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diff --git a/1491-h/1491-h.htm b/1491-h/1491-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..36d7829 --- /dev/null +++ b/1491-h/1491-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4684 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Letters to Dead Authors, by Andrew Lang</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1886 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>LETTERS<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br /> +DEAD AUTHORS</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +ANDREW LANG</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.<br /> +1886</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">TO</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">MISS THACKERAY</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THESE +EXERCISES</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">IN THE ART +OF DIPPING</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">ARE +DEDICATED</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sixteen</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">I.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To W. M. Thackeray</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">II.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Charles Dickens</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page10">10</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">III.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Pierre de Ronsard</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">IV.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Herodotus</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page34">34</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">V.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Epistle to Mr. Alexander +Pope</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page46">46</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">VI.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Lucian of Samosata</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page55">55</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">VII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Maître Françoys +Rabelais</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">VIII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Jane Austen</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page75">75</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">IX.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Master Isaak Walton</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page86">86</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">X.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To M. Chapelain</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page98">98</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XI.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Sir John Maundeville, +Kt.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page110">110</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Alexandre Dumas</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XIII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Theocritus</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page130">130</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XIV.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Edgar Allan Poe</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page140">140</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XV.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Sir Walter Scott, Bart</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page152">152</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XVI.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Eusebius of +Cæsarea</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page162">162</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XVII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Percy Bysshe Shelley</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page173">173</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XVIII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Monsieur de Molière, Valet +de Chambre du Roi</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page184">184</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XIX.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Robert Burns</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XX.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Lord Byron</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page205">205</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XXI.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Omar Khayyâm</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page216">216</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">XXII.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">To Q. Horatius Flaccus</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page223">223</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I.<br /> +<i>To W. M. Thackeray</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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 <i>Précieuses</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p><i>For ever echoing in the heart and present in the +memory</i>: 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, <i>à +léal souvenir</i>! 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.</p> +<h2><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>II.<br +/> +<i>To Charles Dickens</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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 +<i>not</i> call a “Mugwump,” what English politicians +dub a “superior person”—that is, I take no +side, and attempt to enjoy the best of both.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation13"></a><a +href="#footnote13" class="citation">[13]</a> She is a very +rare bird indeed, and humour generally is at a deplorably low +level in England.</p> +<p>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 <i>crétins</i> who +boast that they cannot read Dickens, one certainly does feel much +as Mr. Samuel Weller felt when he encountered Mr. Job +Trotter.</p> +<p>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 +<i>you</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last +for ever and a day. Honest old Laughter, the true +<i>lutin</i> 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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>She was more than usual calm,<br /> +She did not give a single dam,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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? +<i>Sunt lacrymæ rerum</i>; 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 <i>Adsum</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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> +<p>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!</p> +<h3><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>III.<br /> +<i>To Pierre de Ronsard</i><br /> +(<span class="GutSmall">PRINCE OF POETS</span>)</h3> +<p><span class="smcap">Master And Prince of +Poets</span>,—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.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Là du plaisant Avril la saison +immortelle</i><br /> + <i>Sans eschange le suit</i>,<br /> +<i>La terre sans labour, de sa grasse mamelle</i>,<br /> + <i>Toute chose y produit</i>;<br /> +<i>D’enbas la troupe sainte autrefois amoureuse</i>,<br /> + <i>Nous honorant sur tous</i>,<br /> +<i>Viendra nous saluer, s’estimant bien-heureuse</i><br /> + <i>De s’accointer de nous</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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!</p> +<blockquote><p>I will that none should break<br /> +The marble for my sake,<br /> + Wishful to make more fair<br /> + My sepulchre!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>The caves, the founts that fall<br /> +From the high mountain wall,<br /> + That fall and flash and fleet,<br /> + With silver feet.</p> +<p>Only a laurel tree<br /> +Shall guard the grave of me;<br /> + Only Apollo’s bough<br /> + Shall shade me now!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, <i>ces nouveaux Chrétiens qui +la France ont pillée</i>, destroyed thy tomb, and the +warning of the later monument,</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">ABI, NEFASTE, QUAM CALCUS HUMUM SACRA +EST,</span></p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Ce poète +orgueilleux trébuché de si haut</i>!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Je m’en vais pourmener tantost parmy la +plaine,<br /> +Tantost en un village, et tantost en un bois,<br /> +Et tantost par les lieux solitaires et cois.<br /> +J’aime fort les jardins qui sentent le sauvage,<br /> +J’aime le flot de l’eau qui gazoüille au +rivage.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>Renouveau</i>, when the woods were enamelled with flowers, and +the young Spring was lodged, like a wandering prince, in his +great palaces hung with green:</p> +<blockquote><p>Orgueilleux de ses fleurs, enflé de sa +jeunesse,<br /> +Logé comme un grand Prince en ses vertes maisons!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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!</p> +<blockquote><p>Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose,<br /> +Qui ce matin avoit desclose<br /> +Sa robe de pourpre au soleil,<br /> +A point perdu ceste vespree<br /> +Les plis de sa robe pourpree,<br /> +Et son teint au votre pareil.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And again,</p> +<blockquote><p>La belle Rose du Printemps,<br /> +Aubert, admoneste les hommes<br /> +Passer joyeusement le temps,<br /> +Et pendant que jeunes nous sommes,<br /> +Esbattre la fleur de nos ans.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Adieu ma Lyre, adieu fillettes,<br /> +Jadis mes douces amourettes,<br /> +Adieu, je sens venir ma fin,<br /> +Nul passetemps de ma jeunesse<br /> +Ne m’accompagne en la vieillesse,<br /> +Que le feu, le lict et le vin.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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., <i>he</i> is <i>traité en subalterne</i>, and +is jealous of a frocked or unfrocked <i>manant</i> 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.</p> +<h2><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>IV.<br +/> +<i>To Herodotus</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">To</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>you</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>V.<br +/> +<i>Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope</i>.</h2> +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">From</span> mortal Gratitude, +decide, my Pope,<br /> +Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope?<br /> +Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame,<br /> +Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim,<br /> +Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance,<br /> +Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance,<br /> +Pursue the Poet, like Actæon’s Hounds,<br /> +Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds,<br /> +Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem,<br /> +Rend from the laurel’d Brows the Diadem,<br /> +And, if one Rag of Character they spare,<br /> +Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare!</p> +<p>Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom.<br /> +Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet’s Tomb,<br /> +With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line,<br /> +Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine!<br /> +Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends<br /> +To <i>interview</i> the Drudges of your Friends.<br /> +Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high,<br /> +And still proclaims your Poems <i>Poetry</i>,<br /> +Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered,<br /> +And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared!</p> +<p>They say, “what say they?” Not in vain You +ask;<br /> +To tell you what they say, behold my Task!<br /> +“Methinks already I your Tears survey”<br /> +As I repeat “the horrid Things they say.” <a +name="citation48a"></a><a href="#footnote48a" +class="citation">[48a]</a></p> +<p>Comes El-n first: I fancy you’ll agree<br /> +Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he;<br /> +For El-n’s Introduction, crabbed and dry,<br /> +Like Churchill’s Cudgel’s <a +name="citation48b"></a><a href="#footnote48b" +class="citation">[48b]</a> marked with <i>Lie</i>, and +<i>Lie</i>!</p> +<p>“Too dull to know what his own System meant,<br /> +Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent;<br /> +A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends,<br /> +Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends;<br /> +His mind, like Flesh inflamed, <a name="citation49"></a><a +href="#footnote49" class="citation">[49]</a> was raw and sore,<br +/> +And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more!<br /> +Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right,<br /> +His Spirit sank when he was called to fight.<br /> +Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole,<br /> +Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole,<br /> +And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel,<br /> +Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele!<br /> +Still he denied the Letters he had writ,<br /> +And still mistook Indecency for Wit.<br /> +His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries,<br /> +‘Detains the Reader, and at times defies!’”</p> +<p>Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage,<br /> +And furious Foot-notes growl ’neath every Page:<br /> +See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale,<br /> +Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail!<br /> +“Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South,<br /> +But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; <a +name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50" +class="citation">[50]</a><br /> +Affected, hypocritical, and vain,<br /> +A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain;<br /> +A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour,<br /> +The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power,<br /> +Pope yet possessed”—(the Praise will make you +start)—<br /> +“Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart!<br /> +And still we marvel at the Man, and still<br /> +Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill:<br /> +Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form,<br /> +Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm,<br /> +Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line<br /> +That from the Noble separates the Fine!”</p> +<p>The Learned thus, and who can quite reply,<br /> +Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie?<br /> +You reap, in armèd Hates that haunt your Name,<br /> +Reap what you sowed, the Dragon’s Teeth of Fame:<br /> +You could not write, and from unenvious Time<br /> +Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme,<br /> +You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend,<br /> +And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend!</p> +<p>The Pity of it! And the changing Taste<br /> +Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste!<br /> +My Childhood fled your Couplet’s clarion tone,<br /> +And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn.<br /> +Still through the Dust of that dim Prose appears<br /> +The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears;<br /> +Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel,<br /> +And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel!<br /> +But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence,<br /> +Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence,<br /> +And great Achilles’ Eloquence doth show<br /> +As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau!</p> +<p>Again, your Verse is orderly,—and more,—<br /> +“The Waves behind impel the Waves before;”<br /> +Monotonously musical they glide,<br /> +Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied.<br /> +But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep!<br /> +Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep;<br /> +This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth,<br /> +Spurred by the West or smitten by the North,<br /> +Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all<br /> +Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall,<br /> +The next with silver Murmur dies away,<br /> +Like Tides that falter to Calypso’s Bay!</p> +<p>Thus Time, with sordid Alchemy and dread,<br /> +Turns half the Glory of your Gold to Lead;<br /> +Thus Time,—at Ronsard’s wreath that vainly +bit,—<br /> +Has marred the Poet to preserve the Wit,<br /> +Who almost left on Addison a stain,<br /> +Whose Knife cut cleanest with a poisoned pain,—<br /> +Yet Thou (strange Fate that clings to all of Thine!)<br /> +When most a Wit dost most a Poet shine.<br /> +In Poetry thy Dunciad expires,<br /> +When Wit has shot “her momentary Fires.”<br /> +’Tis Tragedy that watches by the Bed<br /> +“Where tawdry Yellow strove with dirty Red,”<br /> +And Men, remembering all, can scarce deny<br /> +To lay the Laurel where thine Ashes lie!</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>VI.<br +/> +<i>To Lucian of Samosata</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 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,”</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Where the daisies are rose-scented</i>,<br /> +<i>And the Rose herself has got</i><br /> +<i>Perfume which on earth is not</i>,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: Whom shall we put first up +to auction?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Zeus</span>: That German in spectacles; he +seems a highly respectable man.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: Ho, Pessimist, come down +and let the public view you.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Zeus</span>: Go on, put him up and have +done with him.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: 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?</p> +<p>A <span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: He does not look at +all a bad lot. May one put him through his paces?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: Certainly; try your +luck.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: What is your name?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Pessimist</span>: Hartmann.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: What can you teach +me?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Pessimist</span>: That Life is not worth +Living.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: Wonderful! Most +edifying! How much for this lot?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: Two hundred pounds.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: I will write you a +cheque for the money. Come home, Pessimist, and begin your +lessons without more ado.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: 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?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: What does he call +himself? he has a very French air.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Hermes</span>: Put your own questions.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: What’s your +pedigree, my Philosopher, and previous performances?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Positivist</span>: I am by Rousseau out of +Catholicism, with a strain of the Evolution blood.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: What do you believe +in?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Positivist</span>: In Man, with a large +M.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: Not in individual +Man?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Positivist</span>: 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.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: And, after this life, +what have you to offer me?</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Positivist</span>: A distinguished +position in the Choir Invisible; but not, of course, conscious +immortality.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Purchaser</span>: Take him away, and put +up another lot.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>dorures</i>, while their contents are sealed to him.</p> +<p>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 <i>turndun</i>. <a +name="citation64"></a><a href="#footnote64" +class="citation">[64]</a></p> +<p>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”?</p> +<p>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!</p> +<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>VII.<br /> +<i>To Maître Françoys Rabelais</i>.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">OF THE COMING OF THE +COQCIGRUES.</span></h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Master</span>,—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.</p> +<p>So chanced it also with Pantagruel and Brother John and their +company, after they had once partaken of the secret of the +<i>Dive Bouteille</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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, <i>pericolo tuo</i>! Nor any game, +such as grouse, partridge, pheasant, capercailzie, wild duck; nor +any cheese, nor fruit, nor pastry, nor coffee, nor <i>eau de +vie</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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:—</p> +<p>Have ye Local Option here?—Pan.: What?</p> +<p>May one man drink if his neighbour be not athirst?—Pan.: +Yea!</p> +<p>Have ye Free Education?—Pan.: What?</p> +<p>Must they that have, pay to school them that have +not?—Pan.: Nay!</p> +<p>Have ye free land?—Pan.: What?</p> +<p>Have ye taken the land from the farmer, and given it to the +tailor out of work and the candlemaker masterless?—Pan.: +Nay!</p> +<p>Have your women folk votes?—Pan.: Bosh!</p> +<p>Have ye got religion?—Pan.: How?</p> +<p>Do you go about the streets at night, brawling, blowing a +trumpet before you, and making long prayers?—Pan.: Nay!</p> +<p>Have you manhood suffrage?—Pan.: Eh?</p> +<p>Is Jack as good as his master?—Pan.: Nay!</p> +<p>Have you joined the Arbitration Society?—Pan.: +<i>Quoy</i>?</p> +<p>Will you let another kick you, and will you ask his neighbour +if you deserve the same?—Pan.: Nay!</p> +<p>Do you eat what you list?—Pan.: Ay!</p> +<p>Do you drink when you are athirst?—Pan.: Ay!</p> +<p>Are you governed by the free expression of the popular +will?—Pan.: How?</p> +<p>Are you servants of priests, pulpits, and penny +papers?—Pan.: NO!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>grand peut-être</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>VIII.<br /> +<i>To Jane Austen</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Madam</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>’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!</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, <i>there</i> 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?</p> +<p>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 <i>tendenz-romanz</i>. 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. <i>They have a certain gentle self-respect and +humour and hardness of heart</i> . . . 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.”</p> +<h2><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>IX.<br +/> +<i>To Master Isaak Walton</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Father Isaak</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ephemeris</i>. 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Philanthropus</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Compleat +Angler</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>How often, studying in thy book, have I hummed to myself that +of Horace—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Laudis amore tumes? Sunt certa piacula +quæ te</i><br /> +<i>Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Thus, by God’s blessing, it befell thee</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Nec turpem senectam</i><br /> +<i>Degere, nec cithara carentem</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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:</p> +<blockquote><p>Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows<br /> +Except himself, who charitably shows<br /> +The ready road to virtue and to praise,<br /> +The road to many long and happy days.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is +unbound,<br /> +They know not, they dream not, who linger around,<br /> +How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin<br /> +From thee—the bliss withered within.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Or perhaps thou wilt better love,</p> +<blockquote><p>The lanesome Tala and the Lyne,<br /> + And Manor wi’ its mountain rills,<br /> +An’ Etterick, whose waters twine<br /> + Wi’ Yarrow frae the forest hills;<br /> +An’ Gala, too, and Teviot bright,<br /> + An’ mony a stream o’ playfu’ +speed,<br /> +Their kindred valleys a’ unite<br /> + Amang the braes o’ bonnie Tweed!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So, Master, may you sing against each other, you two good old +anglers, like Peter and Corydon, that sang in your golden +age.</p> +<h2><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>X.<br +/> +<i>To M. Chapelain</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Monsieur</span>,—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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Laurel is green for a season, and Love is fair for +a day,<br /> +But Love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not +May.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I know not if Mr. Swinburne is correct in his botany, but +<i>your</i> 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 +<i>un si bon homme</i>. But the moral excellence that even +Boileau admitted, <i>la foi, l’honneur, la +probité</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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, <i>O +pectora cæca</i>! 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>me</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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 <i>morale</i> is fair, and he has only +to avoid scurrility.”</p> +<p>Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<blockquote><p>In Chapelain, for all his foes have said,<br /> +She finds but one defect, he can’t be read;<br /> +Yet thinks the world might taste his Maiden’s woes,<br /> +If only he would turn his verse to prose!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>aurea +mediocritas</i>. 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 <i>culs de lampe</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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,</p> +<blockquote><p>Hélas! pour mes péchés, je +n’ai sû que trop lire<br /> +Depuis que tu fais imprimer.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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,</p> +<blockquote><p>Qu’il soit le mieux renté de tous les +beaux-esprits.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Monsieur,</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Votre très-humble serviteur, +&c.</p> +<h2><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>XI.<br /> +<i>To Sir John Maundeville</i>, <i>Kt.</i><br /> +(<span class="GutSmall">OF THE WAYS INTO YNDE</span>.)</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir John</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>XII.<br /> +<i>To Alexandre Dumas</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bouges</i>, +from the surgeries and hospitals, and dead rooms, of M. Daudet +and M. Zola and of the wearisome De Goncourt.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>naturalistes</i>. 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 +<i>fourberie</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>XIII.<br /> +<i>To Theocritus</i>.</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Sweet</span>, 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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.’</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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?</p> +<blockquote><p> The music of +thy rustic flute<br /> +Kept not for long its happy country tone;<br /> + Lost it too soon, and learned a stormy note<br /> +Of men contention tost, of men who groan,<br /> + Which tasked thy pipe too sore, and tired thy +throat—<br /> + It failed, and thou wast mute!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>sow challenged +Athene</i>. 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.</p> +<h2><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>XIV.<br /> +<i>To Edgar Allan Poe</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<i>infelix opportunitate +vitæ</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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, <i>vivu’ per ora virum</i>. +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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>To vary from the kindly race of men;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the consequences, which wasted your life, pursue your +reputation.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>Farewell, farewell, thou sombre and solitary spirit: a genius +tethered to the hack-work of the press, a gentleman among +<i>canaille</i>, 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.</p> +<h2><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +152</span>XV.<br /> +<i>To Sir Walter Scott</i>, <i>Bart.</i></h2> +<p style="text-align: right">Rodono, St. Mary’s Loch:<br /> +Sept. 8, 1885.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>The stubborn spearmen still made good<br /> +Their dark impenetrable wood</p> +</blockquote> +<p>could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as +at M’Neill’s Zareba and at Abu Klea,</p> +<blockquote><p>Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,<br /> + As fearlessly and well.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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,</p> +<blockquote><p>My name is little Jock Elliot,<br /> +And wha daur meddle wi’ me!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, <i>le pauvre homme</i>!) 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.</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>No fisher,<br /> +But a well-wisher<br /> +To the game!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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, <i>purior +electro</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair,<br /> +When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair;<br /> +Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae,<br /> +When I turned about and went my way! <a name="citation160"></a><a +href="#footnote160" class="citation">[160]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Fungor inani munere</i>!</p> +<h2><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +162</span>XVI.<br /> +<i>To Eusebius of Cæsarea</i>.<br /> +(<span class="GutSmall">CONCERNING THE GODS OF THE +HEATHEN</span>.)</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Touching</span> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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”!</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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, <i>Ahanâ</i>, 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.” <a name="citation169"></a><a +href="#footnote169" class="citation">[169]</a></p> +<p>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 <i>Dummkopf</i>, as the Alemanni say, in their own language, +when they would be pleasant among themselves.</p> +<p>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 <i>Thrâetâna +athwyâna</i>.” Lo, you! how Prellerus goes +about to show that her name is drawn not from <i>Ahanâ</i> +and the old Brachmanæ, nor <i>athwyâna</i> and the +old Medes, but from “the root <i>αἰθ</i>, +whence <i>αἴθηρ</i>, the air, or +<i>ἀθ</i>, whence +<i>ἄνθος</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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: <i>quot Alemanni tot sententiæ</i>.</p> +<p>Yea, as thou saidst of the learned heathen, +<i>Οὐδὲ γὰρ +ἀλλήλοις +σύμφωνα +φυσιολογοῦσιν</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>XVII.<br /> +<i>To Percy Bysshe Shelley</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. +<i>L’homme est un méchant animal</i>, in spite of +your boyish efforts to add pretty girls “to the list of the +good, the disinterested, and the free.”</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>ducdame</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +184</span>XVIII.<br /> +<i>To Monsieur de Molière</i>, <i>Valet de Chambre du +Roi</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Monsieur</span>,—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 <i>ferum victorem cepit</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bien</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bouquin</i> +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 <i>mot</i> of +Don Juan’s, the secret of the new Religion and the +watchword of Comte, <i>l’amour de +l’humanité</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>divertissement</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Contemplateur</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 (<i>cetera fluminis ritu feruntur</i>), 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 <i>soubrette</i> as +Mdme. Samary, so exquisite a Nicole?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +195</span>XIX.<br /> +<i>To Robert Burns</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—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 <i>is</i> 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware<br /> + That jaups in luggies;<br /> +But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,<br /> + Gie her a Haggis!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>You <i>have</i> 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. “<i>Thy</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>When o’er the hill the eastern star<br /> + Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo;<br /> +And owsen frae the furrowed field,<br /> + Return sae dowf and wearie O!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>How noble that is, how natural, how unconsciously Greek! +You found, oddly, in good Mrs. Barbauld, the merits of the Tenth +Muse:</p> +<blockquote><p>In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives<br /> + Even Sappho’s flame!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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</p> +<blockquote><p>Phœbus, gilding the brow o’ +morning,<br /> + Banishes ilk darksome shade!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Still we might keep a love-poem unexcelled by Catullus,</p> +<blockquote><p>Had we never loved sae kindly,<br /> +Had we never loved sae blindly,<br /> +Never met—or never parted,<br /> +We had ne’er been broken-hearted.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the letters to Clarinda would have been unwritten, and the +thrush would have been untaught in “the style of the Bird +of Paradise.”</p> +<p>A quiet life of song, <i>fallentis semita vitæ</i>, 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:</p> +<blockquote><p>Here’s to budgets, bags, and wallets!<br /> + Here’s to all the wandering train!<br /> +Here’s our ragged bairns and callets!<br /> + One and all cry out, Amen!</p> +<p>A fig for those by law protected!<br /> + Liberty’s a glorious feast!<br /> +Courts for cowards were erected!<br /> + Churches built to please the priest!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then read this:</p> +<blockquote><p>Drink to lofty hopes that cool—<br /> + Visions of a perfect state:<br /> +Drink we, last, the public fool,<br /> + Frantic love and frantic hate.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,<br /> + While we keep a little breath!<br /> +Drink to heavy Ignorance,<br /> + Hob and nob with brother Death!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Is not the movement the same, though the modern speaks a +wilder recklessness?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2><a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +205</span>XX.<br /> +<i>To Lord Byron</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">My Lord</span>,</p> +<p class="poetry"> (Do you remember how Leigh +Hunt<br /> +Enraged you once by writing <i>My dear Byron</i>?)<br /> + Books have their fates,—as mortals have who +punt,<br /> +And <i>yours</i> have entered on an age of iron.<br /> + Critics there be who think your satire blunt,<br /> +Your pathos, fudge; such perils must environ<br /> +Poets who in their time were quite the rage,<br /> +Though now there’s not a soul to turn their page.<br /> +Yes, there is much dispute about your worth,<br /> +And much is said which you might like to know<br /> +By modern poets here upon the earth,<br /> +Where poets live, and love each other so;<br /> +And, in Elysium, it may move your mirth<br /> +To hear of bards that pitch your praises low,<br /> +Though there be some that for your credit stickle,<br /> + As—Glorious Mat,—and not inglorious +Nichol.</p> +<p class="poetry">(This kind of writing is my pet aversion,<br /> +I hate the slang, I hate the personalities,<br /> +I loathe the aimless, reckless, loose dispersion,<br /> + Of every rhyme that in the singer’s wallet +is,<br /> +I hate it as you hated the <i>Excursion</i>,<br /> +But, while no man a hero to his valet is,<br /> +The hero’s still the model; I indite<br /> +The kind of rhymes that Byron oft would write.)</p> +<p class="poetry">There’s a Swiss critic whom I cannot +rhyme to,<br /> + One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim.<br /> +Of him there’s much to say, if I had time to<br /> +Concern myself in any wise with <i>him</i>.<br /> +He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to,<br /> + He thinks your poetry a coxcomb’s whim,<br /> +A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on<br /> +Shakespeare, and Molière, and you, and Milton.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ay, much his temper is like Vivien’s +mood,<br /> + Which found not Galahad pure, nor Lancelot brave;<br +/> +Cold as a hailstorm on an April wood,<br /> +He buries poets in an icy grave,<br /> +His Essays—he of the Genevan hood!<br /> + Nothing so fine, but better doth he crave.<br /> +So stupid and so solemn in his spite<br /> +He dares to print that Molière could not write!</p> +<p class="poetry">Enough of these excursions; I was saying<br /> + That half our English Bards are turned Reviewers,<br +/> +And Arnold was discussing and assaying<br /> + The weight and value of that work of yours,<br /> +Examining and testing it and weighing,<br /> + And proved, the gems are pure, the gold endures.<br +/> +While Swinburne cries with an exceeding joy,<br /> +The stones are paste, and half the gold, alloy.</p> +<p class="poetry">In Byron, Arnold finds the greatest force,<br +/> + Poetic, in this later age of ours;<br /> +His song, a torrent from a mountain source,<br /> + Clear as the crystal, singing with the showers,<br +/> +Sweeps to the sea in unrestricted course<br /> + Through banks o’erhung with rocks and sweet +with flowers;<br /> +None of your brooks that modestly meander,<br /> +But swift as Awe along the Pass of Brander.</p> +<p class="poetry">And when our century has clomb its crest,<br /> + And backward gazes o’er the plains of Time,<br +/> +And counts its harvest, yours is still the best,<br /> + The richest garner in the field of rhyme<br /> +(The metaphoric mixture, ’tis comfest,<br /> + Is all my own, and is not quite sublime).<br /> +But fame’s not yours alone; you must divide all<br /> +The plums and pudding with the Bard of Rydal!</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span> and <span +class="smcap">Byron</span>, these the lordly names<br /> + And these the gods to whom most incense burns.<br /> +“Absurd!” cries Swinburne, and in anger flames,<br /> + And in an Æschylean fury spurns<br /> +With impious foot your altar, and exclaims<br /> +And wreathes his laurels on the golden urns<br /> +Where Coleridge’s and Shelley’s ashes lie,<br /> +Deaf to the din and heedless of the cry.</p> +<p class="poetry">For Byron (Swinburne shouts) has never woven<br +/> + One honest thread of life within his song;<br /> +As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven<br /> + So Byron is to Shelley (<i>This</i> is strong!),<br +/> +And on Parnassus’ peak, divinely cloven,<br /> + He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong;<br /> +For Byron’s rank (the examiner has reckoned)<br /> +Is in the third class or a feeble second.</p> +<p class="poetry">“A Bernesque poet” at the very +most,<br /> + And “never earnest save in politics,”<br +/> +The Pegasus that he was wont to boast<br /> + A blundering, floundering hackney, full of +tricks,<br /> +A beast that must be driven to the post<br /> + By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and +sticks,<br /> +A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute,<br /> +That any judge of Pegasi would shoot;</p> +<p class="poetry">In sooth, a half-bred Pegasus, and far gone<br +/> + In spavin, curb, and half a hundred woes.<br /> +And Byron’s style is “jolter-headed jargon;”<br +/> + His verse is “only bearable in +prose.”<br /> +So living poets write of those that <i>are</i> gone,<br /> + And o’er the Eagle thus the Bantam crows;<br +/> +And Swinburne ends where Verisopht began,<br /> +By owning you “a very clever man.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Or rather does not end: he still must utter<br +/> + A quantity of the unkindest things.<br /> +Ah! were you here, I marvel, would you flutter<br /> + O’er such a foe the tempest of your wings?<br +/> +’Tis “rant and cant and glare and splash and +splutter”<br /> + That rend the modest air when Byron sings.<br /> +There Swinburne stops: a critic rather fiery.<br /> +<i>Animis cælestibus tantæne iræ</i>?</p> +<p class="poetry">But whether he or Arnold in the right is,<br /> + Long is the argument, the quarrel long;<br /> +<i>Non nobis est</i> to settle <i>tantas lites</i>;<br /> + No poet I, to judge of right or wrong:<br /> +But of all things I always think a fight is<br /> + The <i>most</i> unpleasant in the lists of song;<br +/> +When Marsyas of old was flayed, Apollo<br /> +Set an example which we need not follow.</p> +<p class="poetry">The fashion changes! Maidens do not +wear,<br /> + As once they wore, in necklaces and lockets<br /> +A curl ambrosial of Lord Byron’s hair;<br /> + “Don Juan” is not always in our +pockets—<br /> +Nay, a New Writer’s readers do not care<br /> + Much for your verse, but are inclined to mock its<br +/> +Manners and morals. Ay, and most young ladies<br /> +To yours prefer the “Epic” called “of +Hades”!</p> +<p class="poetry">I do not blame them; I’m inclined to +think<br /> + That with the reigning taste ’tis vain to +quarrel,<br /> +And Burns might teach his votaries to drink,<br /> + And Byron never meant to make them moral.<br /> +You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink<br /> + From lauding you and giving you the laurel;<br /> +The Germans too, those men of blood and iron,<br /> +Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron.</p> +<p class="poetry">Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods!<br +/> + Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit,<br +/> +Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds,<br /> + Unpraised, unpraisable, beyond thy merit;<br /> +Chased, like Orestes, by the Furies’ rods,<br /> + Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit;<br +/> +Beholding whom, men think how fairer far<br /> +Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star! <a +name="citation215"></a><a href="#footnote215" +class="citation">[215]</a></p> +<h2><a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>XXI.<br /> +<i>To Omar Khayyâm</i>.</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Wise</span> Omar, do the +Southern Breezes fling<br /> +Above your Grave, at ending of the Spring,<br /> + The Snowdrift of the Petals of the Rose,<br /> +The wild white Roses you were wont to sing?</p> +<p class="poetry">Far in the South I know a Land divine, <a +name="citation216"></a><a href="#footnote216" +class="citation">[216]</a><br /> +And there is many a Saint and many a Shrine,<br /> + And over all the Shrines the Blossom blows<br /> +Of Roses that were dear to you as Wine.</p> +<p class="poetry">You were a Saint of unbelieving Days,<br /> +Liking your Life and happy in Men’s Praise;<br /> + Enough for you the Shade beneath the Bough,<br /> +Enough to watch the wild World go its Ways.</p> +<p class="poetry">Dreadless and hopeless thou of Heaven or +Hell,<br /> +Careless of Words thou hadst not Skill to spell,<br /> + Content to know not all thou knowest now,<br /> +What’s Death? Doth any Pitcher dread the Well?</p> +<p class="poetry">The Pitchers we, whose Maker makes them ill,<br +/> +Shall He torment them if they chance to spill?<br /> + Nay, like the broken Potsherds are we cast<br /> +Forth and forgotten,—and what will be will!</p> +<p class="poetry">So still were we, before the Months began<br /> +That rounded us and shaped us into Man.<br /> + So still we <i>shall</i> be, surely, at the last,<br +/> +Dreamless, untouched of Blessing or of Ban!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, strange it seems that this thy common +Thought—<br /> +How all Things have been, ay, and shall be nought—<br /> + Was ancient Wisdom in thine ancient East,<br /> +In those old Days when Senlac Fight was fought,</p> +<p class="poetry">Which gave our England for a captive Land<br /> +To pious Chiefs of a believing Band,<br /> + A gift to the Believer from the Priest,<br /> +Tossed from the holy to the blood-red Hand! <a +name="citation218"></a><a href="#footnote218" +class="citation">[218]</a></p> +<p class="poetry">Yea, thou wert singing when that Arrow clave<br +/> +Through Helm and Brain of him who could not save<br /> + His England, even of Harold Godwin’s son;<br +/> +The high Tide murmurs by the Hero’s Grave! <a +name="citation219"></a><a href="#footnote219" +class="citation">[219]</a></p> +<p class="poetry">And <i>thou</i> wert wreathing Roses—who +can tell?—<br /> +Or chanting for some Girl that pleased thee well,<br /> + Or satst at Wine in Nashâpûr, when +dun<br /> +The twilight veiled the Field where Harold fell!</p> +<p class="poetry">The salt Sea-waves above him rage and roam!<br +/> +Along the white Walls of his guarded Home<br /> + No Zephyr stirs the Rose, but o’er the Wave<br +/> +The wild Wind beats the Breakers into Foam!</p> +<p class="poetry">And dear to him, as Roses were to thee,<br /> +Rings the long Roar of Onset of the Sea;<br /> + The <i>Swan’s Path</i> of his Fathers is his +Grave:<br /> +His Sleep, methinks, is sound as thine can be.</p> +<p class="poetry">His was the Age of Faith, when all the West<br +/> +Looked to the Priest for Torment or for Rest;<br /> + And thou wert living then, and didst not heed<br /> +The Saint who banned thee or the Saint who blessed!</p> +<p class="poetry">Ages of Progress! These eight hundred +Years<br /> +Hath Europe shuddered with her Hopes or Fears,<br /> + And now!—she listens in the Wilderness<br /> +To <i>thee</i>, and half believeth what she hears!</p> +<p class="poetry">Hadst <i>thou</i> <span class="smcap">the +Secret</span>? Ah, and who may tell?<br /> +“An Hour we have,” thou saidst; “Ah, waste it +well!”<br /> + An Hour we have, and yet Eternity<br /> +Looms o’er us, and the Thought of Heaven or Hell!</p> +<p class="poetry">Nay, we can never be as wise as thou,<br /> +O idle Singer ’neath the blossomed Bough.<br /> + Nay, and we cannot be content to die.<br /> +<i>We</i> cannot shirk the Questions “Where?” and +“How?”</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, not from learned Peace and gay Content<br +/> +Shall we of England go the way <i>he</i> went—<br /> + The Singer of the Red Wine and the Rose—<br /> +Nay, otherwise than <i>his</i> our Day is spent!</p> +<p class="poetry">Serene he dwelt in fragrant +Nashâpûr,<br /> +But we must wander while the Stars endure.<br /> + <i>He</i> knew <span class="smcap">the +Secret</span>: we have none that knows,<br /> +No Man so sure as Omar once was sure!</p> +<h2><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +223</span>XXII.<br /> +<i>To Q. Horatius Flaccus</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 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.</p> +<blockquote><p>Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus<br /> +Tam cari capitis?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 <i>frustra +pius</i> 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.”</p> +<blockquote><p>Durum, sed levius fit patietia!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we +are pushed so often—</p> +<blockquote><p>“With close-lipped Patience for our only +friend,<br /> +Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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 <i>you</i>, still glad somewhere, +among rivers like Liris and plains and vine-clad hills, that</p> +<blockquote><p>Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is hard, for you looked for no such thing.</p> +<blockquote><p> <i>Omnes una +manet nox</i><br /> +<i>Et calcanda semel via leti</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>You could not tell Mæcenas that you would meet him +again; you could only promise to tread the dark path with +him.</p> + +<blockquote><p> <i>Ibimus</i>, +<i>ibimus</i>,<br /> +<i>Utcunque præcedes</i>, <i>supremum</i><br /> + <i>Carpere iter comites +parati</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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 +<i>ordinaire</i>. 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, <i>officina +gentium</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Durum</i>, <i>sed levius fit patientia</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p> Me nec tam patiens +Lacedæmon,<br /> +Nec tam Larissæ percussit campus opimæ,<br /> + Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis<br /> +Et præceps Anio, ac Tiburni lucus, et uda<br /> + Mobilibus pomaria rivis. <a +name="citation229"></a><a href="#footnote229" +class="citation">[229]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p class="poetry">Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum,<br /> +Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor,<br /> + Ab se removisse, et virilem<br /> + Torvus humi posuisse voltum:</p> +<p class="poetry">Donec labantes consilio patres<br /> +Firmaret auctor nunquam alias dato,<br /> + Interque mærentes amicos<br /> + Egregius properaret exul.</p> +<p class="poetry">Atqui sciebat, quæ sibi barbarus<br /> +Tortor pararet: non aliter tamen<br /> + Dimovit obstantes propinquos,<br /> + Et populum reditus morantem,</p> +<p class="poetry">Quam si clientum longa negotia<br /> +Dijudicata lite relinqueret,<br /> + Tendens Venafranos in agros<br /> + Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum. +<a name="citation231"></a><a href="#footnote231" +class="citation">[231]</a></p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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, +<i>you</i> knew not. Who knows what he believes? +<i>Parcus Deorum cultor</i> 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 +<i>that</i> 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.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> <i>Te +nihil attinet</i><br /> +<i>Tentare multa cæde bidentium</i><br /> + <i>Parvos coronantem marino</i><br /> + <i>Rore deos fragilique +myrto</i>.</p> +<p class="poetry"><i>Immunis aram si tetigit manus</i>,<br /> +<i>Non sumptuosa blandior hostia</i><br /> + <i>Mellivit aversos Penates</i><br /> + <i>Farre pio et saliente mica</i>, +<a name="citation233"></a><a href="#footnote233" +class="citation">[233]</a></p> +<p>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.</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><i>Ave atque +Vale</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13" +class="footnote">[13]</a> I am informed that the <i>Natural +History of Young Ladies</i> is attributed, by some writers, to +another philosopher, the author of <i>The Art of Pluck</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote48a"></a><a href="#citation48a" +class="footnote">[48a]</a> Rape of the Lock.</p> +<p><a name="footnote48b"></a><a href="#citation48b" +class="footnote">[48b]</a> In Mr. Hogarth’s +Caricatura.</p> +<p><a name="footnote49"></a><a href="#citation49" +class="footnote">[49]</a> Elwin’s Pope, ii. 15.</p> +<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50" +class="footnote">[50]</a> “Poor Pope was always a +hand-to-mouth liar.”—<i>Pope</i>, by Leslie Stephen, +139.</p> +<p><a name="footnote64"></a><a href="#citation64" +class="footnote">[64]</a> The Greek +ῥόμβος, mentioned by Lucian +and Theocritus, was the magical weapon of the +Australians—the <i>turndun</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote160"></a><a href="#citation160" +class="footnote">[160]</a> 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 <i>Border Minstrelsy</i> overrides +history.</p> +<p><i>Criminal Trials in Scotland</i>, by Robert Pitcairn, +Esq. Vol. i. part i. p. 144, <span +class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> 1530. 17 Jac. V.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote169"></a><a href="#citation169" +class="footnote">[169]</a> “The Lesson of +Jupiter.”—Nineteenth Century, October 1885.</p> +<p><a name="footnote215"></a><a href="#citation215" +class="footnote">[215]</a> Mr. Swinburne’s and Mr. +Arnold’s diverse views of Byron will be found in the +<i>Selections</i> by Mr. Arnold and in the <i>Nineteenth +Century</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote216"></a><a href="#citation216" +class="footnote">[216]</a> 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.</p> +<p><a name="footnote218"></a><a href="#citation218" +class="footnote">[218]</a> Omar was contemporary with the +battle of Hastings.</p> +<p><a name="footnote219"></a><a href="#citation219" +class="footnote">[219]</a> Per mandata Ducis, Rex hic, Heralde, +quiescis,</p> +<p>Ut custos maneas littoris et pelagi.</p> +<p><a name="footnote229"></a><a href="#citation229" +class="footnote">[229]</a> “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.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote231"></a><a href="#citation231" +class="footnote">[231]</a> “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.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote233"></a><a href="#citation233" +class="footnote">[233]</a> “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.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1491-h.htm or 1491-h.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. 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