +_To Sir Walter Scott_, _Bart._ + + + Rodono, St. Mary’s Loch: + Sept. 8, 1885. + +SIR,—In your biography it is recorded that you not only won the favour of +all men and women; but that a domestic fowl conceived an affection for +you, and that a pig, by his will, had never been severed from your +company. If some Circe had repeated in my case her favourite miracle of +turning mortals into swine, and had given me a choice, into that +fortunate pig, blessed among his race, would I have been converted! You, +almost alone among men of letters, still, like a living friend, win and +charm us out of the past; and if one might call up a poet, as the +scholiast tried to call Homer, from the shades, who would not, out of all +the rest, demand some hours of your society? Who that ever meddled with +letters, what child of the irritable race, possessed even a tithe of your +simple manliness, of the heart that never knew a touch of jealousy, that +envied no man his laurels, that took honour and wealth as they came, but +never would have deplored them had you missed both and remained but the +Border sportsman and the Border antiquary? + +Were the word “genial” not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy +good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old +term might be applied, above all men, to “the Shirra.” But perhaps we +scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so rare, +or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as that of Walter Scott. +Here, in the heart of your own country, among your own grey +round-shouldered hills (each so like the other that the shadow of one +falling on its neighbour exactly outlines that neighbour’s shape), it is +of you and of your works that a native of the Forest is most frequently +brought in mind. All the spirits of the river and the hill, all the +dying refrains of ballad and the fading echoes of story, all the memory +of the wild past, each legend of burn and loch, seem to have combined to +inform your spirit, and to secure themselves an immortal life in your +song. It is through you that we remember them; and in recalling them, as +in treading each hillside in this land, we again remember you and bless +you. + +It is not, “Sixty Years Since” the echo of Tweed among his pebbles fell +for the last time on your ear; not sixty years since, and how much is +altered! But two generations have passed; the lad who used to ride from +Edinburgh to Abbotsford, carrying new books for you, and old, is still +vending, in George Street, old books and new. Of politics I have not the +heart to speak. Little joy would you have had in most that has befallen +since the Reform Bill was passed, to the chivalrous cry of “burke Sir +Walter.” We are still very Radical in the Forest, and you were taken +away from many evils to come. How would the cheek of Walter Scott, or of +Leyden, have blushed at the names of Majuba, The Soudan, Maiwand, and +many others that recall political cowardice or military incapacity! On +the other hand, who but you could have sung the dirge of Gordon, or +wedded with immortal verse the names of Hamilton (who fell with +Cavagnari), of the two Stewarts, of many another clansman, brave among +the bravest! Only he who told how + + The stubborn spearmen still made good + Their dark impenetrable wood + +could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as at +M’Neill’s Zareba and at Abu Klea, + + Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, + As fearlessly and well. + +Ah, Sir, the hearts of the rulers may wax faint, and the voting classes +may forget that they are Britons; but when it comes to blows our fighting +men might cry, with Leyden, + + My name is little Jock Elliot, + And wha daur meddle wi’ me! + +Much is changed, in the countryside as well as in the country; but much +remains. The little towns of your time are populous and excessively +black with the smoke of factories—not, I fear, at present very +flourishing. In Galashiels you still see the little change-house and the +cluster of cottages round the Laird’s lodge, like the clachan of Tully +Veolan. But these plain remnants of the old Scotch towns are almost +buried in a multitude of “smoky dwarf houses”—a living poet, Mr. Matthew +Arnold, has found the fitting phrase for these dwellings, once for all. +All over the Forest the waters are dirty and poisoned: I think they are +filthiest below Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in a Selkirk +man. To keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements are often +promised, I cannot see much change—for the better. Abbotsford, luckily, +is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes of Selkirk, +Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerleithen. On the other hand, your +ill-omened later dwelling, “the unhappy palace of your race,” is +overlooked by villas that prick a cockney ear among their larches, hotels +of the future. Ah, Sir, Scotland is a strange place. Whisky is exiled +from some of our caravanserais, and they have banished Sir John +Barleycorn. It seems as if the views of the excellent critic (who wrote +your life lately, and said you had left no descendants, _le pauvre +homme_!) were beginning to prevail. This pious biographer was greatly +shocked by that capital story about the keg of whisky that arrived at the +Liddesdale farmer’s during family prayers. Your Toryism also was an +offence to him. + +Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let us +be thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the Border +country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at Ashiestiel some +days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been when you left it for +Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on the lawn, the hill on the +opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to the crest with turnips, and the +burn did not sing below the little bridge, for in this arid summer the +burn was dry. But there was still a grilse that rose to a big March +brown in the shrunken stream below Elibank. This may not interest you, +who styled yourself + + No fisher, + But a well-wisher + To the game! + +Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have “grand +gallops among the hills”—those grave wastes of heather and bent that +sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered pastures from +Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the Three Brethren +Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes, Teviotdale is pleasant +still, and there is not a drop of dye in the water, _purior electro_, of +Yarrow. St. Mary’s Loch lies beneath me, smitten with wind and rain—the +St. Mary’s of North and of the Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a +myriad of artificial flies, are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could +no longer fill a cart up Meggat with trout so much of a size that the +country people took them for herrings. + +The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it lies, +within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone, and the +graven letters, and the sword and shield, sleep “Piers Cockburn and +Marjory his wife.” Not a hundred yards off was the castle-door where +they hanged him; this is the tomb of the ballad, and the lady that buried +him rests now with her wild lord. + + Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair, + When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair; + Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae, + When I turned about and went my way! {160} + +Here too hearts have broken, and there is a sacredness in the shadow and +beneath these clustering berries of the rowan-trees. That sacredness, +that reverent memory of our old land, it is always and inextricably +blended with our memories, with our thoughts, with our love of you. +Scotchmen, methinks, who owe so much to you, owe you most for the example +you gave of the beauty of a life of honour, showing them what, by +heaven’s blessing, a Scotchman still might be. + +Words, empty and unavailing—for what words of ours can speak our thoughts +or interpret our affections! From you first, as we followed the deer +with King James, or rode with William of Deloraine on his midnight +errand, did we learn what Poetry means and all the happiness that is in +the gift of song. This and more than may be told you gave us, that are +not forgetful, not ungrateful, though our praise be unequal to our +gratitude. _Fungor inani munere_! + + + + +XVI. +_To Eusebius of Cæsarea_. +(CONCERNING THE GODS OF THE HEATHEN.) + + +TOUCHING the Gods of the Heathen, most reverend Father, thou art not +ignorant that even now, as in the time of thy probation on earth, there +is great dissension. That these feigned Deities and idols, the work of +men’s hands, are no longer worshipped thou knowest; neither do men eat +meat offered to idols. Even as spake that last Oracle which murmured +forth, the latest and the only true voice from Delphi, even so “the +fair-wrought court divine hath fallen; no more hath Phoebus his home, no +more his laurel-bough, nor the singing well of water; nay, the +sweet-voiced water is silent.” The fane is ruinous, and the images of +men’s idolatry are dust. + +Nevertheless, most worshipful, men do still dispute about the beginnings +of those sinful Gods: such as Zeus, Athene, and Dionysus: and marvel how +first they won their dominion over the souls of the foolish peoples. +Now, concerning these things there is not one belief, but many; howbeit, +there are two main kinds of opinion. One sect of philosophers +believes—as thyself, with heavenly learning, didst not vainly +persuade—that the Gods were the inventions of wild and bestial folk, who, +long before cities were builded or life was honourably ordained, +fashioned forth evil spirits in their own savage likeness; ay, or in the +likeness of the very beasts that perish. To this judgment, as it is set +forth in thy Book of the Preparation for the Gospel, I, humble as I am, +do give my consent. But on the other side are many and learned men, +chiefly of the tribes of the Alemanni, who have almost conquered the +whole inhabited world. These, being unwilling to suppose that the +Hellenes were in bondage to superstitions handed down from times of utter +darkness and a bestial life, do chiefly hold with the heathen +philosophers, even with the writers whom thou, most venerable, didst +confound with thy wisdom and chasten with the scourge of small cords of +thy wit. + +Thus, like the heathen, our doctors and teachers maintain that the gods +of the nations were, in the beginning, such pure natural creatures as the +blue sky, the sun, the air, the bright dawn, and the fire; but, as time +went on, men, forgetting the meaning of their own speech and no longer +understanding the tongue of their own fathers, were misled and beguiled +into fashioning all those lamentable tales: as that Zeus, for love of +mortal women, took the shape of a bull, a ram, a serpent, an ant, an +eagle, and sinned in such wise as it is a shame even to speak of. + +Behold, then, most worshipful, how these doctors and learned men argue, +even like the philosophers of the heathen whom thou didst confound. For +they declare the gods to have been natural elements, sun and sky and +storm, even as did thy opponents; and, like them, as thou saidst, “they +are nowise at one with each other in their explanations.” For of old +some boasted that Hera was the Air; and some that she signified the love +of woman and man; and some that she was the waters above the Earth; and +others that she was the Earth beneath the waters; and yet others that she +was the Night, for that Night is the shadow of Earth: as if, forsooth, +the men who first worshipped Hera had understanding of these things! And +when Hera and Zeus quarrel unseemly (as Homer declareth), this meant +(said the learned in thy days) no more than the strife and confusion of +the elements, and was not in the beginning an idle slanderous tale. + +To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying that Hera +could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air, and the love of +sexes, and the confusion of the elements; but that all these opinions +were vain dreams, and the guesses of the learned. And why—thou +saidst—even if the Gods were pure natural creatures, are such foul things +told of them in the Mysteries as it is not fitting for me to declare. +“These wanderings, and drinkings, and loves, and seductions, that would +be shameful in men, why,” thou saidst, “were they attributed to the +natural elements; and wherefore did the Gods constantly show themselves, +like the sorcerers called werewolves, in the shape of the perishable +beasts?” But, mainly, thou didst argue that, till the philosophers of +the heathen were agreed among themselves, not all contradicting each the +other, they had no semblance of a sure foundation for their doctrine. + +To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the heathen +answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand to it that +the heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements, and that the +nations, forgetting their first love and the significance of their own +speech, became confused and were betrayed into foul stories about the +pure Gods—these learned men, I say, agree no whit among themselves. Nay, +they differ one from another, not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and +Theagenes, and the rest whom thou didst laugh to scorn. Bear with me, +Father, while I tell thee how the new Plutarchs and Porphyrys do contend +among themselves; and yet these differences of theirs they call +“Science”! + +Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus, even +as—among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou never +knewest—goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or feet of +their fathers. Thou must know that what Plato, in the “Cratylus,” made +Socrates say in jest, the learned among us practise in sad earnest. For, +when they wish to explain the nature of any God, they first examine his +name, and torment the letters thereof, arranging and altering them +according to their will, and flying off to the speech of the Indians and +Medes and Chaldeans, and other Barbarians, if Greek will not serve their +turn. How saith Socrates? “I bethink me of a very new and ingenious +idea that occurs to me; and, if I do not mind, I shall be wiser than I +should be by to-morrow’s dawn. My notion is that we may put in and pull +out letters at pleasure and alter the accents.” + +Even so do the learned—not at pleasure, maybe, but according to certain +fixed laws (so they declare); yet none the more do they agree among +themselves. And I deny not that they discover many things true and good +to be known; but, as touching the names of the Gods, their learning, as +it standeth, is confusion. Look, then, at the goddess Athene: taking one +example out of hundreds. We have dwelling in our coasts Muellerus, the +most erudite of the doctors of the Alemanni, and the most golden-mouthed. +Concerning Athene, he saith that her name is none other than, in the +ancient tongue of the Brachmanæ, _Ahanâ_, which, being interpreted, means +the Dawn. “And that the morning light,” saith he, “offers the best +starting-point for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, +beyond the reach of doubt or even cavil.” {169} + +Yet this same doctor candidly lets us know that another of his nation, +the witty Benfeius, hath devised another sense and origin of Athene, +taken from the speech of the old Medes. But Muellerus declares to us +that whosoever shall examine the contention of Benfeius “will be bound, +in common honesty, to confess that it is untenable.” This, Father, is +“one for Benfeius,” as the saying goes. And as Muellerus holds that +these matters “admit of almost mathematical precision,” it would seem +that Benfeius is but a _Dummkopf_, as the Alemanni say, in their own +language, when they would be pleasant among themselves. + +Now, wouldst thou credit it? despite the mathematical plainness of the +facts, other Alemanni agree neither with Muellerus, nor yet with +Benfeius, and will neither hear that Athene was the Dawn, nor yet that +she is “the feminine of the Zend _Thrâetâna athwyâna_.” Lo, you! how +Prellerus goes about to show that her name is drawn not from _Ahanâ_ and +the old Brachmanæ, nor _athwyâna_ and the old Medes, but from “the root +_αἰθ_, whence _αἴθηρ_, the air, or _ἀθ_, whence _ἄνθος_, a flower.” Yea, +and Prellerus will have it that no man knows the verity of this matter. +None the less he is very bold, and will none of the Dawn; but holds to it +that Athene was, from the first, “the clear pure height of the Air, which +is exceeding pure in Attica.” + +Now, Father, as if all this were not enough, comes one Roscherus in, with +a mighty great volume on the Gods, and Furtwaenglerus, among others, for +his ally. And these doctors will neither with Rueckertus and Hermannus, +take Athene for “wisdom in person;” nor with Welckerus and Prellerus, for +“the goddess of air;” nor even, with Muellerus and mathematical +certainty, for “the Morning-Red:” but they say that Athene is the “black +thunder-cloud, and the lightning that leapeth therefrom”! I make no +doubt that other Alemanni are of other minds: _quot Alemanni tot +sententiæ_. + +Yea, as thou saidst of the learned heathen, _Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀλλήλοις σύμφωνα +φυσιολογοῦσιν_. Yet these disputes of theirs they call “Science”! But +if any man says to the learned: “Best of men, you are erudite, and +laborious and witty; but, till you are more of the same mind, your +opinions cannot be styled knowledge. Nay, they are at present of no +avail whereon to found any doctrine concerning the Gods”—that man is +railed at for his “mean” and “weak” arguments. + +Was it thus, Father, that the heathen railed against thee? But I must +still believe, with thee, that these evil tales of the Gods were invented +“when man’s life was yet brutish and wandering” (as is the life of many +tribes that even now tell like tales), and were maintained in honour by +the later Greeks “because none dared alter the ancient beliefs of his +ancestors.” Farewell, Father; and all good be with thee, wishes thy +well-wisher and thy disciple. + + + + +XVII. +_To Percy Bysshe Shelley_. + + +SIR,—In your lifetime on earth you were not more than commonly curious as +to what was said by “the herd of mankind,” if I may quote your own +phrase. It was that of one who loved his fellow-men, but did not in his +less enthusiastic moments overestimate their virtues and their +discretion. Removed so far away from our hubbub, and that world where, +as you say, we “pursue our serious folly as of old,” you are, one may +guess, but moderately concerned about the fate of your writings and your +reputation. As to the first, you have somewhere said, in one of your +letters, that the final judgment on your merits as a poet is in the hands +of posterity, and that you fear the verdict will be “Guilty,” and the +sentence “Death.” Such apprehensions cannot have been fixed or frequent +in the mind of one whose genius burned always with a clearer and steadier +flame to the last. The jury of which you spoke has met: a mixed jury and +a merciful. The verdict is “Well done,” and the sentence Immortality of +Fame. There have been, there are, dissenters; yet probably they will be +less and less heard as the years go on. + +One judge, or juryman, has made up his mind that prose was your true +province, and that your letters will out-live your lays. I know not +whether it was the same or an equally well-inspired critic, who spoke of +your most perfect lyrics (so Beau Brummell spoke of his ill-tied cravats) +as “a gallery of your failures.” But the general voice does not echo +these utterances of a too subtle intellect. At a famous University (not +your own) once existed a band of men known as “The Trinity Sniffers.” +Perhaps the spirit of the sniffer may still inspire some of the jurors +who from time to time make themselves heard in your case. The “Quarterly +Review,” I fear, is still unreconciled. It regards your attempts as +tainted by the spirit of “The Liberal Movement in English Literature;” +and it is impossible, alas! to maintain with any success that you were a +Throne and Altar Tory. At Oxford you are forgiven; and the old rooms +where you let the oysters burn (was not your founder, King Alfred, once +guilty of similar negligence?) are now shown to pious pilgrims. + +But Conservatives, ’tis rumoured, are still averse to your opinions, and +are believed to prefer to yours the works of the Reverend Mr. Keble, and, +indeed, of the clergy in general. But, in spite of all this, your poems, +like the affections of the true lovers in Theocritus, are yet “in the +mouths of all, and chiefly on the lips of the young.” It is in your +lyrics that you live, and I do not mean that every one could pass an +examination in the plot of “Prometheus Unbound.” Talking of this piece, +by the way, a Cambridge critic finds that it reveals in you a hankering +after life in a cave—doubtless an unconsciously inherited memory from +cave-man. Speaking of cave-man reminds me that you once spoke of +deserting song for prose, and of producing a history of the moral, +intellectual, and political elements in human society, which, we now +agree, began, as Asia would fain have ended, in a cave. + +Fortunately you gave us “Adonais” and “Hellas” instead of this treatise, +and we have now successfully written the natural history of Man for +ourselves. Science tells us that before becoming a cave-dweller he was a +Brute; Experience daily proclaims that he constantly reverts to his +original condition. _L’homme est un méchant animal_, in spite of your +boyish efforts to add pretty girls “to the list of the good, the +disinterested, and the free.” + +Ah, not in the wastes of Speculation, nor the sterile din of Politics, +were “the haunts meet for thee.” Watching the yellow bees in the ivy +bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the +sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and +fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was +the task of Shelley! “To ask you for anything human,” you said, “was +like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop.” Nay, rather, like asking +Apollo and Hebe, in the Olympian abodes, to give us beef for ambrosia, +and port for nectar. Each poet gives what he has, and what he can offer; +you spread before us fairy bread, and enchanted wine, and shall we turn +away, with a sneer, because, out of all the multitudes of singers, one is +spiritual and strange, one has seen Artemis unveiled? One, like +Anchises, has been beloved of the Goddess, and his eyes, when he looks on +the common world of common men, are, like the eyes of Anchises, blind +with excess of light. Let Shelley sing of what he saw, what none saw but +Shelley! + +Notwithstanding the popularity of your poems (the most romantic of things +didactic), our world is no better than the world you knew. This will +disappoint you, who had “a passion for reforming it.” Kings and priests +are very much where you left them. True, we have a poet who assails +them, at large, frequently and fearlessly; yet Mr. Swinburne has never, +like “kind Hunt,” been in prison, nor do we fear for him a charge of +treason. Moreover, chemical science has discovered new and ingenious +ways of destroying principalities and powers. You would be interested in +the methods, but your peaceful Revolutionism, which disdained physical +force, would regret their application. + +Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider +satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and +we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and +described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence +somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas! +he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will +Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium in twining +buds and beams. + +In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been +carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything else +she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy; her wounds +unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have enfranchised the +paupers, and expect the most happy results. Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone +says) are “our own flesh and blood,” and, as we compel them to be +vaccinated, so we should permit them to vote. Is it a dream that Mr. +Jesse Collings (how you would have loved that man!) has a Bill for +extending the priceless boon of the vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic +Asylums? This may prove that last element in the Elixir of political +happiness which we have long sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret +to hear, are still unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something +for Mr. Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in +the “Queen Mab” stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust +condition of intellectual development. + +As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as much +of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind of +_ducdame_ to bring people of no very great sense into your circle. This +curious fascination has attracted round your memory a feeble folk of +commentators, biographers, anecdotists, and others of the tribe. They +swarm round you like carrion-flies round a sensitive plant, like +night-birds bewildered by the sun. Men of sense and taste have written +on you, indeed; but your weaker admirers are now disputing as to whether +it was your heart, or a less dignified and most troublesome organ, which +escaped the flames of the funeral pyre. These biographers fight terribly +among themselves, and vainly prolong the memory of “old unhappy far-off +things, and sorrows long ago.” Let us leave them and their squabbles +over what is unessential, their raking up of old letters and old stories. + +The town has lately yawned a weary laugh over an enemy of yours, who has +produced two heavy volumes, styled by him “The Real Shelley.” The real +Shelley, it appears, was Shelley as conceived of by a worthy gentleman so +prejudiced and so skilled in taking up things by the wrong handle that I +wonder he has not made a name in the exact science of Comparative +Mythology. He criticises you in the spirit of that Christian Apologist, +the Englishman who called you “a damned Atheist” in the post-office at +Pisa. He finds that you had “a little turned-up nose,” a feature no less +important in his system than was the nose of Cleopatra (according to +Pascal) in the history of the world. To be in harmony with your nose, +you were a “phenomenal” liar, an ill-bred, ill-born, profligate, partly +insane, an evil-tempered monster, a self-righteous person, full of +self-approbation—in fact you were the Beast of this pious Apocalypse. +Your friend Dr. Lind was an embittered and scurrilous apothecary, “a bad +old man.” But enough of this inopportune brawler. + +For Humanity, of which you hoped such great things, Science predicts +extinction in a night of Frost. The sun will grow cold, slowly—as slowly +as doom came on Jupiter in your “Prometheus,” but as surely. If this +nightmare be fulfilled, perhaps the Last Man, in some fetid hut on the +ice-bound Equator, will read, by a fading lamp charged with the dregs of +the oil in his cruse, the poetry of Shelley. So reading, he, the latest +of his race, will not wholly be deprived of those sights which alone +(says the nameless Greek) make life worth enduring. In your verse he +will have sight of sky, and sea, and cloud, the gold of dawn and the +gloom of earthquake and eclipse. He will be face to face, in fancy, with +the great powers that are dead, sun, and ocean, and the illimitable azure +of the heavens. In Shelley’s poetry, while Man endures, all those will +survive; for your “voice is as the voice of winds and tides,” and perhaps +more deathless than all of these, and only perishable with the perishing +of the human spirit. + + + + +XVIII. +_To Monsieur de Molière_, _Valet de Chambre du Roi_. + + +MONSIEUR,—With what awe does a writer venture into the presence of the +great Molière! As a courtier in your time would scratch humbly (with his +comb!) at the door of the Grand Monarch, so I presume to draw near your +dwelling among the Immortals. You, like the king who, among all his +titles, has now none so proud as that of the friend of Molière—you found +your dominions small, humble, and distracted; you raised them to the +dignity of an empire: what Louis XIV. did for France you achieved for +French comedy; and the baton of Scapin still wields its sway though the +sword of Louis was broken at Blenheim. For the King the Pyrenees, or so +he fancied, ceased to exist; by a more magnificent conquest you overcame +the Channel. If England vanquished your country’s arms, it was through +you that France _ferum victorem cepit_, and restored the dynasty of +Comedy to the land whence she had been driven. Ever since Dryden +borrowed “L’Etourdi,” our tardy apish nation has lived (in matters +theatrical) on the spoils of the wits of France. + +In one respect, to be sure, times and manners have altered. While you +lived, taste kept the French drama pure; and it was the congenial +business of English playwrights to foist their rustic grossness and their +large Fescennine jests into the urban page of Molière. Now they are +diversely occupied; and it is their affair to lend modesty where they +borrow wit, and to spare a blush to the cheek of the Lord Chamberlain. +But still, as has ever been our wont since Etherege saw, and envied, and +imitated your successes—still we pilfer the plays of France, and take our +_bien_, as you said in your lordly manner, wherever we can find it. We +are the privateers of the stage; and it is rarely, to be sure, that a +comedy pleases the town which has not first been “cut out” from the +countrymen of Molière. Why this should be, and what “tenebriferous star” +(as Paracelsus, your companion in the “Dialogues des Morts,” would have +believed) thus darkens the sun of English humour, we know not; but +certainly our dependence on France is the sincerest tribute to you. +Without you, neither Rotrou, nor Corneille, nor “a wilderness of monkeys” +like Scarron, could ever have given Comedy to France and restored her to +Europe. + +While we owe to you, Monsieur, the beautiful advent of Comedy, fair and +beneficent as Peace in the play of Aristophanes, it is still to you that +we must turn when of comedies we desire the best. If you studied with +daily and nightly care the works of Plautus and Terence, if you “let no +musty _bouquin_ escape you” (so your enemies declared), it was to some +purpose that you laboured. Shakespeare excepted, you eclipsed all who +came before you; and from those that follow, however fresh, we turn: we +turn from Regnard and Beaumarchais, from Sheridan and Goldsmith, from +Musset and Pailleron and Labiche, to that crowded world of your +creations. “Creations” one may well say, for you anticipated Nature +herself: you gave us, before she did, in Alceste a Rousseau who was a +gentleman not a lacquey; in a _mot_ of Don Juan’s, the secret of the new +Religion and the watchword of Comte, _l’amour de l’humanité_. + +Before you where can we find, save in Rabelais, a Frenchman with humour; +and where, unless it be in Montaigne, the wise philosophy of a secular +civilisation? With a heart the most tender, delicate, loving, and +generous, a heart often in agony and torment, you had to make life +endurable (we cannot doubt it) without any whisper of promise, or hope, +or warning from Religion. Yes, in an age when the greatest mind of all, +the mind of Pascal, proclaimed that the only help was in voluntary +blindness, that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens, you, +Monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to pretend to see what you found +invisible. + +In Religion you beheld no promise of help. When the Jesuits and +Jansenists of your time saw, each of them, in Tartufe the portrait of +their rivals (as each of the laughable Marquises in your play conceived +that you were girding at his neighbour), you all the while were mocking +every credulous excess of Faith. In the sermons preached to Agnès we +surely hear your private laughter; in the arguments for credulity which +are presented to Don Juan by his valet we listen to the eternal +self-defence of superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for +the permanent element of life—precisely where Pascal recognised all that +was most fleeting and unsubstantial—in _divertissement_; in the pleasure +of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence, an observer of +the follies of mankind. Like the Gods of the Epicurean, you seem to +regard our life as a play that is played, as a comedy; yet how often the +tragic note comes in! What pity, and in the laughter what an accent of +tears, as of rain in the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and human +as you; none has had a heart, like you, to feel for his butts, and to +leave them sometimes, in a sense, superior to their tormentors. +Sganarelle, M. de Pourceaugnac, George Dandin, and the rest—our sympathy, +somehow, is with them, after all; and M. de Pourceaugnac is a gentleman, +despite his misadventures. + +Though triumphant Youth and malicious Love in your plays may batter and +defeat Jealousy and Old Age, yet they have not all the victory, or you +did not mean that they should win it. They go off with laughter, and +their victim with a grimace; but in him we, that are past our youth, +behold an actor in an unending tragedy, the defeat of a generation. Your +sympathy is not wholly with the dogs that are having their day; you can +throw a bone or a crust to the dog that has had his, and has been taught +that it is over and ended. Yourself not unlearned in shame, in jealousy, +in endurance of the wanton pride of men (how could the poor player and +the husband of Célimène be untaught in that experience?), you never sided +quite heartily, as other comedians have done, with young prosperity and +rank and power. + +I am not the first who has dared to approach you in the Shades; for just +after your own death the author of “Les Dialogues des Morts” gave you +Paracelsus as a companion, and the author of “Le Jugement de Pluton” made +the “mighty warder” decide that “Molière should not talk philosophy.” +These writers, like most of us, feel that, after all, the comedies of the +_Contemplateur_, of the translator of Lucretius, are a philosophy of life +in themselves, and that in them we read the lessons of human experience +writ small and clear. + +What comedian but Molière has combined with such depths—with the +indignation of Alceste, the self-deception of Tartufe, the blasphemy of +Don Juan—such wildness of irresponsible mirth, such humour, such wit! +Even now, when more than two hundred years have sped by, when so much +water has flowed under the bridges and has borne away so many trifles of +contemporary mirth (_cetera fluminis ritu feruntur_), even now we never +laugh so well as when Mascarille and Vadius and M. Jourdain tread the +boards in the Maison de Molière. Since those mobile dark brows of yours +ceased to make men laugh, since your voice denounced the “demoniac” +manner of contemporary tragedians, I take leave to think that no player +has been more worthy to wear the canons of Mascarille or the gown of +Vadius than M. Coquelin of the Comédie Française. In him you have a +successor to your Mascarille so perfect, that the ghosts of playgoers of +your date might cry, could they see him, that Molière had come again. +But, with all respect to the efforts of the fair, I doubt if Mdlle. +Barthet, or Mdme. Croizette herself, would reconcile the town to the loss +of the fair De Brie, and Madeleine, and the first, the true Célimène, +Armande. Yet had you ever so merry a _soubrette_ as Mdme. Samary, so +exquisite a Nicole? + +Denounced, persecuted, and buried hugger-mugger two hundred years ago, +you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more servility +and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than you may approve. +Are not the Molièristes a body who carry adoration to fanaticism? Any +scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), any anecdote even remotely +touching on your life, any fact that may prove your house was numbered 15 +not 22, is eagerly seized and discussed by your too minute historians. +Concerning your private life, these men often speak more like malicious +enemies than friends; repeating the fabulous scandals of Le Boulanger, +and trying vainly to support them by grubbing in dusty parish registers. +It is most necessary to defend you from your friends—from such friends as +the veteran and inveterate M. Arsène Houssaye, or the industrious but +puzzle-headed M. Loiseleur. Truly they seek the living among the dead, +and the immortal Molière among the sweepings of attorneys’ offices. As I +regard them (for I have tarried in their tents) and as I behold their +trivialities—the exercises of men who neglect Molière’s works to gossip +about Molière’s great-grand-mother’s second-best bed—I sometimes wish +that Molière were here to write on his devotees a new comedy, “Les +Molièristes.” How fortunate were they, Monsieur, who lived and worked +with you, who saw you day by day, who were attached, as Lagrange tells +us, by the kindest loyalty to the best and most honourable of men, the +most open-handed in friendship, in charity the most delicate, of the +heartiest sympathy! Ah, that for one day I could behold you, writing in +the study, rehearsing on the stage, musing in the lace-seller’s shop, +strolling through the Palais, turning over the new books at Billaine’s, +dusting your ruffles among the old volumes on the sunny stalls. Would +that, through the ages, we could hear you after supper, merry with +Boileau, and with Racine,—not yet a traitor,—laughing over Chapelain, +combining to gird at him in an epigram, or mocking at Cotin, or talking +your favourite philosophy, mindful of Descartes. Surely of all the wits +none was ever so good a man, none ever made life so rich with humour and +friendship. + + + + +XIX. +_To Robert Burns_. + + +SIR,—Among men of Genius, and especially among Poets, there are some to +whom we turn with a peculiar and unfeigned affection; there are others +whom we admire rather than love. By some we are won with our will, by +others conquered against our desire. It has been your peculiar fortune +to capture the hearts of a whole people—a people not usually prone to +praise, but devoted with a personal and patriotic loyalty to you and to +your reputation. In you every Scot who _is_ a Scot sees, admires, and +compliments Himself, his ideal self—independent, fond of whisky, fonder +of the lassies; you are the true representative of him and of his nation. +Next year will be the hundredth since the press of Kilmarnock brought to +light its solitary masterpiece, your Poems; and next year, therefore, +methinks, the revenue will receive a welcome accession from the abundance +of whisky drunk in your honour. It is a cruel thing for any of your +countrymen to feel that, where all the rest love, he can only admire; +where all the rest are idolators, he may not bend the knee; but stands +apart and beats upon his breast, observing, not adoring—a critic. Yet to +some of us—petty souls, perhaps, and envious—that loud indiscriminating +praise of “Robbie Burns” (for so they style you in their Change-house +familiarity) has long been ungrateful; and, among the treasures of your +songs, we venture to select and even to reject. So it must be! We +cannot all love Haggis, nor “painch, tripe, and thairm,” and all those +rural dainties which you celebrate as “warm-reekin, rich!” “Rather too +rich,” as the Young Lady said on an occasion recorded by Sam Weller. + + Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware + That jaups in luggies; + But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer, + Gie her a Haggis! + +You _have_ given her a Haggis, with a vengeance, and her “gratefu’ +prayer” is yours for ever. But if even an eternity of partridge may pall +on the epicure, so of Haggis too, as of all earthly delights, cometh +satiety at last. And yet what a glorious Haggis it is—the more +emphatically rustic and even Fescennine part of your verse! We have had +many a rural bard since Theocritus “watched the visionary flocks,” but +you are the only one of them all who has spoken the sincere Doric. Yours +is the talk of the byre and the plough-tail; yours is that large +utterance of the early hinds. Even Theocritus minces matters, save where +Lacon and Comatas quite out-do the swains of Ayrshire. “But thee, +Theocritus, wha matches?” you ask, and yourself out-match him in this +wide rude region, trodden only by the rural Muse. “_Thy_ rural loves are +nature’s sel’;” and the wooer of Jean Armour speaks more like a true +shepherd than the elegant Daphnis of the “Oaristys.” + +Indeed it is with this that moral critics of your life reproach you, +forgetting, perhaps, that in your amours you were but as other Scotch +ploughmen and shepherds of the past and present. Ettrick may still, with +Afghanistan, offer matter for idylls, as Mr. Carlyle (your antithesis, +and the complement of the Scotch character) supposed; but the morals of +Ettrick are those of rural Sicily in old days, or of Mossgiel in your +days. Over these matters the Kirk, with all her power, and the Free Kirk +too, have had absolutely no influence whatever. To leave so delicate a +topic, you were but as other swains, or, as “that Birkie ca’d a lord,” +Lord Byron; only you combined (in certain of your letters) a libertine +theory with your practice; you poured out in song your audacious +raptures, your half-hearted repentance, your shame and your scorn. You +spoke the truth about rural lives and loves. We may like it or dislike +it but we cannot deny the verity. + +Was it not as unhappy a thing, Sir, for you, as it was fortunate for +Letters and for Scotland, that you were born at the meeting of two ages +and of two worlds—precisely in the moment when bookish literature was +beginning to reach the people, and when Society was first learning to +admit the low-born to her Minor Mysteries? Before you how many singers +not less truly poets than yourself—though less versatile not less +passionate, though less sensuous not less simple—had been born and had +died in poor men’s cottages! There abides not even the shadow of a name +of the old Scotch song-smiths, of the old ballad-makers. The authors of +“Clerk Saunders,” of “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” of “Fair Annie,” and +“Sir Patrick Spens,” and “The Bonny Hind,” are as unknown to us as Homer, +whom in their directness and force they resemble. They never, perhaps, +gave their poems to writing; certainly they never gave them to the press. +On the lips and in the hearts of the people they have their lives; and +the singers, after a life obscure and untroubled by society or by fame, +are forgotten. “The Iniquity of Oblivion blindly scattereth his Poppy.” + +Had you been born some years earlier you would have been even as these +unnamed Immortals, leaving great verses to a little clan—verses retained +only by Memory. You would have been but the minstrel of your native +valley: the wider world would not have known you, nor you the world. +Great thoughts of independence and revolt would never have burned in you; +indignation would not have vexed you. Society would not have given and +denied her caresses. You would have been happy. Your songs would have +lingered in all “the circle of the summer hills;” and your scorn, your +satire, your narrative verse, would have been unwritten or unknown. To +the world what a loss! and what a gain to you! We should have possessed +but a few of your lyrics, as + + When o’er the hill the eastern star + Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo; + And owsen frae the furrowed field, + Return sae dowf and wearie O! + +How noble that is, how natural, how unconsciously Greek! You found, +oddly, in good Mrs. Barbauld, the merits of the Tenth Muse: + + In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives + Even Sappho’s flame! + +But how unconsciously you remind us both of Sappho and of Homer in these +strains about the Evening Star and the hour when the Day μετενίσσετο +βουλυτόνδε? Had you lived and died the pastoral poet of some silent +glen, such lyrics could not but have survived; free, too, of all that in +your songs reminds us of the Poet’s Corner in the “Kirkcudbright +Advertiser.” We should not have read how + + Phœbus, gilding the brow o’ morning, + Banishes ilk darksome shade! + +Still we might keep a love-poem unexcelled by Catullus, + + Had we never loved sae kindly, + Had we never loved sae blindly, + Never met—or never parted, + We had ne’er been broken-hearted. + +But the letters to Clarinda would have been unwritten, and the thrush +would have been untaught in “the style of the Bird of Paradise.” + +A quiet life of song, _fallentis semita vitæ_, was not to be yours. Fate +otherwise decreed it. The touch of a lettered society, the strife with +the Kirk, discontent with the State, poverty and pride, neglect and +success, were needed to make your Genius what it was, and to endow the +world with “Tam o’ Shanter,” the “Jolly Beggars,” and “Holy Willie’s +Prayer.” Who can praise them too highly—who admire in them too much the +humour, the scorn, the wisdom, the unsurpassed energy and courage? So +powerful, so commanding, is the movement of that Beggars’ Chorus, that, +methinks, it unconsciously echoed in the brain of our greatest living +poet when he conceived the “Vision of Sin.” You shall judge for +yourself. Recall: + + Here’s to budgets, bags, and wallets! + Here’s to all the wandering train! + Here’s our ragged bairns and callets! + One and all cry out, Amen! + + A fig for those by law protected! + Liberty’s a glorious feast! + Courts for cowards were erected! + Churches built to please the priest! + +Then read this: + + Drink to lofty hopes that cool— + Visions of a perfect state: + Drink we, last, the public fool, + Frantic love and frantic hate. + + * * * * * + + Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, + While we keep a little breath! + Drink to heavy Ignorance, + Hob and nob with brother Death! + +Is not the movement the same, though the modern speaks a wilder +recklessness? + +So in the best company we leave you, who were the life and soul of so +much company, good and bad. No poet, since the Psalmist of Israel, ever +gave the world more assurance of a man; none lived a life more strenuous, +engaged in an eternal conflict of the passions, and by them +overcome—“mighty and mightily fallen.” When we think of you, Byron +seems, as Plato would have said, remote by one degree from actual truth, +and Musset by a degree more remote than Byron. + + + + +XX. +_To Lord Byron_. + + +MY LORD, + + (Do you remember how Leigh Hunt + Enraged you once by writing _My dear Byron_?) + Books have their fates,—as mortals have who punt, + And _yours_ have entered on an age of iron. + Critics there be who think your satire blunt, + Your pathos, fudge; such perils must environ + Poets who in their time were quite the rage, + Though now there’s not a soul to turn their page. + Yes, there is much dispute about your worth, + And much is said which you might like to know + By modern poets here upon the earth, + Where poets live, and love each other so; + And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth + To hear of bards that pitch your praises low, + Though there be some that for your credit stickle, + As—Glorious Mat,—and not inglorious Nichol. + + (This kind of writing is my pet aversion, + I hate the slang, I hate the personalities, + I loathe the aimless, reckless, loose dispersion, + Of every rhyme that in the singer’s wallet is, + I hate it as you hated the _Excursion_, + But, while no man a hero to his valet is, + The hero’s still the model; I indite + The kind of rhymes that Byron oft would write.) + + There’s a Swiss critic whom I cannot rhyme to, + One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. + Of him there’s much to say, if I had time to + Concern myself in any wise with _him_. + He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, + He thinks your poetry a coxcomb’s whim, + A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on + Shakespeare, and Molière, and you, and Milton. + + Ay, much his temper is like Vivien’s mood, + Which found not Galahad pure, nor Lancelot brave; + Cold as a hailstorm on an April wood, + He buries poets in an icy grave, + His Essays—he of the Genevan hood! + Nothing so fine, but better doth he crave. + So stupid and so solemn in his spite + He dares to print that Molière could not write! + + Enough of these excursions; I was saying + That half our English Bards are turned Reviewers, + And Arnold was discussing and assaying + The weight and value of that work of yours, + Examining and testing it and weighing, + And proved, the gems are pure, the gold endures. + While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy, + The stones are paste, and half the gold, alloy. + + In Byron, Arnold finds the greatest force, + Poetic, in this later age of ours; + His song, a torrent from a mountain source, + Clear as the crystal, singing with the showers, + Sweeps to the sea in unrestricted course + Through banks o’erhung with rocks and sweet with flowers; + None of your brooks that modestly meander, + But swift as Awe along the Pass of Brander. + + And when our century has clomb its crest, + And backward gazes o’er the plains of Time, + And counts its harvest, yours is still the best, + The richest garner in the field of rhyme + (The metaphoric mixture, ’tis comfest, + Is all my own, and is not quite sublime). + But fame’s not yours alone; you must divide all + The plums and pudding with the Bard of Rydal! + + WORDSWORTH and BYRON, these the lordly names + And these the gods to whom most incense burns. + “Absurd!” cries Swinburne, and in anger flames, + And in an Æschylean fury spurns + With impious foot your altar, and exclaims + And wreathes his laurels on the golden urns + Where Coleridge’s and Shelley’s ashes lie, + Deaf to the din and heedless of the cry. + + For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven + One honest thread of life within his song; + As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven + So Byron is to Shelley (_This_ is strong!), + And on Parnassus’ peak, divinely cloven, + He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; + For Byron’s rank (the examiner has reckoned) + Is in the third class or a feeble second. + + “A Bernesque poet” at the very most, + And “never earnest save in politics,” + The Pegasus that he was wont to boast + A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, + A beast that must be driven to the post + By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, + A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute, + That any judge of Pegasi would shoot; + + In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone + In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes. + And Byron’s style is “jolter-headed jargon;” + His verse is “only bearable in prose.” + So living poets write of those that _are_ gone, + And o’er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows; + And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began, + By owning you “a very clever man.” + + Or rather does not end: he still must utter + A quantity of the unkindest things. + Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter + O’er such a foe the tempest of your wings? + ’Tis “rant and cant and glare and splash and splutter” + That rend the modest air when Byron sings. + There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery. + _Animis cælestibus tantæne iræ_? + + But whether he or Arnold in the right is, + Long is the argument, the quarrel long; + _Non nobis est_ to settle _tantas lites_; + No poet I, to judge of right or wrong: + But of all things I always think a fight is + The _most_ unpleasant in the lists of song; + When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo + Set an example which we need not follow. + + The fashion changes! Maidens do not wear, + As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets + A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron’s hair; + “Don Juan” is not always in our pockets— + Nay, a New Writer’s readers do not care + Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its + Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies + To yours prefer the “Epic” called “of Hades”! + + I do not blame them; I’m inclined to think + That with the reigning taste ’tis vain to quarrel, + And Burns might teach his votaries to drink, + And Byron never meant to make them moral. + You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink + From lauding you and giving you the laurel; + The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, + Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron. + + Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods! + Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, + Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, + Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit; + Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies’ rods, + Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; + Beholding whom, men think how fairer far + Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! {215} + + + + +XXI. +_To Omar Khayyâm_. + + + WISE Omar, do the Southern Breezes fling + Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring, + The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose, + The wild white Roses you were wont to sing? + + Far in the South I know a Land divine, {216} + And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine, + And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows + Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine. + + You were a Saint of unbelieving Days, + Liking your Life and happy in Men’s Praise; + Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough, + Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways. + + Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or Hell, + Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell, + Content to know not all thou knowest now, + What’s Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well? + + The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill, + Shall He torment them if they chance to spill? + Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast + Forth and forgotten,—and what will be will! + + So still were we, before the Months began + That rounded us and shaped us into Man. + So still we _shall_ be, surely, at the last, + Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban! + + Ah, strange it seems that this thy common Thought— + How all Things have been, ay, and shall be nought— + Was ancient Wisdom in thine ancient East, + In those old Days when Senlac Fight was fought, + + Which gave our England for a captive Land + To pious Chiefs of a believing Band, + A gift to the Believer from the Priest, + Tossed from the holy to the blood-red Hand! {218} + + Yea, thou wert singing when that Arrow clave + Through Helm and Brain of him who could not save + His England, even of Harold Godwin’s son; + The high Tide murmurs by the Hero’s Grave! {219} + + And _thou_ wert wreathing Roses—who can tell?— + Or chanting for some Girl that pleased thee well, + Or satst at Wine in Nashâpûr, when dun + The twilight veiled the Field where Harold fell! + + The salt Sea-waves above him rage and roam! + Along the white Walls of his guarded Home + No Zephyr stirs the Rose, but o’er the Wave + The wild Wind beats the Breakers into Foam! + + And dear to him, as Roses were to thee, + Rings the long Roar of Onset of the Sea; + The _Swan’s Path_ of his Fathers is his Grave: + His Sleep, methinks, is sound as thine can be. + + His was the Age of Faith, when all the West + Looked to the Priest for Torment or for Rest; + And thou wert living then, and didst not heed + The Saint who banned thee or the Saint who blessed! + + Ages of Progress! These eight hundred Years + Hath Europe shuddered with her Hopes or Fears, + And now!—she listens in the Wilderness + To _thee_, and half believeth what she hears! + + Hadst _thou_ THE SECRET? Ah, and who may tell? + “An Hour we have,” thou saidst; “Ah, waste it well!” + An Hour we have, and yet Eternity + Looms o’er us, and the Thought of Heaven or Hell! + + Nay, we can never be as wise as thou, + O idle Singer ’neath the blossomed Bough. + Nay, and we cannot be content to die. + _We_ cannot shirk the Questions “Where?” and “How?” + + Ah, not from learned Peace and gay Content + Shall we of England go the way _he_ went— + The Singer of the Red Wine and the Rose— + Nay, otherwise than _his_ our Day is spent! + + Serene he dwelt in fragrant Nashâpûr, + But we must wander while the Stars endure. + _He_ knew THE SECRET: we have none that knows, + No Man so sure as Omar once was sure! + + + + +XXII. +_To Q. Horatius Flaccus_. + + +IN what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are +dwelling, or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures as +this life afforded? The country and the town, nature and men, who knew +them so well as you, or who ever so wisely made the best of those two +worlds? Truly here you had good things, nor do you ever, in all your +poems, look for more delight in the life beyond; you never expect +consolation for present sorrow, and when you once have shaken hands with +a friend the parting seems to you eternal. + + Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus + Tam cari capitis? + +So you sing, for the dear head you mourn has sunk, for ever, beneath the +wave. Virgil might wander forth bearing the golden branch “the Sibyl +doth to singing men allow,” and might visit, as one not wholly without +hope, the dim dwellings of the dead and the unborn. To him was it +permitted to see and sing “mothers and men, and the bodies outworn of +mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids, and young men borne to the +funeral fire before their parent’s eyes.” The endless caravan swept past +him—“many as fluttering leaves that drop and fall in autumn woods when +the first frost begins; many as birds that flock landward from the great +sea when now the chill year drives them o’er the deep and leads them to +sunnier lands.” Such things was it given to the sacred poet to behold, +and “the happy seats and sweet pleasances of fortunate souls, where the +larger light clothes all the plains and dips them in a rosier gleam, +plains with their own new sun and stars before unknown.” Ah, not +_frustra pius_ was Virgil, as you say, Horace, in your melancholy song. +In him, we fancy, there was a happier mood than your melancholy patience. +“Not, though thou wert sweeter of song than Thracian Orpheus, with that +lyre whose lay led the dancing trees, not so would the blood return to +the empty shade of him whom once with dread wand, the inexorable God hath +folded with his shadowy flocks; but patience lighteneth what heaven +forbids us to undo.” + + Durum, sed levius fit patietia! + +It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are pushed +so often— + + “With close-lipped Patience for our only friend, + Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.” + +The Epicurean is at one with the Stoic at last, and Horace with Marcus +Aurelius. “To go away from among men, if there are Gods, is not a thing +to be afraid of; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no +concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe +devoid of gods or devoid of providence?” + +An excellent philosophy, but easier to those for whom no Hope had dawned +or seemed to set. Yes! it is harder than common, Horace, for us to think +of _you_, still glad somewhere, among rivers like Liris and plains and +vine-clad hills, that + + Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. + +It is hard, for you looked for no such thing. + + _Omnes una manet nox_ + _Et calcanda semel via leti_. + +You could not tell Mæcenas that you would meet him again; you could only +promise to tread the dark path with him. + + _Ibimus_, _ibimus_, + _Utcunque præcedes_, _supremum_ + _Carpere iter comites parati_. + +Enough, Horace, of these mortuary musings. You loved the lesson of the +roses, and now and again would speak somewhat like a death’s head over +your temperate cups of Sabine _ordinaire_. Your melancholy moral was but +meant to heighten the joy of your pleasant life, when wearied Italy, +after all her wars and civic bloodshed, had won a peaceful haven. The +harbour might be treacherous; the prince might turn to the tyrant; far +away on the wide Roman marches might be heard, as it were, the endless, +ceaseless monotone of beating horses’ hoofs and marching feet of men. +They were coming, they were nearing, like footsteps heard on wool; there +was a sound of multitudes and millions of barbarians, all the North, +_officina gentium_, mustering and marshalling her peoples. But their +coming was not to be to-day, nor to-morrow, nor to-day was the budding +Empire to blossom into the blood-red flower of Nero. In the lull between +the two tempests of Republic and Empire your odes sound “like linnets in +the pauses of the wind.” + +What joy there is in these songs! what delight of life, what an exquisite +Hellenic grace of art, what a manly nature to endure, what tenderness and +constancy of friendship, what a sense of all that is fair in the +glittering stream, the music of the waterfall, the hum of bees, the +silvery grey of the olive woods on the hillside! How human are all your +verses, Horace! what a pleasure is yours in the straining poplars, +swaying in the wind! what gladness you gain from the white crest of +Soracte, beheld through the fluttering snowflakes while the logs are +being piled higher on the hearth. You sing of women and wine—not all +wholehearted in your praise of them, perhaps, for passion frightens you, +and ’tis pleasure more than love that you commend to the young. Lydia +and Glycera, and the others, are but passing guests of a heart at ease in +itself, and happy enough when their facile reign is ended. You seem to +me like a man who welcomes middle age, and is more glad than Sophocles +was to “flee from these hard masters” the passions. In the fallow +leisure of life you glance round contented, and find all very good save +the need to leave all behind. Even that you take with an Italian +good-humour, as the folk of your sunny country bear poverty and hunger. + + _Durum_, _sed levius fit patientia_! + +To them, to you, the loveliness of your land is, and was, a thing to live +for. None of the Latin poets your fellows, or none but Virgil, seem to +me to have known so well as you, Horace, how happy and fortunate a thing +it was to be born in Italy. You do not say so, like your Virgil, in one +splendid passage, numbering the glories of the land as a lover might +count the perfections of his mistress. But the sentiment is ever in your +heart and often on your lips. + + Me nec tam patiens Lacedæmon, + Nec tam Larissæ percussit campus opimæ, + Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis + Et præceps Anio, ac Tiburni lucus, et uda + Mobilibus pomaria rivis. {229} + +So a poet should speak, and to every singer his own land should be +dearest. Beautiful is Italy with the grave and delicate outlines of her +sacred hills, her dark groves, her little cities perched like eyries on +the crags, her rivers gliding under ancient walls; beautiful is Italy, +her seas, and her suns: but dearer to me the long grey wave that bites +the rock below the minster in the north; dearer are the barren moor and +black peat-water swirling in tauny foam, and the scent of bog myrtle and +the bloom of heather, and, watching over the lochs, the green +round-shouldered hills. + +In affection for your native land, Horace, certainly the pride in great +Romans dead and gone made part, and you were, in all senses, a lover of +your country, your country’s heroes, your country’s gods. None but a +patriot could have sung that ode on Regulus, who died, as our own hero +died on an evil day, for the honour of Rome, as Gordon for the honour of +England. + + Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum, + Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor, + Ab se removisse, et virilem + Torvus humi posuisse voltum: + + Donec labantes consilio patres + Firmaret auctor nunquam alias dato, + Interque mærentes amicos + Egregius properaret exul. + + Atqui sciebat, quæ sibi barbarus + Tortor pararet: non aliter tamen + Dimovit obstantes propinquos, + Et populum reditus morantem, + + Quam si clientum longa negotia + Dijudicata lite relinqueret, + Tendens Venafranos in agros + Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum. {231} + +We talk of the Greeks as your teachers. Your teachers they were, but +that poem could only have been written by a Roman! The strength, the +tenderness, the noble and monumental resolution and resignation—these are +the gifts of the lords of human things, the masters of the world. + +Your country’s heroes are dear to you, Horace, but you did not sing them +better than your country’s Gods, the pious protecting spirits of the +hearth, the farm, the field; kindly ghosts, it may be, of Latin fathers +dead or Gods framed in the image of these. What you actually believed we +know not, _you_ knew not. Who knows what he believes? _Parcus Deorum +cultor_ you bowed not often, it may be, in the temples of the state +religion and before the statues of the great Olympians; but the pure and +pious worship of rustic tradition, the faith handed down by the homely +elders, with _that_ you never broke. Clean hands and a pure heart, +these, with a sacred cake and shining grains of salt, you could offer to +the Lares. It was a benignant religion, uniting old times and new, men +living and men long dead and gone, in a kind of service and sacrifice +solemn yet familiar. + + _Te nihil attinet_ + _Tentare multa cæde bidentium_ + _Parvos coronantem marino_ + _Rore deos fragilique myrto_. + + _Immunis aram si tetigit manus_, + _Non sumptuosa blandior hostia_ + _Mellivit aversos Penates_ + _Farre pio et saliente mica_, {233} + +Farewell, dear Horace; farewell, thou wise and kindly heathen; of mortals +the most human, the friend of my friends and of so many generations of +men. + + _Ave atque Vale_! + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{13} I am informed that the _Natural History of Young Ladies_ is +attributed, by some writers, to another philosopher, the author of _The +Art of Pluck_. + +{48a} Rape of the Lock. + +{48b} In Mr. Hogarth’s Caricatura. + +{49} Elwin’s Pope, ii. 15. + +{50} “Poor Pope was always a hand-to-mouth liar.”—_Pope_, by Leslie +Stephen, 139. + +{64} The Greek ῥόμβος, mentioned by Lucian and Theocritus, was the +magical weapon of the Australians—the _turndun_. + +{160} Lord Napier and Ettrick points out to me that, unluckily, the +tradition is erroneous. Piers was not executed at all. William Cockburn +suffered in Edinburgh. But the _Border Minstrelsy_ overrides history. + +_Criminal Trials in Scotland_, by Robert Pitcairn, Esq. Vol. i. part i. +p. 144, A.D. 1530. 17 Jac. V. + +May 16. William Cokburne of Henderland, convicted (in presence of the +King) of high treason committed by him in bringing Alexander Forestare +and his son, Englishmen, to the plundering of Archibald Somervile; and +for treasonably bringing certain Englishmen to the lands of Glenquhome; +and for common theft, common reset of theft, out-putting and in-putting +thereof. Sentence. For which causes and crimes he has forfeited his +life, lands, and goods, movable and immovable; which shall be escheated +to the King. Beheaded. + +{169} “The Lesson of Jupiter.”—Nineteenth Century, October 1885. + +{215} Mr. Swinburne’s and Mr. Arnold’s diverse views of Byron will be +found in the _Selections_ by Mr. Arnold and in the _Nineteenth Century_. + +{216} The hills above San Remo, where rose-bushes are planted by the +shrines. Omar desired that his grave might be where the wind would +scatter rose-leaves over it. + +{218} Omar was contemporary with the battle of Hastings. + +{219} Per mandata Ducis, Rex hic, Heralde, quiescis, + +Ut custos maneas littoris et pelagi. + +{229} “Me neither resolute Sparta nor the rich Larissæan plain so +enraptures as the fane of echoing Albunea, the headlong Anio, the grove +of Tibur, the orchards watered by the wandering rills.” + +{231} “They say he put aside from him the pure lips of his wife and his +little children, like a man unfree, and with his brave face bowed +earthward sternly he waited till with such counsel as never mortal gave +he might strengthen the hearts of the Fathers, and through his mourning +friends go forth, a hero, into exile. Yet well he knew what things were +being prepared for him at the hands of the tormentors, who, none the +less, put aside the kinsmen that barred his path and the people that +would fain have delayed his return, passing through their midst as he +might have done if, his retainers’ weary business ended and the suits +adjudged, he were faring to his Venafran lands or to Dorian Tarentum.” + +{233} “Thou, Phidyle, hast no need to besiege the gods with slaughter so +great of sheep, thou who crownest thy tiny deities with myrtle rare and +rosemary. If but the hand be clean that touches the altar, then richest +sacrifice will not more appease the angered Penates than the duteous cake +and salt that crackles in the blaze.” + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1491-0.txt or 1491-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/9/1491 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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 in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. 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 +www.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 unprotected by copyright law 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 in the United States and + most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (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 The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, 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 +works not protected by U.S. copyright law 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 1.F.3. 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 MERCHANTABILITY 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 are 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 information page at +www.gutenberg.org 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 in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, 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 contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/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 www.gutenberg.org/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 checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/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 forty 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 not protected by copyright 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: 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. + |