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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18104-8.txt b/18104-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e86198 --- /dev/null +++ b/18104-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7422 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Among Famous Books, by John Kelman + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Among Famous Books + +Author: John Kelman + +Release Date: April 2, 2006 [EBook #18104] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + + + + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + +AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS + + BY + +JOHN KELMAN, D.D. + +HODDER AND STOUGHTON +LONDON; NEW YORK; TORONTO + +_Printed in 1912_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of the following lectures is twofold. They were delivered in +the first place for the purpose of directing the attention of readers to +books whose literary charm and spiritual value have made them +conspicuous in the vast literature of England. Such a task, however, +tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity, depending absolutely +upon the taste of the individual, and the chances of his experience in +reading. + +I have accordingly taken for the general theme of the book that constant +struggle between paganism and idealism which is the deepest fact in the +life of man, and whose story, told in one form or another, provides the +matter of all vital literature. This will serve as a thread to give +continuity of thought to the lectures, and it will keep them near to +central issues. + +Having said so much, it is only necessary to add one word more by way of +explanation. In quest of the relations between the spiritual and the +material, or (to put it otherwise) of the battle between the flesh and +the spirit, we shall dip into three different periods of time: (1) +Classical, (2) Sixteenth Century, (3) Modern. Each of these has a +character of its own, and the glimpses which we shall have of them ought +to be interesting in their own right. But the similarity between the +three is more striking than the contrast, for human nature does not +greatly change, and its deepest struggles are the same in all +generations. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + LECTURE I + The Gods of Greece + + LECTURE II + Marius the Epicurean + + LECTURE III + The Two Fausts + + LECTURE IV + Celtic Revivals of Paganism + + LECTURE V + John Bunyan + + LECTURE VI + Pepys' Diary + + LECTURE VII + Sartor Resartus + + LECTURE VIII + Pagan Reactions + + LECTURE IX + Mr. G.K. Chesterton's Point of View + + LECTURE X + The Hound of Heaven + + + + +LECTURE I + +THE GODS OF GREECE + + +It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modern +thought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The division +is an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less than +justice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associated +Greece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel with +that of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an interesting +word, whose etymology reminds us of a time when Christianity had won the +towns, while the villages still worshipped heathen gods. It is difficult +to define the word without imparting into our thought of it the idea of +the contrast between Christian dogma and all other religious thought and +life. This, however, would be an extremely unfair account of the matter, +and, in the present volume, the word will be used without reference +either to nationality or to creed, and it will stand for the +materialistic and earthly tendency as against spiritual idealism of any +kind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a thing which has died out +with the passing of heathen systems of religion. It is terribly alive in +the heart of modern England, whether formally believing or unbelieving. +Indeed there is the twofold life of puritan and pagan within us all. A +recent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally a +cannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South Sea +Islands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but to +be one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is +this universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such a +study as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary or +local phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do with +the question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject. + +Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type +of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that +distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become +hard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive national +idealisms without supplying any new ones. The Roman ploughman must have +missed the fauns whom he had been accustomed to expect in the thicket at +the end of his furrow, when the new faith told him that these were +nothing but rustling leaves. When the swish of unseen garments beside +the old nymph-haunted fountain was silenced, his heart was left lonely +and his imagination impoverished. Much charm and romance vanished from +his early world with the passing of its pagan creatures, and indeed it +is to this cause that we must trace the extraordinarily far-reaching and +varied crop of miraculous legends of all sorts which sprang up in early +Catholic times. These were the protest of unconscious idealism against +the bare world from which its sweet presences had vanished. + + "In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, + Of which that Britons speken greet honour, + Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. + The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, + Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; + This was the olde opinion, as I rede. + But now can no man see none elves mo. + For now the grete charitee and prayeres + Of limitours and othere holy freres, + + * * * * * + + This maketh that there been no fayeryes. + For ther as wont to walken was an elf, + Ther walketh now the limitour himself." + +Against this impoverishment the human revolt was inevitable, and it +explains the spirit in such writers as Shelley and Goethe. Children of +nature, who love the sun and the grass, and are at home upon the earth, +their spirits cry for something to delight and satisfy them, nearer than +speculations of theology or cold pictures of heaven. Wordsworth, in his +famous lines, has expressed the protest in the familiar words:-- + + "Great God, I'd rather be + A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; + So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, + Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; + Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, + Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn." + +The early classic thought which found its most perfect expression in the +mythology of Greece was not originally or essentially pagan. It was +humanistic, and represented the response of man's spirit to that free +and beautiful spirit which he found in nature around him. All such +symbolism of Greek religion as that of the worship of Dionysus and +Ceres, shows this. In these cults the commonest things of life, the wine +and corn wherewith man sustained himself, assumed a higher and richer +meaning. Food and drink were not mere sensual gratifications, but divine +gifts, as they are in the twenty-third Psalm; and the whole material +world was a symbol and sacrament of spiritual realities and blessings. +Similarly the ritual of Eleusis interpreted man's common life into a +wonderful world of mystic spirituality. Thus there was a great fund of +spiritual insight of the finest and most beautiful sort in the very +heart of that life which has thoughtlessly been adopted as the type of +paganism. + +Yet the history of Greece affords the explanation and even the +justification of the popular idea. The pagan who is in us all, tends +ever to draw us downwards from sacramental and symbolic ways of thinking +to the easier life of the body and the earth. On the one hand, for blood +that is young and hot, the life of sense is overwhelming. On the other +hand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression of +the world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealism +difficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dream +before the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpses +by every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as well +as some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defended +against the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for the +Greek, God was the view; but when the traveller goes forward into the +view, he meets with many things which it is dangerous to identify with +God. For the young spirit of the early times the temptation to +earthliness was overwhelming. The world was fair, its gates were open, +and its barriers all down. Men took from literature and from religion +just as much of spirituality as they understood and as little as they +desired, and the effect was swift and inevitable in that degeneration +which reached its final form in the degraded sensuality of the later +Roman Empire. + +The confusing element in all such inquiry lies in the fact that one can +never get an unmixed paganism nor a perfect idealism. Just as the claims +of body and spirit are in our daily life inextricably interwoven, so the +Greek thought hung precariously between the two, and was always more or +less at the mercy of the individual interpreter and of the relative +strength of his tastes and passions. So we shall find it all through the +course of these studies. It would be preposterous to deny some sort of +idealism to almost any pagan who has ever lived. The contrast between +pagan and idealist is largely a matter of proportion and preponderating +tendency: yet the lines are clear enough to enable us to work with this +distinction and to find it valuable and illuminating. + +The fundamental fact to remember in studying any of the myths of Greece +is, that we have here a composite and not a simple system of thought and +imagination. There are always at least two layers: the primitive, and +the Olympian which came later. The primitive conceptions were those +afforded by the worship of ghosts, of dead persons, and of animals. Miss +Jane Harrison has pointed out in great detail the primitive elements +which lingered on through the Olympian worship. Perhaps the most +striking instance which she quotes is the Anthesteria, or festival of +flowers, at the close of which the spirits were dismissed with the +formula, "Depart, ye ghosts, the revels now are ended." Mr. Andrew Lang +has suggested that the animals associated with gods and goddesses (such +as the mouse which is found in the hand, or the hair, or beside the feet +of the statues of Apollo, the owl of Minerva, etc.) are relics of the +earlier worship. This would satisfactorily explain much of the +disreputable element which lingered on side by side with the noble +thoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a splendid race of gods, +representing the highest human ideals, arrived with the Greeks; but for +the sake of safety, or of old association, the primitive worship was +retained and blended with the new. In the extreme case of human +sacrifice, it was retained in the form of surrogates--little wooden +images, or even actual animals, being sacrificed in lieu of the older +victims. But all along the line, while the new gods brought their +spiritual conceptions, the older ones held men to a cruder and more +fleshly way of thinking. There is a similar blend of new and old in all +such movements as that of the Holy Grail and the Arthurian legends, +where we can see the combination of Christian and pagan elements so +clearly as to be able to calculate the moral and spiritual effect of +each. Thus we have in the early Greek mythology much of real paganism +involved in the retention of the old and earth-bound gods which attached +themselves to the nobler Olympians as they came, and dragged them down +to the ancient level. + +This blending may be seen very clearly in the mythology of Homer and +Hesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace of +superposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties of +Chronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of the +morality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continue +for a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and +man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably +follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently +than they. + +Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society +improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly +towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the +gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the +sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories. +Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temper +which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. Æschylus is +sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of +the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of +humanity his scepticism rises in protest. + +It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the +various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths. +The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities +stand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and +goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer +and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the +personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The +Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals +of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of +the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol +of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean +characteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, and +every one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East will +sympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God." + +As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with the +name of Plutarch among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more or +less completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir George +Cox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story is +beautifully told in every case, and when we have enjoyed it and felt +something of the exquisiteness of the conception and of the variety and +range of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had first +told it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that all +we have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise, +until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountable +upon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore. +If you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun +and the lamb the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in +religion and astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to +school one day. This nature element, however, had undoubtedly a very +considerable part in the origin of myths, and when Max Müller combines +it with philology it opens a vast field of extraordinarily interesting +interpretations resting upon words and their changes. + +A further theory of myths is that which regards them as the stories of +races told as if they had been the lives of individuals. This, as is +well known, has had permanent effects upon the interpretation not only +of Greek but of Hebrew ancient writings, and it throws light upon some +of those chapters of Genesis which, without it, are but strings of +forgotten and unpronounceable names. + +But beyond all such explanations, after we have allowed for them in +every possible way, there remains a conviction that behind these +fascinating stories there is a certain irreducible remainder of actual +fact. Individual historic figures, seen through the mists of time, walk +before our eyes in the dawn. Long before history was written men lived +and did striking deeds. Heroic memories and traditions of such +distinguished men passed in the form of fireside tales from one +generation to another through many centuries. Now they come to us, +doubtless hugely exaggerated and so far away from their originals as to +be unrecognisable, and yet, after all, based upon things that happened. +For the stories have living touches in them which put blood into the +glorious and ghostly figures, and when we come upon a piece of genuine +human nature there is no possibility of mistaking it. This thing has +been born, not manufactured: nor has any portrait that is lifelike been +drawn without some model. Thus, through all the mist and haze of the +past, we see men and women walking in the twilight--dim and uncertain +forms indeed, yet stately and heroic. + +Now all this has a bearing upon the main subject of our present study. +Meteorology and astronomy are indeed noble sciences, but the proper +study of mankind is man. While, no doubt, the sources of all early +folk-lore are composite, yet it matters greatly for the student of these +things whether the beginnings of religious thought were merely in the +clouds, or whether they had their roots in the same earth whereon we +live and labour. The heroes and great people of the early days are +eternal figures, because each new generation gives them a resurrection +in its own life and experience. They have eternal human meanings, +beneath whatever pageantry of sun and stars the ancient heroes passed +from birth to death. Soon everything of them is forgotten except the +ideas about human life for which they stand. Then each of them becomes +the expression of a thought common to humanity, and therefore secure of +its immortality to the end of time; for the undying interest is the +human interest, and all ideas which concern the life of man are immortal +while man's race lasts. In the case of such legends as those we are +discussing, it is probable that beyond the mere story some such ideal of +human life was suggested from the very first. Certainly, as time went +on, the ideal became so identified with the hero, that to thoughtful men +he came to stand for a particular idealism of human experience. Thus +Pater speaks of Dionysus as from first to last a type of second birth, +opening up the hope of a possible analogy between the resurrections of +nature and something else, reserved for human souls. "The beautiful, +weeping creatures, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, and +rejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out of +the hardness and stony darkness of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal +of chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering." +This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are not +only similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, those +of other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by the +common elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, when +finely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal to +the majority of the human race. + +Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in the +telling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the mere +narration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all stories +that were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high and +admirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical or +scientific bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience. Out of +these judgments there grew the great ideals which from first to last +have commanded the spirit of man. + +In this connection it is interesting to remember that in Homer the men +were regarded as the means of revealing ideas and characters, and not as +mere natural objects in themselves. The things among which they lived +are described and known by their appearances; the men are known by their +words and deeds. "There is no inventory of the features of men, or of +fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern +novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship +that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,' +and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and +emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important +element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human +lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance +of the future race. The myths, with their stories of gods and men, and +their implied or declared religious doctrines, are but the forms in +which these ideals find expression. The ideals remain, but the forms of +their expression change, advancing from cruder to finer and from more +fanciful to more exactly true, with the advance of thought and culture. +Meanwhile, the ideals are above the world,--dwelling, like Plato's, in +heaven,--and there are always two alternatives for every man. He may go +back either with deliberate intellectual assent, or passion-led in +sensual moods, to the powers of nature and the actual human stories in +their crude and earthly form; or he may follow the idealisation of human +experience, and discover and adopt the ideals of which the earthly +stories and the nature processes are but shadows and hints. In the +former case he will be a pagan; in the latter, a spiritual idealist. In +what remains of this lecture, we shall consider four of the most famous +Greek legends--those of Prometheus, Medusa, Orpheus, and Apollo--in the +light of what has just been stated. + +Prometheus, in the early story, is a Titan, who in the heavenly war had +fought on the side of Zeus. It is, however, through the medium of the +later story that Prometheus has exercised his eternal influence upon the +thought of men. In this form of the legend he appears constantly living +and striving for man's sake as the foe of God. We hear of him making men +and women of clay and animating them with celestial fire, teaching them +the arts of agriculture, the taming of horses, and the uses of plants. +Again we hear of Zeus, wearied with the race of men--the new divinity +making a clean sweep, and wishing to begin with better material. Zeus is +the lover of strength and the despiser of weakness, and from the earth +with its weak and pitiful mortals he takes away the gift of fire, +leaving them to perish of cold and helplessness. Then it is that +Prometheus climbs to heaven, steals back the fire in his hollow cane, +and brings it down to earth again. For this benefaction to the despised +race Zeus has him crucified, fixed for thirty thousand years on a rock +in the Asian Caucasus, where, until Herakles comes to deliver him, the +vulture preys upon his liver. + +Such a story tempts the allegorist, and indeed the main drift of its +meaning is unmistakable. Cornutus, a contemporary of Christ, explained +it "of forethought, the quick inventiveness of human thought chained to +the painful necessities of human life, its liver gnawed unceasingly by +cares." In the main, and as a general description, this is quite +unquestionable. Prometheus is the prototype of a thousand other figures +of the same kind, not in mythology only, but in history, which tell the +story of the spiritual effort of man frustrated and brought to earth. It +is the story of Tennyson's youth who + + "Rode a horse with wings that would have flown + But that his heavy rider bore him down." + +Only, in the Prometheus idea, it is not a man's senses, as in Tennyson's +poem, but the outward necessity of things, the heavy and cruel powers of +nature around him, that prove too much for his aspirations. In this +respect the story is singularly characteristic of the Greek spirit. That +spirit was always daring with truth, feeling the risks of knowledge and +gladly taking them, passionately devoted to the love of knowledge for +its own sake. + +The legend has, however, a deeper significance than this. One of the +most elemental questions that man can ask is, What is the relation of +the gods to human inquiry and freedom of thought? There always has been +a school of thinkers who have regarded knowledge as a thing essentially +against the gods. The search for knowledge thus becomes a phase of +Titanism; and wherever it is found, it must always be regarded in the +light of a secret treasure stolen from heaven against the will of +contemptuous or jealous divinities. On the other hand, knowledge is +obviously the friend of man. Prometheus is man's champion, and no figure +could make a stronger appeal than his. Indeed, in not a few respects he +approaches the Christian ideal, and must have brought in some measure +the same solution to those who were able to receive it. Few touches in +literature, for instance, are finer than that in which he comforts the +daughters of Ocean, speaking to them from his cross. + +The idea of Titanism has become the commonplace of poets. It is familiar +in Milton, Byron, Shelley, and countless others, and Goethe tells us +that the fable of Prometheus lived within him. Many of the Titanic +figures, while they appeared to be blaspheming, were really fighting for +truth and justice. The conception of the gods as jealous and +contemptuous was not confined to the Greek mythology, but has appeared +within the pale of Christian faith as well as in all heathen cults. +Nature, in some of its aspects, seems to justify it. The great powers +appear to be arrayed against man's efforts, and present the appearance +of cruel and bullying strength. Evidently upon such a theory something +must go, either our faith in God or our faith in humanity; and when +faith has gone we shall be left in the position either of atheists or of +slaves. There have been those who accepted the alternative and went into +the one camp or the other according to their natures; but the Greek +legend did not necessitate this. There was found, as in Æschylus, a hint +of reconciliation, which may be taken to represent that conviction so +deep in the heart of humanity, that there is "ultimate decency in +things," if one could only find it out; although knowledge must always +remain dangerous, and may at times cost a man dear. + +The real secret lies in the progress of thought in its conceptions of +God and life. Nature, as we know and experience it, presents indeed an +appalling spectacle against which everything that is good in us +protests. God, so long as He is but half understood, is utterly +unpardonable; and no man yet has succeeded in justifying the ways of God +to men. But "to understand all is to forgive all"--or rather, it is to +enter into a larger view of life, and to discover how much there is in +_us_ that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was +told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases +through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest +commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can be +written. + +In two great battlegrounds of the human spirit the problem raised by +Prometheus has been fought out. On the ground of science, who does not +know the defiant and Titanic mood in which knowledge has at times been +sought? The passion for knowing flames through the gloom and depression +and savagery of the darker moods of the student. Difficulties are +continually thrust into the way of knowledge. The upper powers seem to +be jealous and outrageously thwarting, and the path of learning becomes +a path of tears and blood. That is all that has been reached by many a +grim and brave student spirit. But there is another possible +explanation; and there are those who have attained to a persuasion that +the gods have made knowledge difficult in order that the wise may also +be the strong. + +The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there has +been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and +then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness +of the human _débâcle_. The only aspect of the powers above them has +seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in +the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts +up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the +worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing +man upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what they +please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest of +Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling a +noble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, there +dawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the same hope that Prometheus +vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has understood the story of +Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is divine +love. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous cruelty +yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end of +time, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God is +love, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted. + +Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that of +Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for +it shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest +depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hung +between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around him +in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly felt +the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in the +universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a +running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had +heard some of the hollow notes of _Pan's_ music. Would the wicked river +drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?" +It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and most +suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world." It is this +combination of beauty and terror for which the myth of Medusa stands. It +finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is seen +in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of nature's +action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit beauty, and +fascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen in all of the +many cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be dangerous, or at +least sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is at once one of +the most characteristic and one of the most tragic things in the world. + +There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyond +the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun never +shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the only +mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhood +she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and very +lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess. +Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire of +Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of +her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of the +golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that had +been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, with +its rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a loathsome greenish +white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning +mask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. So +dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess, that her face turned +all those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone. There is a degree +of hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it came to pass that the +cave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around it, were full of men +and wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance of her,--grim fossils +immortalised in stone,--while the snakes writhed and the red eyes +rolled, waiting for another victim. + +This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, and +there was nothing for it but to slay her. To do this, Perseus set out +upon his long journey, equipped with the magic gifts of swiftness and +invisibility, and bearing on his arm the shield that was also a mirror. +The whole picture is infinitely dreary. As he travels across the dark +sea to the land where the pillars of Atlas are visible far off, towering +into the sky, the light decreases. In the murky and dangerous twilight +he forces the Graiai, those grey-haired sisters with their miserable +fragmentary life, to bestir their aged limbs and guide him to the +Gorgons' den. By the dark stream, where the yellow light brooded +everlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it then +for Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa's +hair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and the +snakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where there +is "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor storm," he held the +magic mirror over against the monster, beheld her in it without change +or injury to himself, severed the head, and bore it away to place it on +Athene's shield. + +It is very interesting to notice how Art has treated the legend. It was +natural that so vivid an image should become a favourite alike with +poets and with sculptors, but there was a gradual development from the +old hideous and terrible representations, back to the calm repose of a +beautiful dead face. This might indeed more worthily record the maiden's +tragedy, but it missed entirely the thing that the old myth had said. +The oldest idea was horrible beyond horror, for the darker side of +things is always the most impressive to primitive man, and sheer +ugliness is a category with which it is easy to work on simple minds. +The rudest art can achieve such grotesque hideousness long before it can +depict beauty. Later, as we have seen, Art tempered the face to beauty, +but in so doing forgot the meaning of the story. It was the old story +that has been often told, of the fair and frail one who had fallen among +the pitiless. For her there was no compassion either in mortals or in +immortals. It was the tragedy of sweet beauty desecrated and lost, the +petrifying horror of which has found its most unflinching modern +expression in Thomas Hardy's _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. _Corruptio +optimi pessima_. + +To interpret such stories as these by any reference to the rising sun, +or the rivalry between night and dawn, is simply to stultify the science +of interpretation. It may, indeed, have been true that most of those who +told and heard the tale in ancient times accepted it in its own right, +and without either the desire or the thought of further meanings. Yet, +even told in that fashion, as it clung to memory and imagination, it +must continually have reminded men of certain features of essential +human nature, which it but too evidently recorded. Here was one of the +sad troop of soulless women who appear in the legends of all the races +of mankind. Medusa had herself been petrified before she turned others +to stone. The horror that had come upon her life had been too much to +bear, and it had killed her heart within her. + +So far of passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. But +this story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's head +must rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that may +petrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when the +dazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has come +the cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and, +on a wider scale, the sight of the pain and the tragedy of the world, +present to the eyes of every generation the spectacle of victims +standing petrified like those who had seen too much at the cave's mouth +in the old legend. + +It is peculiarly interesting to contrast the story of Medusa with its +Hebrew parallel in Lot's wife. Both are women presumably beautiful, and +both are turned to stone. But while the Greek petrifaction is the result +of too direct a gaze upon the horrible, the Hebrew is the result of too +loving and desirous a gaze upon the coveted beauty of the world. Nothing +could more exactly represent and epitomise the diverse genius of the +nations, and we understand the Greek story the better for the strong +contrast with its Hebrew parallel. To the Greek, ugliness was dangerous; +and the horror of the world, having no explanation nor redress, could +but petrify the heart of man. To the Hebrew, the beauty of the world was +dangerous, and man must learn to turn away his eyes from beholding +vanity. + +The legend of Medusa is a story of despair, and there is little room in +it for idealism of any kind; and yet there may be some hint, in the +reflecting shield of Perseus, of a brighter and more heartening truth. +The horror of the world we have always with us, and for all exquisite +spirits like those of the Greeks there is the danger of their being +marred by the brutality of the universe, and made hard and cold in rigid +petrifaction by the too direct vision of evil. Yet for such spirits +there is ever some shield of faith, in whose reflection they may see the +darkest horrors and yet remain flesh and blood. Those who believe in +life and love, whose religion--or at least whose indomitable clinging to +the beauty they have once descried--has taught them sufficient courage +in dwelling upon these things, may come unscathed through any such +ordeal. But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It came +out of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are the +daughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrow +of the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound, +looking upon its tragedy, will see in it only the _macabre_, and feel +that graveyard and spectral air which breathes about the haunted pagan +sepulchre. + +Another myth in which we see the contrast between essential paganism and +idealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms and +with innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successive +parts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all the +creatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing that +lived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom it +allured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuary +that adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose sweetness +surpassed that of the Sirens, nature, dead and living both (for all +lived unto Orpheus), followed him with glad and loving movement. Nay, +not only beasts and trees, but stones themselves and even mountains, +felt in the hard heart of them the power of this sweet music. It is one +of the most perfect stories ever told--the precursor of the legends that +gathered round Francis of Assisi and many a later saint and artist. It +is the prophecy from the earliest days of that consummation of which +Isaiah was afterwards to sing and St. Paul to echo the song, when nature +herself would come to the perfect reconciliation for which she had been +groaning and travailing through all the years. + +The second part of the story tells of the tragedy of love. Such a man as +Orpheus, if he be fortunate in his love, will love wonderfully, and +Eurydice is his worthy bride. Dying, bitten by a snake in the grass as +she flees from danger, she descends to Hades. But the surpassing love of +the sweet singer dares to enter that august shadow, not to drink the +Waters of Lethe only and to forget, but also to drink the waters of +Eunoe and to remember. His music charms the dead, and those who have the +power of death. Even the hard-hearted monarch of hell is moved for +Orpheus, who + + "Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, + And made hell grant what love did seek." + +But the rescue has one condition. He must restrain himself, must not +look upon the face of his beloved though he bears her in his arms, until +they have passed the region of the shadow of death, and may see one +another in the sunlight of the bright earth again. The many versions of +the tragic disobedience to this condition bear eloquent testimony, not +certainly to any changing phase of the sky, but to the manifold aspects +of human life. According to some accounts, it was the rashness of +Orpheus that did the evil--love's impatience, that could not wait the +fitting time, and, snatching prematurely that which was its due, +sacrificed all. According to other accounts, it was Eurydice who tempted +Orpheus, her love and pain having grown too hungry and blind. However +that may be, the error was fatal, and on the very eve of victory all was +lost. It was lost, not by any snatching back in which strong hands of +hell tore his beloved from the man's grasp. Within his arms the form of +Eurydice faded away, and as he clutched at her his fingers closed upon +the empty air. That, too, is a law deep in the nature of things. It is +by no arbitrary decree that self-restraint has been imposed on love. In +this, as in all other things, a man must consent to lose his life in +order to find it; and those who will not accept the conditions, will be +visited by no melodramatic or violent catastrophe. Love which has broken +law will simply fade away and vanish. + +The third part of the story is no less interesting and significant. +Maddened with this second loss, so irrevocable and yet due to so +avoidable a cause, Orpheus, in restless despair, wandered about the +lands. For him the nymphs had now no attractions, nor was there anything +in all the world but the thought of his half-regained Eurydice, now lost +for ever. His music indeed remained, nor did he cast away his lute; but +it was heard only in the most savage and lonely places. At length wild +Thracian women heard it, furious in the rites of Dionysus. They desired +him, but his heart was elsewhere, and, in the mad reaction of their +savage breasts, when he refused them they tore him limb from limb. He +was buried near the river Hebrus, and his head was thrown into the +stream. But as the waters bore it down, the lips whose singing had +charmed the world still repeated the beloved name Eurydice to the waters +as they flowed. + +Here again it is as if, searching for the dead in some ancient +sepulchre, we had found a living man and friend. The symbolism of the +story, disentangled from detail which may have been true enough in a +lesser way, is clear to every reader. It tells that love is strong as +death--that old sweet assurance which the lover in Canticles also +discovered. Love is indeed set here under conditions, or rather it has +perceived the conditions which the order of things has set, and these +conditions have been violated. But still the voice of the severed head, +crying out the beloved name as the waters bore it to the sea, speaks in +its own exquisite way the final word. It gives the same assurance with +the same thrill which we feel when we read the story of Herakles +wrestling with death for the body of Alkestis, and winning the woman +back from her very tomb. + +But before love can be a match for death, it first must conquer life, +and the early story of the power of Orpheus over the wild beasts, +restoring, as it does, an earthly paradise in which there is nothing but +gentleness, marks the conquest of life by love. All life's wildness and +savagery, which seem to give the lie to love continually, are after all +conquerable and may be tamed. And the lesson of it all is the great +persuasion that in the depth of things life is good and not evil. When +we come to the second conflict, and that love which has mastered life +now pits itself against death, it goes forward to the greater adventure +with a strange confidence. Who that has looked upon the face of one +dearly beloved who is dead, has not known the leap of the spirit, not so +much in rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that it +obviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuaded +that it has it--that death is but a puppet king, and love the master of +the universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but a +faltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it. + +For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies +of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian +women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand +for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They +but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of the +forfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, of +selfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far as +love can be slain. + +In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek creation in the form of one +of the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and ideal +aspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout the +story; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning against +paganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mighty +contrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganism +enters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle was +fought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, for +all the world to see. The two things which give their character to the +centuries from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man for +immortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On the +smaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand to +the end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus. + +It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet +singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of +Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or +Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its +greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim +the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for +the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which +professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought +of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who +derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance, +reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the early +Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and +found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story +tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good +Shepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith. + +One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, more +perhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad and +good elements. On the one hand there are the innumerable immoralities +and savageries that are found in all the records of mythology. On the +other hand, he who flays Marsias alive and visits the earth with plagues +is also the healer of men. He is the cosmopolitan god of the brotherhood +of mankind, the spirit of wisdom whose oracle acknowledged and inspired +Socrates, and, generally, the incarnation of the "glory of the Lord." + +We cannot here touch upon the marvellous tales of Delos and of Delphi, +nor repeat the strains that Pindar sang, sitting in his iron chair +beside the shrine. This much at least we may say, that both the Apollo +of Delos and the Apollo of Delphi are foreign gods, each of whom +appropriated to his own use a sacred place where the ancient earth-bound +religion had already established its rites. The Greeks brought with them +a splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he was +identified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems to +be the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between the +revolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at least +repudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning such +stories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee; +it is a hateful cleverness that slanders gods." No one who has realised +the power and glory of the Eastern sun, can wonder at the identification +both of the good and bad symbolism with the orb of day. Sun-worship is +indeed a form of nature-worship, and there are physical reasons obvious +enough for its being able to incorporate both the clean and unclean, +both the deadly and the benign legends. Yet there is a splendour in it +which is seen in its attraction for such minds as those of Aurelian and +Julian, and which is capable of refinement in the delicate spirituality +of Mithra, that worship of the essential principle of light, the soul of +sunshine. In the worship of Apollo we have a combination, than which +none on record is more striking, of the finest spirituality with the +crudest paganism. + +Here then, in the magical arena of the early world of Greece, we see in +one of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism and +spirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular stories +of Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partly +bequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which preceded +the Olympians, partly added in decadent days when the mind of man was +turned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deeper +meaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nights +or of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which is +ever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant), +and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell in +heaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought and life, +as we move about from point to point among the literature of later days. +Yet we shall seldom find any phase of the conflict which has not been +prophesied, or at least foreshadowed, in these legends of the dawn. The +link that binds the earliest to the latest page of literature is just +that human nature which, through all changes of country and of time, +remains essentially the same. It is this which lends to our subject its +individual as well as its historical interest. The battle is for each of +us our own battle, and its victories and defeats are our own. + + + + +LECTURE II + +MARIUS THE EPICUREAN + + +Much has been written, before and after the day of Walter Pater, +concerning that singularly pure and yet singularly disappointing +character, Marcus Aurelius, and his times. The ethical and religious +ferment of the period has been described with great fullness and +sympathy by Professor Dill. Yet it may be said, without fear of +contradiction, that no book has ever been written, nor is likely ever to +appear, which has conveyed to those who came under its spell a more +intimate and familiar conception of that remarkable period and man than +that which has been given by Walter Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_. + +Opinion is divided about the value of Pater's work, and if it be true +that some of his admirers have provoked criticism by their unqualified +praise, it is no less true that many of his detractors appear never to +have come in contact with his mind at all. Born in 1839, he spent the +greater part of his life in Queen's College, Oxford, where he died in +1894. As literary critic, humanist, and master of a thoroughly original +style, he made a considerable impression upon his generation from the +first; but it may be safely said that it is only now, when readers are +able to look upon his work in a more spacious and leisurely way, that he +and his contribution to English thought and letters have come to their +own. + +The family was of Dutch extraction, and while the sons of his +grandfather were trained in the Roman Catholic religion, the daughters +were Protestants from their childhood. His father left the Roman +Catholic communion early in life, without adopting any other form of +Christian faith. It is not surprising that out of so strongly marked and +widely mingled a heredity there should have emerged a writer prone to +symbolism and open to the sense of beauty in ritual, and yet too +cosmopolitan to accept easily the conventional religious forms. Before +his twentieth year he had come under the influence of Ruskin's writings, +but he soon parted from that wayward and contradictory master, whose +brilliant dogmatism enslaved so thoroughly, but so briefly, the taste of +young England. Ruskin, however, had awakened Pater, although to a style +of criticism very different from his own, and for this service we owe +him much. The environment of Oxford subjected his spirit to two widely +different sets of influences. On the one hand, he was in contact with +such men as Jowett, Nettleship, and Thomas Hill Green: on the other +hand, with Swinburne, Burne-Jones, and the pre-Raphaelites. Thus the +awakened spirit felt the dominion both of a high spiritual rationalism, +and of the beauty of flesh and the charm of the earth. A visit to Italy +in company with Shadwell, and his study of the Renaissance there, made +him an enthusiastic humanist. The immediate product of this second +awakening was the _Renaissance_ Essays, a very remarkable volume of his +early work. Twelve years later, _Marius the Epicurean_, his second book, +appeared in 1885. In Dr. Gosse, Pater has found an interpreter of rare +sympathy and insight, whose appreciations of his contemporaries are, in +their own right, fine contributions to modern literature. + +The characteristics of his style were also those both of his thought and +of his character. Dr. Gosse has summed up the reserve and shy reticence +and the fastidious taste which always characterise his work, in saying +that he was "one of the most exquisite, most self-respecting, the most +individual prose writers of the age." Even in the matter of style he +consciously respected his own individuality, refusing to read either +Stevenson or Kipling for fear that their masterful strength might lead +him out of his path. Certainly his bitterest enemies could not accuse +him of borrowing from either of them. Mr. Kipling is apt to sacrifice +everything to force, while Pater is perhaps the gentlest writer of our +time. In Stevenson there is a delicate and yet vigorous human passion, +but also a sense of fitness, a consciousness of style that is all his +own. He is preaching, and not swearing at you, as you often feel Mr. +Kipling to be doing. To preach at one may be indeed to take a great +liberty, but of course much will depend upon whether the preaching is +good preaching. Be that as it may, Pater is distinctive, and borrows +nothing from any writer whose influence can be traced in his work. He +neither swears nor preaches, but weaves about his reader a subtle film +of thought, through whose gossamer all things seem to suffer a curious +change, and to become harmonious and suggestive, as dark and +quiet-coloured things often are. The writer does not force himself upon +his readers, nor tempt even the most susceptible to imitate him; rather +he presupposes himself, and dominates without appearing. His reticence, +to which we have already referred, is one of his most characteristic +qualities. Dr. Gosse ascribes it to a somewhat low and sluggish vitality +of physical spirits. For one in this condition "the first idea in the +presence of anything too vivacious is to retreat, and the most obvious +form of social retreat is what we call affectation." That Pater's style +has impressed many readers as affected there can be no question, and it +is as unquestionable that Dr. Gosse's explanation is the true one. + +His style has been much abused by critics who have found it easy to say +smart things about such tempting peculiarities. We may admit at once +that the writing is laboured and shows constant marks of the tool. The +same criticism applies, for that matter, to much that Stevenson has +written. But unless a man's style is absolutely offensive, which Pater's +emphatically is not, it is a wise rule to accept it rather as a +revelation of the man than as a chance for saying clever things. As one +reads the work of some of our modern critics, one cannot but perceive +and regret how much of pleasure and of profit their cleverness has cost +them. Acknowledging his laboriousness and even his affectation, we still +maintain that the style of Walter Pater is a very adequate expression of +his mind. There is a calm suggestive atmosphere, a spirit half-childish +and half-aged about his work. It is the work of a solemn and sensitive +child, who has kept the innocence of his eye for impressions, and yet +brought to his speech the experience, not of years only, but of +centuries. He has many things to teach directly; but even when he is not +teaching so, the air you breathe with its delicate suggestion of faint +odours, the perfect taste in selection, the preferences and shrinkings +and shy delights, all proclaim a real and high culture. And, after all, +the most notable point in his style is just its exactness. Over-precise +it may be sometimes, and even meticulous, yet that is because it is the +exact expression of a delicate and subtle mind. In his _Appreciations_ +he lays down, as a first canon for style, Flaubert's principle of the +search, the unwearied search, not for the smooth, or winsome, or +forcible word as such, but, quite simply and honestly, for the word's +adjustment to its meaning. It will be said in reply to any such defence +that the highest art is to conceal art. That is an old saying and a hard +one, and it is not possible to apply its rule in every instance. Pater's +immense sense of the value of words, and his choice of exact +expressions, resulted in language marvellously adapted to indicate the +almost inexpressible shades of thought. When a German struggles for the +utterance of some mental complexity he fashions new compounds of words; +a Frenchman helps out his meaning by gesture, as the Greek long ago did +by tone. Pater knows only one way of overcoming such situations, and +that is by the painful search for the unique word that he ought to use. + +One result of this habit is that he has enriched our literature with a +large number of pregnant phrases which, it is safe to prophesy, will +take their place in the vernacular of literary speech. "Hard gem-like +flame," "Drift of flowers," "Tacitness of mind,"--such are some +memorable examples of the exact expression of elusive ideas. The house +of literature built in this fashion is a notable achievement in the +architecture of language. It reminds us of his own description of a +temple of Æsculapius: "His heart bounded as the refined and dainty +magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood of early +sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there, and with +all the singular expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanliness +and simplicity." Who would not give much to be able to say the thing he +wants to say so exactly and so beautifully as that is said? Indeed the +love of beauty is the key both to the humanistic thought and to the +simple and lingering style of Pater's writing. If it is not always +obviously simple, that is never due either to any vagueness or confusion +of thought, but rather to a struggle to express precise shades of +meaning which may be manifold, but which are perfectly clear to himself. + +A mind so sensitive to beauty and so fastidious in judging of it and +expressing it, must necessarily afford a fine arena for the conflict +between the tendencies of idealism and paganism. Here the great struggle +between conscience and desire, the rivalry of culture and restraint, the +choice between Athens and Jerusalem, will present a peculiarly +interesting spectacle. In Walter Pater both elements are strongly +marked. The love of ritual, and a constitutional delight in solemnities +of all kinds, was engrained in his nature. The rationalism of Green and +Jowett, with its high spirituality lighting it from within, drove off +the ritual for a time at least. The result of these various elements is +a humanism for which he abandoned the profession of Christianity with +which he had begun. Yet he could not really part from that earlier +faith, and for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not all +for Apollo, and not all for Christ." The same writer quotes as +applicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was a +disaffected cathedral," and likens him to that mysterious face of Mona +Lisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the most +brilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christian +idealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed gradually +and naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it he +never surrendered the humanistic gains of the time between. He accepted +in their fullness both ideals, and so spiritualised his humanism and +humanised his idealism. Anything less rich and complete than this could +never have satisfied him. Self-denial is obviously not an end in itself; +and yet the real end, the fulfilment of nature, can never by any +possibility be attained by directly aiming at it, but must ever involve +self-denial as a means towards its attainment. It is Pater's clear sight +of the necessity of these two facts, and his lifelong attempt to +reconcile them, that give him, from the ethical and religious point of +view, his greatest importance. + +The story of this reconciliation is _Marius the Epicurean_. It is a +spiritual biography telling the inner history of a Roman youth of the +time of Marcus Aurelius. It begins with an appreciative interpretation +of the old Roman religion as it was then, and depicts the family +celebrations by which the devout were wont to seek "to produce an +agreement with the gods." Among the various and beautiful tableaux of +that Roman life, we see the solemn thoughtful boy reading hard and +becoming a precocious idealist, too old already for his years, but +relieving the inward tension by much pleasure in the country and the +open air. A time of delicate health brings him and us to a temple of +Æsculapius. The priesthood there is a kind of hospital college +brotherhood, whose teaching and way of life inculcate a mysteriously +sacramental character in all matters of health and the body. + +Like all other vital youths, Marius must eat of the tree of knowledge +and become a questioner of hitherto accepted views. "The tyrannous +reality of things visible," and all the eager desire and delight of +youth, make their strong appeal. Two influences favour the temptation. +First there is his friend, Flavian the Epicurean, of the school that +delights in pleasure without afterthought, and is free from the burden +and restraint of conscience; and later on, _The Golden Book_ of +Apuleius, with its exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, and its search +for perfectness in the frankly material life. The moral of its main +story is that the soul must not look upon the face of its love, nor seek +to analyse too closely the elements from which it springs. Spirituality +will be left desolate if it breaks this ban, and its wiser course is to +enjoy without speculation. Thus we see the youth drawn earthwards, yet +with a clinging sense of far mystic reaches, which he refuses as yet to +explore. The death of Flavian rudely shatters this phase of his +experience, and we find him face to face with death. The section begins +with the wonderful hymn of the Emperor Hadrian to his dying soul-- + + Dear wanderer, gipsy soul of mine, + Sweet stranger, pleasing guest and comrade of my flesh, + Whither away? Into what new land, + Pallid one, stoney one, naked one? + +But the sheer spectacle and fact of death is too violent an experience +for such sweet consolations, and the death of Flavian comes like a final +revelation of nothing less than the soul's extinction. Not unnaturally, +the next phase is a rebound into epicureanism, spiritual indeed in the +sense that it could not stoop to low pleasures, but living wholly in the +present none the less, with a strong and imperative appreciation of the +fullness of earthly life. + +The next phase of the life of Marius opens with a journey to Rome, +during which he meets a second friend, the soldier Cornelius. This very +distinctly drawn character fascinates the eye from the first. In him we +meet a kind of earnestness which seems to interpret and fit in with the +austere aspects of the landscape. It is different from that disciplined +hardness which was to be seen in Roman soldiers as the result of their +military training; indeed, it seems as if this were some new kind of +knighthood, whose mingled austerity and blitheness were strangely +suggestive of hitherto unheard-of achievements in character. + +The impression made by Rome upon the mind of Marius was a somewhat +morbid one. He was haunted more or less by the thought of its passing +and its eventual ruin, and he found much, both in its religion and its +pleasure, to criticise. The dominant figure in the imperial city was +that of Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, so famous in his day that for two +hundred years after his death his image was cherished among the Penates +of many pious families. Amid much that was admirable in him, there was a +certain chill in his stoicism, and a sense of lights fading out into the +night. His words in praise of death, and much else of his, had of course +a great distinction. Yet in his private intercourse with Marcus +Aurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it the bleak sense that all +is vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity--of a +too easy acceptance of the world--in the imperial philosophy. For in the +companionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, and his friend was more truly an aristocrat than his Emperor. +Cornelius did not accept the world in its entirety, either sadly or +otherwise. In him there was "some inward standard ... of distinction, +selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the period and the +corrupt life across which they were moving together." And, apparently as +a consequence of this spirit of selection, "with all the severity of +Cornelius, there was a breeze of hopefulness--freshness and +hopefulness--as of new morning, about him." Already, it may be, the +quick intelligence of the reader has guessed what is coming. Jesus +Christ said of Himself on one occasion, "For distinctions I am come into +the world." Marius' criticism of the Emperor reached its climax in his +disgust at the amusements of the amphitheatre, which also Marcus +Aurelius accepted. + +There follows a long account of Roman life and thought, with much +speculation as to the ideal commonwealth. That dream of the philosophers +remains for ever in the air, detached from actual experiences and +institutions, but Marius felt himself passing beyond it to something in +which it would be actually realised and visibly localised, "the unseen +Rome on high." Thus in correcting and supplementing the philosophies, +and in insisting upon some actual embodiment of them on the earth, he is +groping his way point by point to Christ. The late Dean Church has said: +"No one can read the wonderful sayings of Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus +Aurelius, without being impressed, abashed perhaps, by their grandeur. +No one can read them without wondering the next moment why they fell so +dead--how little response they seem to have awakened round them." It is +precisely at this point that the young Christian Church found its +opportunity. Pagan idealisms were indeed in the air. The Christian +idealism was being realised upon the earth, and it was this with which +Marius was now coming into contact. + +So he goes on until he is led up to two curious houses. The first of +these was the house of Apuleius, where in a subtle and brilliant system +of ideas it seemed as if a ladder had been set up from earth to heaven. +But Marius discovered that what he wanted was the thing itself and not +its mere theory, a life of realised ideals and not a dialectic. The +second house was more curious still. Much pains is spent upon the +description of it with its "quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble +taste," in which both colour and form, alike of stones and flowers, +seemed expressive of a rare and potent beauty in the personality that +inhabited them. There were inscriptions there to the dead martyrs, +inscriptions full of confidence and peace. Old pagan symbols were there +also--Herakles wrestling with death for possession of Alkestis, and +Orpheus taming the wild beasts--blended naturally with new symbols such +as the Shepherd and the sheep, and the Good Shepherd carrying the sick +lamb upon his shoulder. The voice of singers was heard in the house of +an evening singing the candle hymn, "Hail, Heavenly Light." Altogether +there seemed here to be a combination of exquisite and obvious beauty +with "a transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in +which the old puzzle of life had found its solution." + +It was none other than the Church of the early Christian days that +Marius had stumbled on, under the guidance of his new friend; and +already in heart he had actually become a Christian without knowing it, +for these friends of comeliness seemed to him to have discovered the +secret of actualising the ideal as none others had done. At such a +moment in his spiritual career it is not surprising that he should +hesitate to look upon that which would "define the critical +turning-point," yet he looked. He saw the blend of Greek and Christian, +each at its best--the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. In +this "minor peace of the Church," so pure, so delicate, and so vital +that it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest of +bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the +generations of living trees," he seemed to see the possibility of +satisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love and +self-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than the +Greek blitheness, and a new beauty which contrasted brightly with the +Roman insipidity. It was the humanism of Christianity that so satisfied +him, standing as it did for the fullness of life, in spite of all its +readiness for sacrifice. And it was effective too, for it seemed to be +doing rapidly what the best paganism was doing very slowly--attaining, +almost without thinking about it, the realisation of the noblest ideals. + +"And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the first +time the wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential +power over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. There +were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, +of personal type. The Roman _ingenuus_, with the white toga and gold +ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole +company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thus +unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence +so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as if +he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could +scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the +earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of +which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human +type there present, was the various expression of every form of human +sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so +pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of +humble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on the +details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some +science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly +been no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message from +beyond 'the flaming rampart of the world'--a message of hope regarding +the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of +things--already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, +now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work +in them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look +comparatively vulgar and mean." + +The spectacle of the Sacrament adds its deep impression, "bread and wine +especially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan +vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and +animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now +in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch and see, in the +midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things." + +The sense of youth in it all was perhaps the dominating impression--the +youth that was yet old as the world in experience and discovery of the +true meaning of life. The young Christ was rejuvenating the world, and +all things were being made new by him. + +This is the climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for a +moment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him has +been no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does not +leap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietly +realises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealism +had been all the time groping. The story closes amid scenes of plague +and earthquake and martyrdom in which he and Cornelius are taken +prisoners, and he dies at last a Christian. "It was the same people who, +in the grey, austere evening of that day, took up his remains, and +buried them secretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, +holding his death, according to their generous view in this matter, to +have been of the nature of a martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the Church had +always said, was a kind of Sacrament with plenary grace." + +Such is some very brief and inadequate conception of one of the most +remarkable books of our time, a book "written to illustrate the highest +ideal of the æsthetic life, and to prove that beauty may be made the +object of the soul in a career as pure, as concentrated, and as austere +as any that asceticism inspires. _Marius_ is an apology for the highest +Epicureanism, and at the same time it is a texture which the author has +embroidered with exquisite flowers of imagination, learning, and +passion. Modern humanism has produced no more admirable product than +this noble dream of a pursuit through life of the spirit of heavenly +beauty." Nothing could be more true, so far as it goes, than this +admirable paragraph, yet Pater's book is more than that. The main drift +of it is the reconciliation of Hellenism with Christianity in the +experience of a man "bent on living in the full stream of refined +sensation," who finds Christianity in every point fulfilling the ideals +of Epicureanism at its best. + +The spiritual stages through which Marius passes on his journey towards +this goal are most delicately portrayed. In the main these are three, +which, though they recur and intertwine in his experience, yet may be +fairly stated in their natural order and sequence as normal types of +such spiritual progress. + +The first of these stages is a certain vague fear of evil, which seems +to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of +some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its +keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a +very subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to +his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined +or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague +misgivings took shape in one definite experience. "From the steep slope +a heavy mass of stone was detached, after some whisperings among the +trees above his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell to +pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so that he +felt the touch upon his heel." That was sufficient, just then, to rouse +out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil--of one's "enemies." +Such distress was so much a matter of constitution with him, that at +times it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but be +snatched hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark besetting +influence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of +enemies, seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things. When +tempted by the earth-bound philosophy of the early period of his +development, "he hardly knew how strong that old religious sense of +responsibility, the conscience, as we call it, still was within him--a +body of inward impressions, as real as those so highly valued outward +ones--to offend against which, brought with it a strange feeling of +disloyalty, as to a person." Later on, when the "acceptance of things" +which he found in Marcus Aurelius had offended him, and seemed to mark +the Emperor as his inferior, we find that there is "the loyal conscience +within him, deciding, judging himself and every one else, with a +wonderful sort of authority." This development of conscience from a +vague fear of enemies to a definite court of appeal in a man's judgment +of life, goes side by side with his approach to Christianity. The pagan +idealism of the early days had never been able to cope with that sense +of enemies, nor indeed to understand it; but in the light of his growing +Christian faith, conscience disentangles itself and becomes clearly +defined. + +Another element in the spiritual development of Marius is that which may +be called his consciousness of an unseen companion. Marius was +constitutionally _personel_, and never could be satisfied with the dry +light of pure reason, or with any impersonal ideal whatsoever. For him +the universe was alive in a very real sense. At first, however, this was +the vaguest of sentiments, and it needed much development before it +became clear enough to act as one of the actual forces which played upon +his life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy of +Marcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, made +possible by means of the _Logos_, "the reasonable spark in man, common +to him with the gods." "There could be no inward conversation with +oneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware of +our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's +disposition of oneself." This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamental +necessity of experience--one of those "beliefs, without which life +itself must be almost impossible, principles which had their sufficient +ground of evidence in that very fact." So far Marcus Aurelius. But the +conviction of some august yet friendly companionship in life beyond the +veil of things seen, took form for Marius in a way far more picturesque. +The passage which describes it is one of the finest in the book, and may +be given at length. + +"Through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in another +life, and like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, +passing from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from various +dangers. That prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively +gratitude: it was as if he must look round for some one else to share +his joy with: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own +relief. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this +way or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one or +another long span of it, the chief delight of the journey. And was it +only the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through +his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had not +been--besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude +which in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of all +things--some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side +throughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of +his peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful +recognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was +there at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for him +altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it?" One can +see in this sense of constant companionship the untranslated and indeed +the unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God is +responsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, it +will be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for that +complexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could better +summarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, +"To have apprehended the _Great Ideal_, so palpably that it defined +personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid +the shadows of the world." + +The third essential development of Marius' thought is that of the City +of God, which for him assumes the shape of a perfected and purified +Rome, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of life and character. This +is indeed the inevitable sequel of any such spiritual developments as +the fear of enemies and the sense of an unseen companion. Man moves +inevitably to the city, and all his ideals demand an embodiment in +social form before they reach their full power and truth. In that house +of life which he calls society, he longs to see his noblest dreams find +a local habitation and a name. This is the grand ideal passed from hand +to hand by the greatest and most outstanding of the world's seers--from +Plato to Augustine, from Augustine to Dante--the ideal of the City of +God. It is but little developed in the book which we are now +considering, for that would be beside the purpose of so intimate and +inward a history. Yet we see, as it were, the towers and palaces of this +"dear City of Zeus" shining in the clear light of the early Christian +time, like the break of day over some vast prospect, with the new City, +as it were some celestial new Rome, in the midst of it. + +These are but a few glimpses at this very significant and far-reaching +book, which indeed takes for its theme the very development from pagan +to Christian idealism with which we are dealing. In it, in countless +bright and vivid glances, the beauty of the world is seen with virgin +eye. Many phases of that beauty belong to the paganism which surrounds +us as we read, yet these are purified from all elements that would make +them pagan in the lower sense, and under our eyes they free themselves +for spiritual flights which find their resting-place at last and become +at once intelligible and permanent in the faith of Jesus Christ. + + + + +LECTURE III + +THE TWO FAUSTS + + +It may seem strange to pass immediately from the time of Marcus Aurelius +to Marlowe and Goethe, and yet the tale upon which these two poets +wrought is one whose roots are very deep in history, and which revives +in a peculiarly vital and interesting fashion the age-long story of +man's great conflict. Indeed the saga on which it is founded belongs +properly to no one period, but is the tragic drama of humanity. It +tells, through all the ages, the tale of the struggle between earth and +the spiritual world above it; and the pagan forms which are introduced +take us back into the classical mythology, and indeed into still more +ancient times. + +The hero of the story must be clearly distinguished from Fust the +printer, a wealthy goldsmith of Mayence, who, in the middle of the +fifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise of +printing. Robert Browning, in _Fust and his Friends_, tells us, with +great vivacity, the story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magic +spirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkward +pause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of the +psalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fust +had, was that so long as this or any other process was kept secret, it +was attributed to supernatural powers. + +Faust, although a contemporary of Fust the printer, was a very different +character. Unfortunately, our information about him comes almost +entirely from his enemies, and their accounts are by no means sparing in +abuse. Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Spanheim in the early part of +the sixteenth century, writes of him with the most virulent contempt, as +a debauched person and a criminal whose overweening vanity arrogated to +itself the most preposterous supernatural powers. It would appear that +he had been some sort of travelling charlatan, whose performing horse +and dog were taken for evil spirits, like Esmeralda's goat in Victor +Hugo's _Notre Dame_. Even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have shared the +common view of him, and at last there was published at Frankfurt the +_Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus_. +The date of this work is 1587, and a translation of it appeared in +London in 1592. It is a discursive composition, founded upon +reminiscences of some ancient stroller who lived very much by his wits; +but it took such a hold upon the imagination of the time that, by the +latter part of the sixteenth century, Faust had become the necromancer +_par excellence_. Into the Faust-book there drifted endless necromantic +lore from the Middle Ages and earlier times. It seems to have had some +connection with Jewish legends of magicians who invoked the _Satanim_, +or lowest grade of elemental spirits not unlike the "elementals" of +modern popular spiritualism. It was the story of a Christian selling his +soul to the powers of darkness, and it had behind it one of the poems of +Hrosvitha of Gandersheim which relates a similar story of an archdeacon +of Cilicia of the sixth century, and also the popular tradition of Pope +Sylvester the Second, who was suspected of having made the same bargain. +Yet, as Lebahn says, "The Faust-legend in its complete form was the +creation of orthodox Protestantism. Faust is the foil to Luther, who +worsted the Devil with his ink-bottle when he sought to interrupt the +sacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue." This legend, +by the way, is a peculiarly happy one, for Luther not only aimed his +ink-bottle at the Devil, but most literally and effectively hit him with +it, when he wrote those books that changed the face of religious Europe. + +The _Historie_ had an immense and immediate popularity, and until well +into the nineteenth century it was reproduced and sold throughout +Europe. As we read it, we cannot but wonder what manner of man it really +was who attracted to himself such age-long hatred and fear, and held the +interest of the centuries. In many respects, doubtless, his story was +like that of Paracelsus, in whom the world has recognised the struggle +of much good with almost inevitable evil, and who, if he had been born +in another generation, might have figured as a commanding spiritual or +scientific authority. + +Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1564, two months before +Shakespeare. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was the pupil of Kett, a +fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College. This tutor was probably +accountable for much in the future Marlowe, for he was a mystic, and was +burnt for heresy in 1589. After a short and extremely violent life, the +pupil followed his master four years later to the grave, having been +killed in a brawl under very disgraceful circumstances. He only lived +twenty-nine years, and yet he, along with Kyd, changed the literature of +England. Lyly's Pastorals had been the favourite reading of the people +until these men came, keen and audacious, to lead and sing their "brief, +fiery, tempestuous lives." When they wrote their plays and created their +villains, they were not creating so much as remembering. Marlowe's plays +were four, and they were all influential. His _Edward the Second_ was +the precursor of the historical plays of Shakespeare. His other plays +were _Tamburlaine the Great_, _Dr. Faustus_, and _The Jew of Malta_ +(Barabbas). These three were all upon congenial lines, expressing that +Titanism in revolt against the universe which was the inspiring spirit +of Marlowe. But it was the character of Faust that especially fascinated +him, for he found in the ancient magician a pretty clear image of his +own desires and ambitions. He was one of those who loved "the dangerous +edge of things," and, as Charles Lamb said, "delighted to dally with +interdicted subjects." The form of the plays is loose and broken, and +yet there is a pervading larger unity, not only of dramatic action, but +of spirit. The laughter is loud and coarse, the terror unrelieved, and +the splendour dazzling. There is no question as to the greatness of this +work as permanent literature. It has long outlived the amazing +detractions of Hallam and of Byron, and will certainly be read so long +as English is a living tongue. + +The next stage in this curious history is a peculiarly interesting one. +In former days there sprang up around every great work of art a forest +of slighter literature, in the shape of chap-books, ballads, and puppet +plays. By far the most popular of the puppet plays was that founded upon +Marlowe's _Faust_. The German version continued to be played in Germany +until three hundred years later. Goethe constructed his masterpiece +largely by its help. English actors travelling abroad had brought back +the story to its native land of Germany, and in every town the bands of +strolling players sent Marlowe's great conception far and wide. In +England also the puppet play was extremely popular. The drama had moved +from the church to the market-place, and much of the Elizabethan drama +appeared in this quaint form, played by wooden figures upon diminutive +boards. To the modern mind nothing could be more incongruous than the +idea of a solemn drama forced to assume a guise so grotesque and +childish; but, according to Jusserand, much of the stage-work was +extremely ghastly, and no doubt it impressed the multitude. There is +even a story of some actors who had gone too far, and into the midst of +whose play the real devil suddenly descended with disastrous results. It +must, however, be allowed that even the serious plays were not without +an abundant element of grotesqueness. The occasion for Faustus' final +speech of despair, for instance, was the lowering and raising before his +eyes of two or three gilded arm-chairs, representing the thrones in +heaven upon which he would never sit. It does not seem to have occurred +to the audience as absurd that heaven should be regarded as a kind of +drawing-room floating in the air, and indeed that idea is perhaps not +yet obsolete. However that may be, it is quite evident that such +machinery, ill-suited though it was to the solemnities of tragedy, must +have been abundantly employed in the puppet plays. + +The German puppet play of _Faust_ has been transcribed by Dr. Hamm and +translated by Mr. Hedderwick into English. It was obtained at first with +great difficulty, for the showmen kept the libretto secret, and could +not be induced to lend it. Dr. Hamm, however, followed the play round, +listening and committing much of it to memory, and his version was +finally completed when his amanuensis obtained for a day or two the +original manuscript after plying one of the assistants with much beer +and wine. It was a battered book, thumb-marked and soaked with lamp oil, +but it has passed on to posterity one of the most remarkable pieces of +dramatic work which have come down to us from those times. + +In all essentials the play is the same as that of Marlowe, except for +the constant interruptions of the clown Casper, who intrudes with his +absurdities even into the most sacred parts of the action, and entirely +mars the dreadful solemnity of the end by demanding his wages from Faust +while the clock is striking the diminishing intervals of the last hour. + +It was through this curious intermediary that Goethe went back to +Marlowe and created what has been well called "the most mystic poetic +work ever created," and "the _Divina Commedia_ of the eighteenth +century." Goethe's _Faust_ is elemental, like _Hamlet_. Readers of +_Wilhelm Meister_ will remember how profound an impression _Hamlet_ had +made upon Goethe's mind, and this double connection between Goethe and +the English drama forms one of the strongest and most interesting of all +the links that bind Germany to England. His _Faust_ was the direct +utterance of Goethe's own inner life. He says: "The marionette folk of +_Faust_ murmured with many voices in my soul. I, too, had wandered into +every department of knowledge, and had returned early enough, satisfied +with the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under various +aspects, and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied." Thus _Faust_ +lay in the depths of Goethe's life as a sort of spiritual pool, +mirroring all its incidents and thoughts. The play was begun originally +in the period of his _Sturm und Drang_, and it remained unpublished +until, in old age, the ripened mind of the great poet took it over +practically unchanged, and added the calmer and more intellectual parts. +The whole of the Marguerite story belongs to the earlier days. + +There is nothing in the whole of literature which could afford us a +finer and more fundamental account of the battle between paganism and +idealism in the soul of man, than the comparison between the _Fausts_ of +Marlowe and of Goethe. But before we come to this, it may be interesting +to notice two or three points of special interest in the latter drama, +which show how entirely pagan are the temptations of Faust. + +The first passage to notice is that opening one on Easter Day, where the +devil approaches Faust in the form of a dog. Choruses of women, +disciples, and angels are everywhere in the air; and although the dog +appears first in the open, yet the whole emphasis of the passage is upon +the contrast between that brilliant Easter morning with its sunshine and +its music, and the close and darkened study into which Faust has shut +himself. It is true he goes abroad, but it is not to join with the rest +in their rejoicing, but only as a spectator, with all the superiority as +well as the wistfulness of his illicit knowledge. Evidently the +impression intended is that of the wholesomeness of the crowd and the +open air. He who goes in with the rest of men in their sorrow and their +rejoicing cannot but find the meaning of Easter morning for himself. It +is a festival of earth and the spring, an earth idealised, whose spirit +is incarnate in the risen Christ. Faust longs to share in that, and on +Easter Eve tries in vain to read his Gospel and to feel its power. But +the only cure for such morbid introspectiveness as his, is to cast +oneself generously into the common life of man, and the refusal to do +this invites the pagan devil. + +Another point of interest is the coming of the _Erdgeist_ immediately +after the _Weltschmerz_. The sorrow that has filled his heart with its +melancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and the +thousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition, +are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheer +worldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's _Pilgrim's +Progress_ it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough of +Despond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Precisely the +same experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is subtler +and more complex than that of Bunyan. The _Erdgeist_ which comes to the +saddened scholar is a noble spirit, vivifying and creative. It is the +world in all its glorious fullness of meaning, quite as true an idealism +as that which is expressed in the finest spirit of the Greeks. But for +Faust it is too noble. His morbid gloom has enervated him, and the call +of the splendid earth is beyond him. So there comes, instead of it, a +figure as much poorer than that of Worldly Wiseman as the _Erdgeist_ is +richer. Wagner represents the poor commonplace world of the wholly +unideal. It is infinitely beneath the soul of Faust, and yet for the +time it conquers him, being nearer to his mood. Thus Mephistopheles +finds his opportunity. The scholar, embittered with the sense that +knowledge is denied to him, will take to mere action; and the action +will not be great like that which the _Erdgeist_ would have prompted, +but poor and unsatisfying to any nobler spirit than that of Wagner. + +The third incident which we may quote is that of _Walpurgis-Night_. Some +critics would omit this part, which, they say, "has naught of interest +in bearing on the main plot of the poem." Nothing could be more mistaken +than such a judgment. In the _Walpurgis-Night_ we have the play ending +in that sheer paganism which is the counterpart to Easter Day at the +beginning. Walpurgis has a strange history in German folklore. It is +said that Charlemagne, conquering the German forests for the Christian +faith, drove before him a horde of recalcitrant pagans, who took a last +shelter among the trees of the Brocken. There, on the pagan May-day, in +order to celebrate their ancient rites unmolested, they dressed +themselves in all manner of fantastic and bestial masks, so as to +frighten off the Christianising invaders from the revels. The Walpurgis +of _Faust_ exhibits paganism at its lowest depths. Sir Mammon is the +host who invites his boisterous guests to the riot of his festive night. +The witches arrive on broomsticks and pitchforks; singing, not without +significance, the warning of woe to all climbers--for here aspiration of +any sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact that +pious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducing +the same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which Nathaniel +Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of _Young Goodman +Brown_; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust in +disgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch with +whom he had been dancing there had sprung a small red mouse. Throughout +the whole play the sense of holy and splendid ideals shines at its +brightest in lurid contrast with the hopeless and sordid dark of the +pagan earth. + +Returning now to our main point, the comparison of Marlowe's play with +Goethe's, let us first of all contrast the temptations in the two. +Marlowe's play is purely theological. Jusserand finely describes the +underlying tragedy of it. "Faust, like Tamburlaine, and like all the +heroes of Marlowe, lives in thought, beyond the limit of the possible. +He thirsts for a knowledge of the secrets of the universe, as the other +thirsted for domination over the world." Both are Titanic figures +exactly in the pagan sense, but the form of Faustus' Titanism is the +revolt against theology. From the early days of the Christian +persecutions, there had been a tendency to divorce the sacred from the +secular, and to regard all that was secular as being of the flesh and +essentially evil. The mediæval views of celibacy, hermitage, and the +monastic life, had intensified this divorce; and while many of the monks +were interested in human secular learning, yet there was a feeling, +which in many cases became a kind of conscience, that only the divine +learning was either legitimate or safe for a man's eternal well-being. +The Faust of Marlowe is the Prometheus of his own day. The new knowledge +of the Renaissance had spread like fire across Europe, and those who saw +in it a resurrection of the older gods and their secrets, unhesitatingly +condemned it. The doctrine of immortality had entirely supplanted the +old Greek ideal of a complete earthly life for man, and all that was +sensuous had come to be regarded as intrinsically sinful. Thus we have +for background a divided universe, in which there is a great gulf fixed +between this world and the next, and a hopeless cleavage between the +life of body and that of spirit. + +In this connection we may also consider the women of the two plays. +Charles Lamb has asked, "What has Margaret to do with Faust?" and has +asserted that she does not belong to the legend at all. Literally, this +is true, in so far as there is no Margaret in the earlier form of the +play, whose interest was, as we have seen, essentially theological. Yet +Margaret belongs to the essential story and cannot be taken out of it. +She is the "eternal feminine," in which the battle between the spirit +and the flesh, between idealism and paganism, will always make its last +stand. Even Marlowe has to introduce a woman. His Helen is, indeed, a +mere incident, for the real bride of the soul must be either theological +or secular science; and yet so essential and so poignant is the question +of woman to the great drama, that the passage in which the incident of +Helen is introduced far surpasses anything else in Marlowe's play, and +indeed is one of the grandest and most beautiful in all literature. + + "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, + And burned the topless towers of Ilium? + Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. + + * * * * * + + O, thou art fairer than the evening air, + Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars." + +Still, Marlowe's _motif_ is not sex but theology. The former heretics +whom we named had been saved--Theophilus by the intervention of the +Blessed Virgin Mary, and Pope Sylvester snatched from the very jaws of +hell--by a return to orthodoxy. That was in the Roman Catholic days, but +the savage antithesis between earth and heaven had been taken over by +the conscience of Protestantism, making a duality which rendered life +always intellectually anxious and almost impossible. It is this +condition in which Marlowe finds himself. The good and the evil angels +stand to right and left of his Faustus, pleading with him for and +against secular science on the one side and theological knowledge on the +other. For that is the implication behind the contest between magic and +Christianity. "The Faust of the earlier Faust-books and ballads, dramas, +puppet shows, which grew out of them, is damned because he prefers the +human to the divine knowledge. He laid the Holy Scriptures behind the +door and under the bench, refused to be called Doctor of Theology, but +preferred to be called Doctor of Medicine." Obviously here we find +ourselves in a very lamentable _cul-de-sac_. Idealism has floated apart +from the earth and all its life, and everything else than theology is +condemned as paganism. + +Goethe changes all that. In the earlier _Weltschmerz_ passages some +traces of it still linger, where Faust renounces theology; but even +there it is not theology alone that he renounces, but philosophy, +medicine, and jurisprudence as well, so that his renunciation is +entirely different from that of Marlowe's Faustus. In Goethe it is no +longer one doctrine or one point of view against another doctrine or +another point of view. It is life, vitality in all its forms, against +all mere doctrine whatsoever. + + "Grey, dearest friend, is every theory, + But golden-green is the tree of life." + +Thus the times had passed into a sense of the limits of theology such as +has been well expressed in Rossetti's lines-- + + "Let lore of all theology + Be to thee all it can be, + But know,--the power that fashions man + Measured not out thy little span + For thee to take the meting-rod + In turn and so approve on God." + +So in Goethe we have the unsatisfied human spirit with its infinite +cravings and longings for something more than earth can give--something, +however, which is not separated from the earth, and which is entirely +different from theological dogma or anything of that sort. In this, +Goethe is expressing a constant yearning of his own, which illuminated +all his writings like a gentle hidden fire within them, hardly seen in +many passages and yet always somehow felt. It is _through_ the flesh +that he will find the spirit, _through_ this world that he will find the +next. The quest is ultimately the same as that of Marlowe, but the form +of it is absolutely opposed to his. Goethe is as far from Marlowe's +theological position as _Peer Gynt_ is, and indeed there is a +considerable similarity between Ibsen's great play and Goethe's. As the +drama develops, it is true that the love of Faust becomes sensual and +his curiosity morbid; but the tragedy lies no longer in the belief that +sense and curiosity are in themselves wrong, but in the fact that Faust +fails to distinguish their high phases from their low. We have already +seen that the _Erdgeist_ which first appeals to Faust is too great for +him, and it is there that the tragedy really lies. The earth is not an +accursed place, and the _Erdgeist_ may well find its home among the +ideals; but Wagner is neither big enough nor clean enough to be man's +guide. + +The contrast between the high and low ideals comes to its finest and +most tragic in the story of Margaret. Spiritual and sensual love +alternate through the play. Its tragedy and horror concentrate round the +fact that love has followed the lower way. Margaret has little to give +to Faust of fellowship along intellectual or spiritual lines. She is a +village maiden, and he takes from her merely the obvious and lower kind +of love. It is a way which leads ultimately to the dance of the witches +and the cellar of Auerbach, yet Faust can never be satisfied with these, +and from the witch's mouth comes forth the red mouse--the climax of +disgust. In Auerbach's cellar he sees himself as the pagan man in him +would like to be. In Martha one sees the pagan counterpart to the pure +and simple Margaret, just as Mephistopheles is the pagan counterpart to +Faust. The lower forms of life are the only ones in which Martha and +Mephistopheles are at home. For Faust and Margaret the lapse into the +lower forms brings tragedy. Yet it must be remembered also that Faust +and Mephistopheles are really one, for the devil who tempts every man is +but himself after all, the animal side of him, the dog. + +The women thus stand for the most poignant aspect of man's great +temptation. It is not, as we have already said, any longer a conflict +between the secular and the sacred that we are watching, nor even the +conflict between the flesh and the spirit. It is between a higher and a +lower way of treating life, flesh and spirit both. Margaret stands for +all the great questions that are addressed to mankind. There are for +every man two ways of doing work, of reading a book, of loving a woman. +He who keeps his spiritual life pure and high finds that in all these +things there is a noble path. He who yields to his lower self will +prostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to the +mad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel in +literature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result of +choosing the pagan and refusing the ideal. The Blocksberg is the pagan +heaven. + +A still more striking contrast between the plays meets us when we +consider the respective characters of Mephistopheles. When we compare +the two devils we are reminded of that most interesting passage in +Professor Masson's great essay, which describes the secularisation of +Satan between _Paradise Lost_ and the _Faust_ of Goethe:-- + +"We shall be on the right track if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what +Satan has become after six thousand years.... Goethe's Mephistopheles is +this same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years +in his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times +sharper and cleverer.... For six thousand years he has been pursuing the +walk he struck out at the beginning, plying his self-selected function, +dabbling devilishly in human nature, and abjuring all interest in the +grander physics; and the consequence is, as he himself anticipated, that +his nature, once great and magnificent, has become small, virulent, and +shrunken. He, the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and +civilised into the clever, cold-hearted Mephistopheles." + +Marlowe's devil is of the solemn earlier kind, not yet degraded into the +worldling whom Goethe has immortalised. Marlowe's Mephistophilis is +essentially the idealist, and it is his Faust who is determined for the +world. One feels about Mephistophilis that he is a kind of religious +character, although under a cloud. The things he does are done to organ +music, and he might be a figure in some stained-glass window of old. Not +only is he "a melancholy devil, with a soul above the customary hell," +but he actually retains a kind of despairing idealism which somehow +ranks him on the side rather of good than of evil. The puppet play +curiously emphasises this. "Tell me," says Faust, "what would you do if +you could attain to everlasting salvation?" "Hear and despair! Were I to +attain to everlasting salvation, I would mount to heaven on a ladder, +though every rung were a razor edge." The words are exactly in the +spirit of the earlier play. So sad is the devil, so oppressed with a +sense of the horror of it all, that, as we read, it almost seems as if +Faust were tempting the unwilling Mephistophilis to ruin him. + + "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it; + Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, + And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, + Am not tormented with ten thousand hells + In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss? + O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, + Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!" + +To which Faust replies-- + + "What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate + For being deprived of the joys of heaven? + Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, + And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess." + +Goethe's Mephistopheles near the end of the play taunts Faust in the +words, "Why dost thou seek our fellowship if thou canst not go through +with it?... Do we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?" And one has +the feeling that, like most other things the fiend says, it is an +apparent truth which is really a lie; but it would have been entirely +true if Marlowe's devil had said it. + +The Mephistopheles of Goethe is seldom solemnised at all. Once indeed on +the Harz Mountains he says-- + + "Naught of this genial influence do I know! + Within me all is wintry. + + * * * * * + + How sadly, yonder, with belated glow, + Rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round!" + +Yet there it is merely by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideous +sorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is like +Satan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuries +instead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jaunty +air that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the passage as +irreverent. He is the spirit that _denies_--sceptical and cynical, the +anti-Christian that is in us all. His business is to depreciate +spiritual values, and to persuade mortals that there is no real +distinction between good and bad, or between high and low. We have seen +in the character of Cornelius in _Marius the Epicurean_ "some inward +standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various +elements of the period." Here is the extreme opposite. There is no +divine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would never +have said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor edges. +There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is a +spirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future. +Before the throne of God he swaggers with the same easy insolence as in +Martha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism. + +So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan and +Mephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, making +paganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the nobler side of the +man. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that which +had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and +thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the +worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, +never quite lose." + +One more contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, the +fate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably damned. On +the old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and the +sacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect of +man was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for the +rebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific passage at the +close, when, with the chiming of the bell, terror grows to madness in +the victim's soul, and at last he envies the beasts that perish-- + + "For, when they die, + Their souls are soon dissolved in elements; + But mine must live still to be plagued in hell. + Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me! + No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer + That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven." + +Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not have +accepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out that +the final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; but +Goethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even if +Lessing had not asserted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play, +by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly damnable" as Martha +is. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaks +forth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery of +this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art +grinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words follow +immediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth by +Mephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first." Such a Faust as +this, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can the +Mephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for his +destruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the only +really damnable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles of +Goethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing the +sin against the Holy Ghost. + +The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning of +the play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines of +human life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere that +surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy +issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only +on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and +cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment," only + + "If ever to the passing hour I say, + So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"-- + +only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the +first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to +bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such +bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit +such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor +lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought. + +It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. It +is true that "man errs so long as he is striving," but the great word of +the play is just this, that no such errors can ever be final. The deadly +error is that of those who have ceased to strive, and who have +complacently settled down in the acceptance of the lower life with its +gratifications and delights. + +But such striving is, as Robert Browning tells us in _Rabbi ben Ezra_ +and _The Statue and the Bust_, the critical and all-important point in +human character and destiny. It is this which distinguishes pagan from +idealist in the end. Faust's errors fall off from him like a discarded +robe; the essential man has never ceased to strive. He has gone indeed +to hell, but he has never made his bed there. He is saved by want of +satisfaction. + + + + +LECTURE IV + +CELTIC REVIVALS OF PAGANISM + +OMAR KAYYÁM AND FIONA MACLEOD + + +It is extremely difficult to judge justly and without prejudice the +literature of one's own time. So many different elements are pouring +into it that it assumes a composite character, far beyond the power of +definition or even of epigram to describe as a whole. But, while this is +true, it is nevertheless possible to select from this vast amalgam +certain particular elements, and to examine them and judge them fairly. + +The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included under +the head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the most +modern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, +although they have come into our literature but recently, yet represent +very ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern about +them. They describe bed-rock human passions and longings, sorrowings +and consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, +but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism. + + +OMAR KAYYÁM + +In the twelfth century, at Khorassán in Persia Omar Kayyám the poet was +born. He lived and died at Naishápúr, following the trade of a +tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with +astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the _Rubáiyát_, was +first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the +sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the +Omar Kayyám Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since +come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations." + +In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Súfis, or +religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which +professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be +suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It +was against the poetry of such Súfis that Omar Kayyám rose in revolt. +Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the +exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed. + +A fair specimen of the finest Súfi poetry is _The Rose Garden of Sa'di_, +which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility in +English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although of +a later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, and +he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war. +His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in hand +through a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primary +conviction that the soul is essentially part of God, and will return to +God again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints and +half-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and there +you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines-- + + "Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs, + Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries. + The guardian of the store-house of the wind + Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies." + +These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate-- + + "To God's beloved even the dark hour + Shines as the morning glory after rain. + Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power + Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain." + +It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyám revolted. He had not +any proof of such spiritual assurances, and he did not want that of +which he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, both +in its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any other +world. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, and +protested against the vague spirituality of the Súfis by an assertion of +what may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much as +they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit +an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who +"failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of +what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of +any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the +inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb--"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not +worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with +such inscriptions on them--"The future is utterly useless, make the most +of to-day,"--and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and the +inscription. + +The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. In +his view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means God; when he +speaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, no +man has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left his +meaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine and +love--earthly things, which may or may not have their spiritual +counterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. The +same persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, and +wine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life for +Omar as he knows it. + + "Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring + Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. + + A Book of verses underneath the Bough, + A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou + Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- + Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! + + We are no other than a moving row + Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go + Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held + In Midnight by the Master of the Show." + +It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too +seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of +Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in +as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained. +When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li +Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him. +That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which +neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it +would have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have found +the fashions of China somewhat _risqué_. One remembers that introductory +note to Browning's _Ferishtah's Fancies_--"You, Sir, I entertain you for +one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you +will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."[1] The only safe +way of dealing with Omar Kayyám is to insist that his garments be _not_ +changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The +East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most +materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to +quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and +fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide. + +Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the +literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent +materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is +subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is +capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it +becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and +drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites +may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast +of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take +the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr. +Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on +a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart +of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a +picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the +signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons." +That is the root of the matter after all--the soul and horizons. He who +says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high +intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip +of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent +has certainly not lessened. + +The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is +only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple +life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have +a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves +for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of +degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious +self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present +world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are +moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel +the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange +scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always +will be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we +have already found to be the keynote of Goethe's _Faust_. Kingsley, in +one of the most remarkable passages of _Westward Ho!_ describes two of +Amyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly +delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the +march. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil. +But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and +fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O Lord +Jesus," said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!" + +It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce the +element of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his _Conspiracy of +Pontiac_, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the Ojibwa +Indians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out +his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; ... or he +lifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles +on the grass-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs +away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.... But when winter +descends upon the North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can +fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and +stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the +snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat +strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs." + +Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the time +trying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked up +again, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, that +impossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Those +who choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that the +song of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt at +singing and fall into an earth-bound silence. + +Thus Omar Kayyám has brought us a rich treasure from the East, of +splendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness of +poetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and a +decoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are taken +more seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as other +Eastern things have sometimes done. + + +FIONA MACLEOD + +To turn suddenly from this curious Persian life and thought to the still +more curious life and thought of ancient Scotland is indeed a violent +change. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the two types of paganism +out of which they spring; and if Fiona Macleod's work may have its +dangers for the precarious faith of modern days, they are certainly +dangers which attack the soul in a different fashion from those of Omar. + +The revelation of Fiona Macleod's identity with William Sharp came upon +the English-reading world as a complete surprise. Few deaths have been +more lamented in the literary world than his, and that for many reasons. +His biography is one of the most fascinating that could be imagined. His +personality was a singularly attractive one,--so vital, so +indefatigable,--with interests so many-sided, and a heart so sound in +all of them. It is characteristic of him that in his young days he ran +away for a time with gipsies, for he tells us, "I suppose I was a gipsy +once, and before that a wild man of the woods." The two great influences +of his life were Shelley and D.G. Rossetti. The story of his literary +struggles is brimful of courage and romance, and the impression of the +book is mainly that of ubiquity. His insatiable curiosity seems to have +led him to know everybody, and every place, and everything. + +At length Fiona Macleod was born. She arose out of nowhere, so far as +the reading public could discover. Really there was a hidden shy self in +Sharp, which must find expression impossible except in some secret way. +We knew him as the brilliant critic, the man of affairs, and the wide +and experienced traveller. We did not know him, until we discovered that +he was Fiona, in that second life of his in the borderland where flesh +and spirit meet. + +First there came _Pharais_ in 1893, and that was the beginning of much. +Then came _The Children of To-morrow_, the forerunner of Fiona Macleod. +It was his first prose expression of the subjective side of his nature, +together with the element of revolt against conventionalities, which was +always strongly characteristic of him. It introduced England to the +hidden places of the Green Life. + +The secret of his double personality was confided only to a few friends, +and was remarkably well kept. When pressed by adventurous questioners, +some of these allies gave answers which might have served for models in +the art of diplomacy. So Sharp wrote on, openly as William Sharp, and +secretly as Fiona Macleod. Letters had to reach Fiona somehow, and so it +was given out that she was his cousin, and that letters sent to him +would be safely passed on to her. If, however, it was difficult to keep +the secret from the public, it was still more difficult for one man to +maintain two distinct personalities. William Sharp of course had to +live, while Fiona might die any day. Her life entailed upon him another +burden, not of personification only, but of subject and research, and he +was driven to sore passes to keep both himself and her alive. For each +was truly alive and individual--two distinct people, one of whom thought +of the other as if she were "asleep in another room." Even the double +correspondence was a severe burden and strain, for Fiona Macleod had her +own large post-bag which had to be answered, just as William Sharp had +his. But far beyond any such outward expressions of themselves as these, +the difficulty of the double personality lay in deep springs of +character and of taste. Sharp's mind was keenly intellectual, observant, +and reasoning; while Fiona Macleod was the intuitional and spiritual +dreamer. She was indeed the expression of the womanly element in Sharp. +This element certainly dominated him, or rather perhaps he was one of +those who have successfully invaded the realm of alien sex. In his +earlier work, such as _The Lady of the Sea_,--"the woman who is in the +heart of woman,"--we have proof of this; for in that especially he so +"identified himself with woman's life, seeing it through her own eyes +that he seems to forget sometimes that he is not she." So much was this +the case that Fiona Macleod actually received at least one proposal of +marriage. It was answered quite kindly, Fiona replying that she had +other things to do, and could not think of it; but the little incident +shows how true the saying about Sharp was, that "he was always in love +with something or another." This loving and love-inspiring element in +him has been strongly challenged, and some of the women who have judged +him, have strenuously disowned him as an exponent of their sex. Yet the +fact is unquestionable that he was able to identify himself in a quite +extraordinary degree with what he took to be the feminine soul. + +It seems to have something to do with the Celtic genius. One can always +understand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one or +a Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case to +remember Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the +present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and +that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it +were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high +soprano, and Mr. Yeats in deep and most heart-searching contralto. + +The Fiona Macleod side of Sharp never throve well in London. Hers was +the fate of those who in this busy world have retained the faculty and +the need for dreaming. So Sharp had to get away from London--driven of +the spirit into the wilderness--that his other self might live and +breathe. One feels the power of this second self especially in certain +words that recur over and over again, until the reader is almost +hypnotised by their lilting, and finds himself in a kind of sleep. That +dreaming personality, with eyes half closed and poppy-decorated hair, +could never live in the bondage of the city cage. The spirit must get +free, and the longing for such freedom has been well called "a barbaric +passion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea." + +There are two ways of loving and understanding nature. Meredith speaks +of those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun. +The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of +the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must +always be doing something with nature--either hunting, or camping out, +or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. But +there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristic +of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet. The +test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn "and no' +think lang." Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed nothing to +interest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and its waters. +It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the grassy turf +and then scatter it to the east and west and north and south; or lie +down at night upon the ground that he might see the intricate patterns +of the moonlight, filtering through the branches of the trees. + +In all this, it is needless to say, Mr. Yeats offers a close parallel. +He understands so perfectly the wild life, that one knows at once that +it is in him, like a fire in his blood. Take this for instance-- + + "They found a man running there; + He had ragged long grass-coloured hair; + He had knees that stuck out of his hose; + He had puddle water in his shoes; + He had half a cloak to keep him dry, + Although he had a squirrel's eye." + +Such perfect observation is possible only to the detached spirit, which +is indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work. +In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and the +heart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the squirrel's +eye for nature. + +Fiona's favourite part of nature is the sea. That great and many-sided +wonder, whether with its glare of phosphorescence or the stillness of +its dead calm, fascinates the poems of Sharp and lends them its spell. +But of the prose of Fiona it may be truly said that everything + + "... doth suffer a sea-change, + Into something rich and strange." + +These marvellous lines were never more perfectly illustrated than here. +As we read we behold the sea, now crouching like a gigantic tiger, now +moaning with some Celtic consciousness of the grim and loathsome +treasures in its depths, ever haunted and ever haunting. It is probable +that Sharp never wrote anything that had not for his ear an undertone of +the ocean. Sitting in London in his room, he heard, on one occasion, the +sound of waves so loud that he could not hear his wife knocking at the +door. Similarly in Fiona Macleod's writing seas are always rocking and +swinging. Gulfs are opening to disclose the green dim mysteries of the +deeper depths. The wind is running riot with the surface overhead, and +the sea is lord in all its mad glory and wonder and fear. + +Mr. Yeats has the same characteristic, but again it is possible to draw +a fantastic distinction like that between the soprano and the alto. It +is lake water rather than the ocean that sounds the under-tone of Mr. +Yeats' poetry-- + + "I will arise and go now, for always night and day + I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; + While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey, + I hear it in the deep heart's core." + +The oldest sounds in the world, Mr. Yeats tells us are wind and water +and the curlew: and of the curlew he says-- + + "O curlew, cry no more in the air, + Or only to the waters of the West; + Because your crying brings to my mind + Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair + That was shaken out over my breast: + There is enough evil in the crying of wind." + +In all this you hear the crying of the wind and the swiftly borne scream +of the curlew on it, and you know that lake water will not be far away. +This magic power of bringing busy city people out of all their +surroundings into the green heart of the forest and the moorland, and +letting them hear the sound of water there, is common to them both. + +Fiona Macleod is a lover and worshipper of beauty. Long before her, the +Greeks had taught the world their secret, and the sweet spell had +penetrated many hearts beyond the pale of Greece. It was Augustine who +said, "Late I have loved thee, oh beauty, so old and yet so new, late I +have loved thee." And Marius the Epicurean, in Pater's fine phrase, "was +one who was made perfect by love of visible beauty." It is a direct +instinct, this bracing and yet intoxicating love of beauty for its own +sake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one of +the deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easily +distinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness I +ask, not lovely things," says Fiona; and it is but a step from this to +that abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the very +soul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours, +and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The pale +green of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still more +the remote and liquid colours of the sky, and the sad-toned or the gay +garments of the earth--these are more by far to those who know their +value than pigments, however delicate. They are either a sensuous +intoxication or else a mystic garment of the spirit. Seumas, the old +islander, looking seaward at sunrise, says, "Every morning like this I +take my hat off to the beauty of the world." And as we read we think of +Mr. Neil Munro's lord of Doom Castle walking uncovered in the night +before retiring to his rest, and with tears welling in his eyes +exclaiming that the mountains are his evening prayer. Such mystics as +these are in touch with far-off things. Sharp, indeed, was led +definitely to follow such leading into regions of spiritualism where not +many of his readers will be able or willing to follow him, but Fiona +Macleod left the mystery vague. It might easily have defined itself in +some sort of pantheistic theory of the universe, but it never did so. +"The green fire" is more than the sap which flows through the roots of +the trees. It is as Alfred de Musset has called it, the blood that +courses through the veins of God. As we realise the full force of that +imaginative phrase, the dark roots of trees instinct with life, and the +royal liquor rising to its foam of leaves, we have something very like +Fiona's mystic sense of nature. Any extreme moment of human experience +will give an interpretation of such symbolism--love or death or the mere +springtide of the year. + +It is not without significance that Sharp and Mr. Yeats and Mr. Symons +all dreamed on the same night the curious dream of a beautiful woman +shooting arrows among the stars. All the three had indeed the beautiful +woman in the heart of them, and in far-darting thoughts and imaginations +she was ever sending arrows among the stars. But Mr. Yeats is calmer and +less passionate than Fiona, as though he were crooning a low song all +the time, while the silent arrows flash from his bow. Sometimes, indeed, +he will blaze forth flaming with passion in showers of light of the +green fire. Yet from first to last, there is less of the green fire and +more of the poppies in Mr. Yeats and it is Fiona who shoots most +constantly and farthest among the stars. + +_Haunted_, that is the word for this world into which we have entered. +The house without its guests would be uninhabitable for such poets as +these. The atmosphere is everywhere that of a haunted earth where +strange terrors and beauties flit to and fro--phantoms of spectral lives +which seem to be looking on while we play out our bustling parts upon +the stage. They are separate from the body, these shadows, and belong to +some former life. They are an ancestral procession walking ever behind +us, and often they are changing the course of our visible adventures by +the power of sins and follies that were committed in the dim and +remotest past. Certainly the author is, as he says, "Aware of things and +living presences hidden from the rest." "The shadows are here." The +spirits of the dead and the never born are out and at large. These or +others like them were the folk that Abt Vogler encountered as he played +upon his instrument--"presences plain in the place." + +One of the most striking chapters in that very remarkable book of Mr. +Fielding Hall's, _The Soul of a People_, is that in which he describes +the nats, the little dainty spirits that haunt the trees of Burmah. But +it is not only the Eastern trees that are haunted, and Sharp is always +seeing tree-spirits, and nature-spirits of every kind, and talking with +them. Now and again he will give you a natural explanation of them, but +that always jars and sounds prosaic. In fact, we do not want it; we +prefer the "delicate throbbing things" themselves, to any facts you can +give us instead of them, for to those who have heard and seen beyond the +veil, they are far more real than any of your mere facts. Here we think +of Mr. Yeats again with his cry, "Come into the world again wild bees, +wild bees." But he hardly needed to cry upon them, for the wild bees +were buzzing in every page he wrote. + +A world haunted in this fashion has its sinister side, allied with the +decaying corpses deep in the earth. When passion has gone into the world +beyond that which eye hath seen and ear heard, it takes, in presence of +the thought of death, a double form. It is in love with death and yet it +hates death. So we come back to that singular sentence of Robert Louis +Stevenson's, "The beauty and the terror of the world," which so +adequately describes the double fascination of nature for man. Her spell +is both sweet and terrible, and we would not have it otherwise The +menace in summer's beauty, the frightful contrast between the laughing +earth and the waiting death, are all felt in the prolonged and deep +sense of gloom that broods over much of Fiona's work, and in the +second-sight which very weirdly breaks through from time to time, +forcing our entrance into the land from which we shrink. + +Mr. Yeats is not without the same sinister and moving undergloom, +although, on the whole, he is aware of kindlier powers and of a timid +affection between men and spirits. He actually addresses a remonstrance +to Scotsmen for having soured the disposition of their ghosts and +fairies, and his reconstructions of the ancient fairyland are certainly +full of lightsome and pleasing passages. Along either lane you may +arrive at peace, which is the monopoly neither of the Eastern nor of the +Western Celt, but it is a peace never free from a great wistfulness. + + "How many loved your moments of glad grace, + And loved your beauty with love false or true; + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, + And loved the sorrows of your changing face." + +That there is much paganism in all this must be obvious to any one who +has given any attention to the subject. The tale of _The Annir-Choille_ +confesses it frankly enough, where the young Christian prince is brought +back by the forest maiden from his new faith to the ancient pagan world. +Old gods are strewn everywhere upon the waysides down which Fiona leads +us, and there are many times when we cannot disentangle the spiritual +from the material, nor indeed the good from the evil influences. Dr. +John Brown used to tell the story of a shepherd boy near Biggar, who one +day was caught out on the hill in a thunder-storm. The boy could not +remember whether thunder-storms were sent by God or Satan, and so to be +quite safe, he kept alternately repeating the ejaculations, "Eh, guid +God," and "Eh, bonny deil." One often thinks of Fiona in connection with +that story. You are seldom quite sure whether it is a Christian or a +pagan deity whom you are invoking, but there is no question as to the +paganism of the atmosphere which you often breathe. + +As a matter of fact, William Sharp began in frank and avowed paganism, +and passed from that through various phases into a high spirituality. +His early utterances in regard to Art, in which he deprecated any +connection between Art and a message, and insisted upon its being mere +expression, were of course sheer paganism. In 1892, before Fiona was +born, he published one of those delightful magazines which run through a +short and daring career and then vanish as suddenly as they arose. In +fact his magazine, _The Pagan Review_, from first to last had only one +number. It was edited by Mr. Brooks and William Sharp, and its articles +were contributed by seven other people. But these seven, and Mr. Brooks +as well, turned out eventually all to be William Sharp himself. It was +"frankly pagan; pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan in +outlook.... The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us +personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign +power in the realm." He finished up with the interesting phrase, "Sic +transit gloria Grundi," and he quotes Gautier: "'Frankly I am in earnest +this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, +a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd. I shall have +a lamb washed to complete the pastoral....' This is the lamb." + +The magazine was an extraordinarily clever production, and the fact that +he was its author is significant. For to the end of her days Fiona was a +pagan still, albeit sometimes a more or less converted pagan. In _The +Annir-Choille_, _The Sin-Eater_, _The Washer of the Ford_, and the +others, you never get away from the ancient rites, and there is one +story which may be taken as typical of all the rest, _The Walker in the +Night_:-- + +"Often he had heard of her. When any man met this woman his fate +depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she +saw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange song, and he would +go to her; and when he was before her, two flames would come out of her +eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder, +and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she +would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and a +day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is let go a +furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadow +from glade to glade, or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a +wayside Calvary: but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almost +be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a +valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now and +again unhappy nightfarers--unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal +remain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken--would be +startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some such +terrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night had +taken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the last +day of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawk +scatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry." + +We have said that nature may be either an intoxication or a sacrament, +and paganism might be defined as the view of nature in the former of +these two lights. But where you have a growing spirituality like that of +William Sharp, you are constantly made aware of the hieratic or +sacramental quality in nature also. It is this which gives its peculiar +charm and spell to Celtic folklore in general. The Saxon song of Beowulf +is a rare song, and its story is the swinging tale of a "pagan gentleman +very much in the rough," but for the most part it is quite destitute of +spiritual significance. It may be doubted if this could be said truly of +any Celtic tale that was ever told. Fiona Macleod describes _The Three +Marvels_ as "studies in old religious Celtic sentiment, so far as that +can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and +simplicity in the early Christian faith"; and there is a constant sense +that however wild and even wicked the tale may be, yet it has its +Christian counterpart, and is in some true sense a strayed idealism. + +At this point we become aware of one clear distinction between William +Sharp and Fiona Macleod. To him, literature was a craft, laboured at +most honestly and enriched with an immense wealth both of knowledge and +of cleverness; but to her, literature was a revelation, with divine +inspirations behind it--inspirations authentically divine, no matter by +what name the God might be called. So it came to pass that _The Pagan +Review_ had only one number. That marked the transition moment, when +Fiona Macleod began to predominate over William Sharp, until finally she +controlled and radically changed him into her own likeness. He passes on +to the volume entitled _The Divine Adventure_, which interprets the +spirit of Columba. Nature and the spiritual meet in the psychic phase +into which Sharp passed, not only in the poetic and native sense, but in +a more literal sense than that. For the Green Life continually leads +those who are akin to it into opportunities of psychical research among +obscure and mysterious forces which are yet very potent. With a nature +like his it was inevitable that he should be eventually lured +irresistibly into the enchanted forest, where spirit is more and more +the one certainty of existence. + +For most of us there is another guide into the spirit land. In the +region of the spectral and occult many of us are puzzled and ill at +ease, but we all, in some degree, understand the meaning of ordinary +human love. Even the most commonplace nature has its magical hours now +and then, or at least has had them and has not forgotten; and it is love +that "leads us with a gentle hand into the silent land." This may form a +bond of union between Fiona Macleod and many who are mystified rather +than enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of the +phrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality which +has been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp who +chose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than we +conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." Fiona's work, +too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she has +perceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom and +brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full +that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which +is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and +yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in +all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us +all in His "Mighty Moulding Hand." + +The relation in which all this stands to Christianity is a very curious +question. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evident +enough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definite +Christian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossible +that one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such an +open-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done otherwise +than to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted against +Christianity and every other form and convention of civilised life, and +claimed a freedom far beyond any which he ever used. We read that in his +sixth year, when already he found the God of the pulpit remote and +forbidding, he was nevertheless conscious of a benign and beautiful +presence. On the shore of Loch Long he built a little altar of rough +stones beneath a swaying pine, and laid an offering of white flowers +upon it. In the college days he turned still more definitely against +orthodox Presbyterianism; but he retained all along, not only belief in +the central truths that underlie all religions, but great reverence and +affection for them. + +It is probable that towards the close he was approaching nearer to +formal Christianity than he knew. We are told that he "does not +reverence the Bible or Christian Theology in themselves, but for the +beautiful spirituality which faintly breathes through them like a vague +wind blowing through intricate forests." His quarrel with Christianity +was that it had never done justice to beauty, that it had a gloom upon +it, and an unlovely austerity. This indeed is a strange accusation from +so perfect an interpreter of the Celtic gloom as he was, and the retort +_tu quoque_ is obvious enough. There have indeed been phases of +Christianity which seemed to love and honour the ugly for its own sake, +yet there is a rarer beauty in the Man of Sorrows than in all the +smiling faces of the world. This is that hidden beauty of which the +saints and mystics tell us. They have seen it in the face more marred +than any man's, and their record is that he who would find a lasting +beauty that will satisfy his soul, must find it through pain conquered +and ugliness transformed and sorrow assuaged. The Christ Beautiful can +never be seen when you have stripped him of the Crown of Thorns, nor is +there any loveliness that has not been made perfect by tears. Thus +though there is truth in Sharp's complaint that Christianity has often +done sore injustice to beauty as such, yet it must be repeated that this +exponent of the Celtic heart somehow missed the element in Christianity +which was not only like, but actually identical with, his own deepest +truth. + +Sharp often reminds one of Heine, with his intensely human love of life, +both in its brightness and in its darkness. Where that love is so +intense as it was in these hearts, it is almost inevitable that it +should sometimes eclipse the sense of the divine. Thus Sharp tells us +that "Celtic paganism lies profound still beneath the fugitive drift of +Christianity and civilisation, as the deep sea beneath the coming and +going of the tides." He was indeed so aware of this underlying paganism, +that we find it blending with Christian ideas in practically the whole +of his work. Nothing could be quoted as a more distinctive note of his +genius than that blend. It is seen perhaps most clearly in such stories +as _The Last Supper_ and _The Fisher of Men_. In these tales of +unsurpassable power and beauty, Fiona Macleod has created the Gaelic +Christ. The Christ is the same as He of Galilee and of the Upper Room in +Jerusalem, and His work the same. But he talks the sweet Celtic +language, and not only talks it but _thinks_ in it also. He walks among +the rowan trees of the Shadowy Glen, while the quiet light flames upon +the grass, and the fierce people that lurk in shadow have eyes for the +helplessness of the little lad who sees too far. Such tales are full of +a strange light that seems to be, at one and the same time, the Celtic +glamour and the Light of the World. + +All the lovers of Mr. Yeats must have remembered many instances of the +same kind in his work. "And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, +purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this +dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no +expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, +and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies +of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go +forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longs +for, and have no fear." + +Mr. Yeats is continually identifying these apparently unrelated things; +and youth and peace, faith and beauty, are ever meeting in converging +lines in his work. No song of his has a livelier lilt than the _Fiddler +of Dooney_. + + "I passed my brother and cousin: + They read in their books of prayer; + I read in my book of songs + I bought at Sligo fair. + + When we come at the end of time, + To Peter sitting in state, + He will smile on the three old spirits, + But call me first through the gate. + + And when the folk there spy me, + They will all come up to me, + With, 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' + And dance like a wave of the sea." + +In a few final words we may try to estimate what all this amounts to in +the long battle between paganism and idealism. There is no question that +Fiona Macleod may be reasonably claimed by either side. Certainly it is +true of her work, that it is pure to the pure and dangerous to those who +take it wrongly. Meredith's great line was never truer than it is here, +"Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare." The effect upon the mind, +and the tendency in the life, will depend upon what one brings to the +reading of it. + +All this bringing back of the discarded gods has its glamour and its +risk. Such gods are excellent as curiosities, and may provide the +quaintest of studies in human nature. They give us priceless fragments +of partial and broken truth, and they exhibit cross-sections of the +evolution of thought in some of its most charming moments. Besides all +this, they are exceedingly valuable as providing us with that general +sense of religion, vague and illusive, which is deeper than all dogma. + +But, for the unwary, there is the double danger in all this region that +they shall, on the one hand, be tempted to worship the old gods; or +that, on the other hand, even in loving them without definite worship, +the old black magic may spring out upon them. As to the former +alternative, light minds will always prefer the wonderfully coloured but +more or less formless figure in a dream, to anything more definite and +commanding. They will cry, "Here is the great god"; and, intoxicated by +the mystery, will fall down to worship. But that which does not command +can never save, and for a guiding faith we need something more sure than +this. + +Moreover, there is the second alternative of the old black magic. A +discarded god is always an uncanny thing to take liberties with. While +the earth-spirit in all its grandeur may appeal to the jaded and +perplexed minds of to-day as a satisfying object of faith, the result +will probably be but a modern form of the ancient Baal-worship. It will +in some respects be a superior cult to its ancient prototype. Its +devotees will not cut themselves with knives. They will cut themselves +with sweet and bitter poignancies of laughter and tears, when the sun +shines upon wet forests in the green earth. This, too, is Baal-worship, +hardly distinguishable in essence from that cruder devotion to the +fructifying and terrifying powers of nature against which the prophets +of Israel made their war. In much that Fiona Macleod has written we feel +the spirit struggling like Samson against its bonds of green withes, +though by no means always able to break them as he did; or lying down in +an earth-bound stupor, content with the world that nature produces and +sustains. Here, among the elemental roots of things, when the heart is +satisfying itself with the passionate life of nature, the red flower +grows in the green life, and the imperative of passion becomes the final +law. + +On the other hand, a child of nature may remember that he is also a +child of the spirit; and, even in the Vale Perilous, the spirit may be +an instinctive and faithful guide. Because we love the woods we need not +worship the sacred mistletoe. Because we listen to the sea we need not +reject greater and more intelligible voices of the Word of Life. And the +mention of the sea, and the memory of all that it has meant in Fiona +Macleod's writing, reminds us strangely of that old text, "Born of water +and of the Spirit." While man lives upon the sea-girt earth, the voices +of the ocean, that seem to come from the depths of its green heart, will +always call to him, reminding him of the mysterious powers and the +terrible beauties among which his life is cradled. Yet there are deeper +secrets which the spirit of man may learn--secrets that will still be +told when the day of earth is over, when the sea has ceased from her +swinging, and the earth-spirit has fled for ever. It is well that a man +should remember this, and remain a spiritual man in spite of every form +of seductive paganism. + +Sharp has said in his _Green Fire_:-- + +"There are three races of man. There is the myriad race which loses all, +through (not bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane) +perverted animalism; and there is the myriad race which denounces +humanity, and pins all its faith and joy to a life the very conditions +of whose existence are incompatible with the law to which we are +subject; the sole law, the law of nature. Then there is that small +untoward class which knows the divine call of the spirit through the +brain, and the secret whisper of the soul in the heart, and for ever +perceives the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our human +horizons: which hears and sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to the +life of the green earth, of which we are part, to the common kindred of +living things, with which we are at one--is content, in a word, to live, +because of the dream that makes living so mysteriously sweet and +poignant; and to dream, because of the commanding immediacy of life." + +There are indeed the three races. There is the pagan, which knows only +the fleshly aspect of life, and seeks nothing beyond it. There is the +spiritual, which ignores and seeks to flee from that to which its body +chains it. There is also that wise race who know that all things are +theirs, flesh and spirit both, and who have learned how to reap the +harvests both of time and of eternity. + + + + +LECTURE V + +JOHN BUNYAN + + +We have seen the eternal battle in its earlier phases surging to and fro +between gods of the earth that are as old as Time, and daring thoughts +of men that rose beyond them and claimed a higher inheritance. Between +that phase of the warfare and the same battle as it is fought to-day, we +shall look at two contemporary men in the latter part of the seventeenth +century who may justly be taken as examples of the opposing types. John +Bunyan and Samuel Pepys, however, will lead us no dance among the +elemental forces of the world. They will rather show us, with very +fascinating _naïveté_, true pictures of their own aspirations, nourished +in the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in the +other, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete and +systematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy to +exaggerate their simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how John +Bunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which he +lived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with that +world. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon the +spiritual region, but he seems to have closed them all, and become +increasingly a simple devotee of things seen and temporal. + +Bunyan comes upon us full grown and mature in the work by which he is +best known and remembered. His originality is one of the standing +wonders of history. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ was written at a time when +every man had to take sides in a savage and atrocious ecclesiastical +controversy. The absolute judgments passed on either side by the other, +the cruelties practised and the dangers run, were such as to lead the +reader to expect extreme bitterness and sectarian violence in every +religious writing of the time. Bunyan was known to his contemporaries as +a religious writer, pure and simple, and a man whose convictions had +caused him much suffering at the hands of his enemies. Most of the first +readers of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ had no thought of any connection +between that book and worldly literature; and the pious people who shook +their heads over his allegory as being rather too interesting for a +treatise on such high themes as those which it handled, might perhaps +have shaken their heads still more solemnly had they known how much of +what they called the world was actually behind it. Bunyan was a +voluminous writer of theological works, and the complete edition of them +fills three enormous volumes, closely printed in double column. But it +is the little allegory embedded in one of these volumes which has made +his fame eternal, and for the most part the rest are remembered now only +in so far as they throw light upon that story. One exception must be +made in favour of _Grace Abounding_. This is Bunyan's autobiography, in +which he describes, without allegory, the course of his spiritual +experience. For an understanding of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ it is +absolutely necessary to know that companion volume. + +It is very curious to watch the course of criticism as it was directed +to him and to his story. The eighteenth century had lost the keenness of +former controversies, and from its classic balcony it looked down upon +what seemed to it the somewhat sordid arena of the past. _The Examiner_ +complains that he never yet knew an author that had not his admirers. +Bunyan and Quarles have passed through several editions and pleased as +many readers as Dryden and Tillotson. Even Cowper, timidly appreciative +and patronising, wrote of the "ingenious dreamer"-- + + "I name thee not, lest so despised a name + Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame," + +--lines which have a pathetic irony in them, as we contrast the anxious +Cowper, with the occasional revivals of interest and the age-long tone +of patronage which have been meted out to him, with the robust and +sturdy immortality of the man he shrank from naming. Swift discovered +Bunyan's literary power, and later Johnson and Southey did him justice. +In the nineteenth century his place was secured for ever, and Macaulay's +essay on him will probably retain its interest longer than anything else +that Macaulay wrote. + +We are apt to think of him as a mere dreamer, spinning his cobwebs of +imagination wholly out of his own substance--a pure idealist, whose +writing dwells among his ideals in a region ignorant of the earth. In +one of his own apologies he tells us, apparently in answer to +accusations that had been made against him, that he did not take his +work from anybody, but that it came from himself alone. Doubtless that +is true so far as the real originality of his work is concerned, its +general conception, and the working out of its details point by point. +Yet, to imagine that if there had been no other English literature the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ would have been exactly what it is, is simply to +ignore the facts of the case. John Bunyan is far more interesting just +because his work is part of English literature, because it did feel the +influences of his own time and of the past, than it could ever have been +as the mere monstrosity of detachment which it has been supposed to be. +The idealist who merely dreams and takes no part in the battle, refusing +to know or utilise the writing of any other man, can be no fair judge of +the life which he criticises, and no reliable guide among its facts. + +Bunyan might very easily indeed have been a pagan of the most worldly +type. It was extremely difficult for him to be a Puritan, not only on +account of outward troubles, but also of inward ones belonging to his +own disposition and experience. Accepting Puritanism, the easiest course +for him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that course +he would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far more +difficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to the +beauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what men +were writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard in +early days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding in +his ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant to +say, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecution +were raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writing +shows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of the +soul of man and the life of God, but the way in which he tells these +things shows innumerable signs of the bright world of English books. + +It is worth while to consider this large and human Bunyan, who has been +very erroneously supposed to be a mere literary freak, detached from all +such influences as go to the making of other writers. He tells us, +indeed, that "when I pulled it came," and that is delightfully true. +Yet, it came not out of nowhere, and it is our part in this essay to +inquire as to the places from which it did come. As we have said, it +came out of two worlds, and the web is most wonderfully woven and +coloured, but our present concern is rather with the earthly part of it +than the heavenly. + +No one can read John Bunyan without thinking of George Herbert. Few of +the short biographies in our language are more interesting reading than +Isaac Walton's life of Herbert. That master of simplicity is always +fascinating, and in this biography he gives us one of the most beautiful +sketches of contemporary narrative that has ever been penned. Herbert +was the quaintest of the saints. He lived in the days of Charles the +First and James the First, a High Churchman who had Laud for his friend. +Shy, sensitive, high-bred, shrinking from the world, he was at the same +time a man of business, skilful in the management of affairs, and yet a +man of morbid delicacy of imagination. The picture of his life at Little +Gidding, where he and Mr. Farrer instituted a kind of hermitage, or +private chapel of devotion, in which the whole of the Psalms were read +through once in every twenty-four hours, grows peculiarly pathetic when +we remember that the house and chapel were sacked by the parliamentary +army, in which for a time John Bunyan served. No two points of view, it +would seem, could be more widely contrasted than those of Bunyan and +Herbert, and yet the points of agreement are far more important than the +differences between them, and _The Temple_ has so much in common with +the _Pilgrim's Progress_ that one is astonished to find that the +likenesses seem to be entirely unconscious. Matthew Henry is perpetually +quoting _The Temple_ in his Commentary. Writing only a few years +earlier, Bunyan reproduces in his own fashion many of its thoughts, but +does not mention its existence. + +In order to know Bunyan's early life, and indeed to understand the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ at all adequately, one must read _Grace Abounding_. +It is a short book, written in the years when he was already growing +old, for those whom he had brought into the fold of religion. From this +autobiography it has usually been supposed that he had led a life of the +wildest debauchery before his Christian days; but the more one examines +the book, and indeed all his books, the less is one inclined to believe +in any such desperate estimate of the sins of his youth. The measure of +sin is the sensitiveness of a man's conscience; and where, as in +Bunyan's case, the conscience is abnormally delicate and subject to +violent reactions, a life which in another man would be a pattern of +innocence and respectability may be regarded as an altogether +blackguardly and vicious one. It was, however evidently a life of strong +and intense worldly interest stepping over the line here and there into +positive wrong-doing, but for the most part blameworthy mainly on +account of its absorption in the passing shows of the hour. + +What then was that world which interested Bunyan so intensely, and cost +him so many pangs of conscience? No doubt it was just the life of the +road as he travelled about his business; for though by no means a tinker +in the modern sense of the word, he was an itinerant brazier, whose +business took him constantly to and fro among the many villages of the +district of Bedford. He must have heard in inns and from wayside +companions many a catch of plays and songs, and listened to many a +lively story, or read it in the chap-books which were hawked about the +country then. It must also be remembered that these were the days of +puppet shows. The English drama, as we have already mentioned in +connection with _Faust_, was by no means confined to the boards of +actual theatres where living actors played the parts. Little mimic +stages travelled about the country in all directions reproducing the +plays, very much after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even the +solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There +is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at +these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature +at second hand. + +As to how much of it he had actually read, that is a different question. +One is tempted to believe that he must have read George Herbert, but of +this there is no positive proof. We are quite certain about five books, +for which we have his own express statements. His wife brought him as +her dowry the very modest furniture of two small volumes, Baily's +_Practice of Piety_ and Dent's _The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven_. The +first is a very complicated and elaborate statement of Christian dogma, +which Bunyan passes by with the scant praise, "Wherein I also found some +things that were somewhat pleasing to me." The other is a much more +vital production. Even to this day it is an immensely interesting piece +of reading. It consists of conversations between various men who stand +for types of worldling, ignoramus, theologian, etc., and there are very +clear traces of it in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, especially in the talks +between Bunyan's pilgrims and the man Ignorance. + +Another book which played a large part in Bunyan's life was the short +biography of Francis Spira, an Italian, who had died shortly before +Bunyan's time. Spira had been a Protestant lawyer in Italy, but had +found it expedient to abate the open profession of Protestantism with +which he began, and eventually to transfer his allegiance to the Roman +Church. The biography is for the most part an account of his death-bed +conversation, which lasted a long time, since his illness was even more +of the mind than of the body. It is an extremely ghastly account of a +morbid and insane melancholia. It was the fashion of the time to take +such matters spiritually rather than physically, and we read that many +persons went to his death-bed and listened to his miserable cries and +groanings in the hope of gaining edification for their souls. How the +book came into Bunyan's hands no one can tell, but evidently he had +found it in English translation, and many of the darkest parts of _Grace +Abounding_ are directly due to it, while the Man in the Iron Cage quotes +the very words of Spira. + +Another book which Bunyan had read was Luther's _Commentary on the +Galatians_. The present writer possesses a copy of that volume dated +1786, at the close of which there are fourteen pages, on which long +lists of names are printed. The names are those of weavers, +shoe-makers, and all sorts of tradesmen in the western Scottish towns +of Kilmarnock, Paisley, and others of that neighbourhood, who had +subscribed for a translation of the commentary that they might read it +in their own tongue. This curious fact reminds us that the book had +among the pious people of our country an audience almost as enthusiastic +as Bunyan himself was. Another of his books, and the only one quoted by +name in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Grace Abounding_, with the +exception of Luther on Galatians, is Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, traces of +which are unmistakable in such incidents as the trial and death of +Faithful and in other parts. + +In these few volumes may be summed up the entire literary knowledge +which Bunyan is known to have possessed. He stands apart from mere +book-learning, and deals with life rather through his eyes and ears +directly than through the medium of books. But then those eyes and ears +of his were no ordinary organs; and his imagination, whose servants they +were, was quick to enlist every vital and suggestive image and idea for +its own uses. Thus the rich store of observation which he had already +laid up through the medium of puppet plays, fragments of song and +popular story, was all at his disposal when he came to need it. Further, +even in his regenerate days, there was no dimming of the imaginative +faculty nor of the observant. The whole neighbourhood in which he lived +was an open book, in which he read the wonderful story of life in many +tragic and comic tales of actual fact; and in the prison where he spent +twelve years, he must often have heard from his fellow-prisoners such +fragments as they knew and remembered, with which doubtless they would +beguile the tedium of their confinement. That would be for the most part +in the first and second imprisonments, extending from the years 1660 to +1672. The third imprisonment was a short affair of only some nine +months, spent in the little prison upon the bridge of Bedford, where +there would be room for very few companions. The modern bridge crosses +the river at almost exactly the same spot; and if you look over the +parapet you may see, when the river is low, traces of what seem to be +the foundations of the old prison bridge. + +When we would try to estimate the processes by which the great allegory +was built up, the first fact that strikes us is its extreme aloofness +from current events which must have been very familiar to him. In others +of his works he tells many stories of actual life, but these are of a +private and more or less gossiping nature, many of them fantastic and +grotesque, such as those appalling tales of swearers, drunkards, and +other specially notorious sinners being snatched away by the +devil--narratives which bear the marks of crude popular imagination in +details like the actual smell of sulphur left behind. In the whole +_Pilgrim's Progress_ there is no reference whatever to the Civil War, in +which we know that Bunyan had fought, although there are certain parts +of it which were probably suggested by events of that campaign. The +allegory is equally silent concerning the Great Fire and the Great +Plague of London, which were both fresh in the memory of every living +man. The only phrase which might have been suggested by the Fire, is +that in which the Pilgrim says, "I hear that our little city is to be +destroyed by fire"--a phrase which obviously has much more direct +connection with the destruction of Sodom than with that of London. The +only suggestions of those disastrous latter years of the reign of +Charles the Second, are some doubtful allusions to the rise and fall of +persecution, few of which can be clearly identified with any particular +events. + +There are several interesting indications that Bunyan made use of recent +and contemporary secular literature. The demonology of the _Pilgrim's +Progress_ is quite different from that of the _Holy War_. It used to be +suggested that Bunyan had altered his views in consequence of the +publication of Milton's _Paradise Regained_, which appeared in 1671. +That was when it was generally supposed that he had written the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ in his earlier imprisonment. If, as is now +conceded, it was in the later imprisonment that he wrote the book, this +theory loses much of its plausibility, for Milton published his +_Paradise Regained_ before the first edition of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ +was penned. It is, of course, always possible that between the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Holy War_ Bunyan may have seen Milton's +work, or may have been told about it, for he certainly changed his +demonology and made it more like Milton's. Again, there are certain +passages in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ which bear so close a resemblance +to Bunyan's description of the Celestial City, that it is difficult not +to suppose that either directly or indirectly that poem had influenced +Bunyan's creation; while in at least one of his songs he approaches so +near both the language and the rhythm of a song of Shakespeare's as to +make it very probable that he had heard it sung.[2] + +These suppositions are not meant in any way to detract from the +originality of the great allegory, but rather to link the writer in with +that English literature of which he is so conspicuous an ornament. They +are no more significant and no less, than the fact that so much of the +geography of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ seems not to have been created by +his imagination, but to have been built up from well-remembered +landscapes. From his prison window he could not but see the ruins of old +Bedford Castle, which stood demolished upon its hill even in his time. +This, together with Cainhoe Castle, only a few miles away, may well have +suggested the Castle of Despair in Bypath Meadow near the River of God. +Again, memories of Elstow play a notable part in the story. A cross +stood there, at the foot of which, when he was playing the game of cat +upon a certain Sunday, the voice came to his soul with its tremendous +question, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins +and go to hell?" There stood the Moot Hall as it stands to-day, in +which, during his worldly days, he had danced with the rest of the +villagers and gained his personal knowledge of Vanity Fair. There, as he +tells us expressly, is the wicket gate, the rough old oak and iron gate +of Elstow parish church. Close beside it, just as you read in the story, +stands that great tower which suggested a devil's castle beside the +wicket gate, whence Satan showered his arrows on those who knocked +below. Not only so, but there was a special reason why for Bunyan that +ancient church tower may well have been symbolic of the stronghold of +the devil; for it had bells in it, and he was so fond of bell-ringing +that it got upon his conscience and became his darling sin. It is easy +to make light of his heart-searchings about so innocent an employment, +but doubtless there were other things that went along with it. We have +all seen those large drinking-vessels, known as bell-ringers' jugs; and +these perhaps may suggest an explanation of the sense of sin which +burdened his conscience so heavily. Anyhow, there the tower stands, and +in the Gothic doorway of it there are one or two deeply cut grooves, +obviously made by the ropes of the bell-ringers when, instead of +standing below their ropes, they preferred the open air, and drew the +ropes through the archway of the door, so as to cut into its moulding. +The little fact gains much significance in the light of Bunyan's own +confession that he was so afraid that the bell would fall upon him and +kill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the door +to ring it. Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, long +before Bunyan's time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as +"the ladies of Elstow." Very aristocratic and very human ladies they +seem to have been, given to the entertainment of their friends in the +intervals of their tasteful devotion, and occasionally needing a rebuke +from headquarters. Yet it seems not improbable that there is some +glorified memory of those ladies in the inhabitants of the House +Beautiful, which house itself appears to have been modelled upon +Houghton House on the Ampthill heights, built by Sir Philip Sidney's +sister but a century before. The silver mine of Demas might seem to have +come from some far-off source in chap-book or romance, until we remember +that at the village of Pulloxhill, which had been the original home of +the Bunyan family, and near which Bunyan was arrested and brought for +examination to the house of Justice Wingate, there are the actual +remains of an ancient gold mine whose tradition still lingers among the +villagers. + +All these things seem to indicate that the great allegory is by no means +so remote from the earth as has sometimes been imagined; and perhaps the +most touching commentary upon this statement is the curious and very +unlovely burying-ground in Bunhill fields, cut through by a straight +path that leads from one busy thoroughfare to another. A few yards to +the left of that path is the tomb and monument of John Bunyan, while at +an equal distance to the right lies Daniel Defoe. The _Pilgrim's +Progress_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ are perhaps the two best-known stories +in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they +seem. + +Nor was it only in the outward material with which he worked that John +Bunyan had much in common with the romance and poetry of England. He +could indeed write verses which, for sheer doggerel, it would be +difficult to match, but in spite of that there was the authentic note of +poetry in him. Some of his work is not only vigorous, inspiring, and +full of the brisk sense of action, but has an unconscious strength and +worthiness of style, whose compression and terseness have fulfilled at +least one of the canons of high literature. Take, for example, the lines +on Faithful's death-- + + "Now Faithful, play the man, speak for thy God: + Fear not the wicked's malice, nor their rod: + Speak boldly, man, the truth is on thy side; + Die for it, and to life in triumph ride." + +Or take this as a second example, from his _Prison Meditations_-- + + "Here come the angels, here come saints, + Here comes the Spirit of God, + To comfort us in our restraints + Under the wicked's rod. + + This gaol to us is as a hill, + From whence we plainly see + Beyond this world, and take our fill + Of things that lasting be. + + We change our drossy dust for gold, + From death to life we fly: + We let go shadows, and take hold + Of immortality." + +This whole poem has in it not merely the bright march of a very vigorous +mind, but also a great many of the elements which long before had built +up the ancient romances. In it, and in much else that he wrote, he finds +a congenial escape from the mere middle-class respectability of his +time, and ranges himself with the splendid chivalry both of the past and +of the present. There is an elfin element in him as there was in +Chaucer, which now and again twinkles forth in a quaint touch of humour, +or escapes from the merely spiritual into an extremely interesting human +region. + +In _Grace Abounding_ he very pleasantly tells us that he could have +written in a much higher style if he had chosen to do so, but that for +our sakes he has refrained. He does, however, sometimes "step into" his +finer style. There is some exquisite pre-Raphaelite work that comes +unexpectedly upon the reader, in which he is not only a poet, but a +writer capable of seeing and of describing the most highly coloured and +minute detail: "Besides, on the banks of this river on either side were +green trees, that bore all manner of fruit...." "On either side of the +river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it was +green the year long." At other times he affrights us with a sudden +outburst of the most terrifying imagination, as in the close of the poem +of _The Fly at the Candle_-- + + "At last the Gospel doth become their snare, + Doth them with burning hands in pieces tear." + +His imagination was sometimes as quaint and sweet as at other times it +could be lurid and powerful. _Upon a Snail_ is not a very promising +subject for a poem, but its first lines justify the experiment-- + + "She goes but softly, but she goeth sure; + She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do." + +He can adopt the methods of the stately poets of nature, and break into +splendid descriptions of natural phenomena-- + + "Look, look, brave Sol doth peep up from beneath, + Shews us his golden face, doth on us breathe; + Yea, he doth compass us around with glories, + Whilst he ascends up to his highest stories, + Where he his banner over us displays, + And gives us light to see our works and ways." + +Again in the art of childlike interest and simplicity he can write such +lines as these-- + + OF THE CHILD WITH THE BIRD ON THE BUSH + + "My little bird, how canst thou sit + And sing amidst so many thorns? + Let me but hold upon thee get, + My love with honour thee adorns. + + 'Tis true it is sunshine to-day, + To-morrow birds will have a storm; + My pretty one, come thou away, + My bosom then shall keep thee warm. + + My father's palace shall be thine, + Yea, in it thou shalt sit and sing; + My little bird, if thou'lt be mine, + The whole year round shall be thy spring. + + I'll keep thee safe from cat and cur, + No manner o' harm shall come to thee: + Yea, I will be thy succourer, + My bosom shall thy cabin be." + +The last line might have been written by Ben Jonson, and the description +of sunrise in the former poem might almost have been from Chaucer's pen. + +Yet the finest poetry of all is the prose allegory of the _Pilgrim's +Progress_. English prose had taken many centuries to form, in the +moulding hands of Chaucer, Malory, and Bacon. It had come at last to +Bunyan with all its flexibility and force ready to his hand. He wrote +with virgin purity, utterly free from mannerisms and affectations; and, +without knowing himself for a writer of fine English, produced it. + +The material of the allegory also is supplied from ancient sources. One +curious paragraph in Bunyan's treatise entitled _Sighs from Hell_, gives +us a broad hint of this. "The Scriptures, thought I then, what are they? +A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings price. +Alack! what is Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, _George on +Horseback_ or _Bevis of Southampton_. Give me some book that teaches +curious Arts, that tells old Fables." In _The Plain Man's Pathway to +Heaven_ there is a longer list of such romances as these, including +_Ellen of Rummin_, and many others. As has been already stated, these +tales of ancient folklore would come into his hands either by recitation +or in the form of chap-books. The chap-book literature of Old England +was most voluminous and interesting. It consisted of romances and songs, +sold at country fairs and elsewhere, and the passing reference which we +have quoted proves conclusively, what we might have known without any +proof, that Bunyan knew them. + +_George on Horseback_ has been identified by Professor Firth with the +_Seven Champions of England_, an extremely artificial romance, which may +be taken as typical of hundreds more of its kind. The 1610 edition of it +is a very lively book with a good deal of playing to the gallery, such +as this: "As for the name of Queen, I account it a vain title; for I had +rather be an English lady than the greatest empress in the world." There +is not very much in this romance which Bunyan has appropriated, although +there are several interesting correspondences. It is very courtly and +conventional. The narrative is broken here and there by lyrics, quite in +Bunyan's manner, but it is difficult to imagine Bunyan, with his direct +and simple taste, spending much time in reading such sentences as the +following: "By the time the purple-spotted morning had parted with her +grey, and the sun's bright countenance appeared on the mountain-tops, +St. George had rode twenty miles from the Persian Court." On the other +hand, when Great-Heart allows Giant Despair to rise after his fall, +showing his chivalry in refusing to take advantage of the fallen giant, +we remember the incident of Sir Guy and Colebrand in the _Seven +Champions_. + + "Good sir, an' it be thy will, + Give me leave to drink my fill, + For sweet St. Charity, + And I will do thee the same deed + Another time if thou have need, + I tell thee certainly." + +St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, +traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears "dismal croakings of night +ravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring of +monsters."[3] St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, the +Vale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as the +pilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan's story traverse the Enchanted +Ground. And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land, +tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David was +tempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when his +eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned +in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself +from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament." + +_Bevis of Southampton_ has many points in common with St. George in the +_Seven Champions_. The description of the giant, the escape of Bevis +from his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much was +common stock for the writers of these earlier romances. There is the +same rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing and +stride of vigorous rhyming metre. Of the humour, one quotation will be +enough for an example. It is when they are proposing to baptize the +monstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and then +engaged as his body-servant. At the christening of Josian, wife of +Bevis, the Bishop sees the giant. + + "'What is,' sayde he, 'this bad vysage?' + 'Sir,' sayde Bevys, 'he is my page-- + I pray you crysten hym also, + Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!' + The Bysshop crystened Josian, + That was as white as any swan; + For Ascaparde was made a tonne, + And whan he shulde therein be done, + He lept out upon the brenche + And sayde: 'Churle, wylt thou me drenche? + The devyl of hel mot fetche the + I am to moche crystened to be!' + The folke had gode game and laughe, + But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe." + +There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to the +account of the fight with Apollyon in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and +which was doubtless in Bunyan's mind when he wrote that admirable battle +sketch-- + + "Beves is swerde anon upswapte, + He and the geaunt togedre rapte; + And delde strokes mani and fale, + The nombre can i nought telle in tale. + The geaunt up is clubbe haf, + And smot to Beves with is staf, + But his scheld flegh from him thore, + Three acres brede and somedel more, + Tho was Beves in strong erur + And karf ato the grete levour, + And on the geauntes brest a-wonde + That negh a-felde him to the grounde. + The geaunt thoughte this bataile hard, + Anon he drough to him a dart, + Throgh Beves scholder he hit schet, + The blold ran doun to Beves' fet, + The Beves segh is owene blod + Out of his wit he wex negh wod, + Unto the geaunt ful swithe he ran, + And kedde that he was doughti man, + And smot ato his nekke bon; + The geant fel to grounde anon." + +It is part of his general sympathy with the spirit of the romances that +Bunyan's giants were always real giants to him, and he evidently enjoyed +them for their own sake as literary and imaginative creations, as well +as for the sake of any truths which they might be made to enforce. +Despair and Slay-Good are distinct to his imagination. His interest +remains always twofold. On the one hand there is allegory, and on the +other hand there is live tale. Sometimes the allegory breaks through and +confuses the tale a little, as when Mercy begs for the great mirror that +hangs in the dining-room of the shepherds, and carries it with her +through the remainder of her journey. Sometimes the allegory has to stop +in order that a sermon may be preached on some particular point of +theology, and such sermons are by no means short. Still the story is so +true to life that its irresistible simplicity and naturalness carry it +on and make it immortal. When we read such a conversation as that +between old Honest and Mr. Standfast about Madam Bubble, we feel that +the tale has ceased to be an allegory altogether and has become a novel. +This is perhaps more noticeable in the Second Part than in the First. +The First Part is indeed almost a perfect allegory; although even there, +from time to time, the earnestness and rush of the writer's spirit +oversteps the bounds of consistency and happily forgets the moral +because the story is so interesting, or forgets for a moment the story +because the moral is so important. In the Second Part the two characters +fall apart more definitely. Now you have delightful pieces of crude +human nature, naïve and sparkling. Then you have long and intricate +theological treatises. Neither the allegorical nor the narrative unity +is preserved to anything like the same extent as on the whole is the +case in Part I. The shrewd and humorous touches of human nature are +especially interesting. Bunyan was by no means the gentle saint who +shrank from strong language. When the gate of Doubting Castle is +opening, and at last the pilgrims have all but gone free, we read that +"the lock went damnable hard." When Great-Heart is delighted with Mr. +Honest, he calls him "a cock of the right kind." The poem _On Christian +Behaviour_, which we have quoted, contains the lines-- + + "When all men's cards are fully played, + Whose will abide the light?" + +These are quaint instances of the way in which even the questionable +parts of the unregenerate life of the dreamer came in the end to serve +the uses of his religion. + +There are many gems in the Second Part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ which +are full of mother-wit and sly fun. Mr. Honest confesses, "I came from +the town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of +Destruction." Then there is Mr. Fearing, that morbidly self-conscious +creature, who is so much at home in the Valley of Humiliation that he +kneels down and kisses the flowers in its grass. He is a man who can +never get rid of himself for a moment, and who bores all the company +with his illimitable and anxious introspection. Yet, in Vanity Fair, +when practical facts have to be faced instead of morbid fancies and +inflamed conscience, he is the most valiant of men, whom they can hardly +keep from getting himself killed, and for that matter all the rest of +them. Here, again, is an inimitable flash of insight, where Simple, +Sloth, and Presumption have prevailed with "one Short-Wind, one +Sleepy-Head, and with a young woman, her name was Dull, to turn out of +the way and become as they." + +Every now and then these natural touches of portraiture rise to a true +sublimity, as all writing that is absolutely true to the facts of human +nature tends to do. Great-Heart says to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, "Let me +see thy sword," and when he has taken it in his hand and looked at it +for awhile, he adds, "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade." That sword +lingers in Bunyan's imagination, for, at the close of Valiant's life, +part of his dying speech is this "My sword I give to him that shall +succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can +get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that +I have fought His battles." + +Bunyan is so evidently an idealist and a prince of spiritual men, that +no one needs to point out this characteristic of the great dreamer, nor +to advertise so obvious a thing as his spiritual idealism. We have +accordingly taken that for granted and left it to the reader to +recognise in every page for himself. We have sought in this to show what +has sometimes been overlooked, how very human the man and his work are. +Yet his humanism is ever at the service of the spirit, enlivening his +book and inspiring it with a perpetual and delicious interest, but never +for a moment entangling him again in the old yoke of bondage, from which +at his conversion he had been set free. For the human as opposed to the +divine, the fleshly as the rival of the spiritual, he has an open and +profound contempt, which he expresses in no measured terms in such +passages as that concerning Adam the First and Madam Wanton. These are +for him sheer pagans. At the cave, indeed, which his pilgrim visits at +the farther end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we read that Pope +and Pagan dwelt there in old time, but that Pagan has been dead many a +day. Yet the pagan spirit lives on in many forms, and finds an abiding +place and home in Vanity Fair. As Professor Firth has pointed out, Ben +Jonson, in his play _Bartholomew Fair_, had already told the adventures +of two Puritans who strayed into the Fair, and who regarded the whole +affair as the shop of Satan. There were many other Fairs, such as that +of Sturbridge, and the Elstow Fair itself, which was instituted by the +nuns on the ground close to their convent, and which is held yearly to +the present day. Such Fairs as these have been a source of much +temptation and danger to the neighbourhood, and represent in its popular +form the whole spirit of paganism at its worst. + +All the various elements of Bunyan's world live on in the England of +to-day. Thackeray, with a stroke of characteristic genius, has expanded +and applied the earlier conception of paganism in his great novel whose +title _Vanity Fair_ is borrowed from Bunyan. But the main impression of +the allegory is the victory of the spiritual at its weakest over the +temporal at its mightiest. His descriptions of the supper and bed +chamber in the House Beautiful, and of the death of Christiana at the +end of the Second Part, are immortal writings, in the most literal +sense, amid the shows of time. They have indeed laid hold of immortality +not for themselves only, but for the souls of men. Nothing could sum up +the whole story of Bunyan better than the legend of his flute told by +Mr. S.S. M'Currey in his book of poems entitled _In Keswick Vale_. The +story is that in his prison Bunyan took out a bar from one of the chairs +in his cell, scooped it hollow, and converted it into a flute, upon +which he played sweet music in the dark and solitary hours of the prison +evening. The jailers never could find out the source of that music, for +when they came to search his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, +and there was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when the +jailers departed the music would mysteriously recommence. It is very +unlikely that this legend is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyan +was a musician at all (although we do have from his pen one touching and +beautiful reference to the finest music in the world being founded upon +the bass), but, like his own greater work, the little legend is an +allegory. The world for centuries has heard sweet music from Bunyan, and +has not known whence it came. It has seemed to most men a miracle, and +indeed they were right in counting it so. Yet there was a flute from +which that music issued, and the flute was part of the rough furniture +of his imprisoned world. He was no scholar, nor delicate man of _belles +lettres_, like so many of his contemporaries. He took what came to his +hand; and in this lecture we have tried to show how much did come thus +to his hand that was rare and serviceable for the purposes of his +spirit, and for the expression of high spiritual truth. + + + + +LECTURE VI + +PEPYS' DIARY + + +It is doubtful whether any of Bunyan's contemporaries had so strong a +human interest attaching to his person and his work as Samuel Pepys. +There is indeed something in common to the two men,--little or nothing +of character, but a certain _naïveté_ and sincerity of writing, which +makes them remind one of each other many times. All the more because of +this does the contrast between the spirit of the two force itself upon +every reader; and if we should desire to find a typical pagan to match +Bunyan's spirituality and idealism, it would be difficult to go past +Samuel Pepys. + +There were, as everybody knows, two famous diarists of the Restoration +period, Pepys and Evelyn. It is interesting to look at the portraits of +the two men side by side. Evelyn's face is anxious and austere, +suggesting the sort of stuff of which soldiers or saints are made. Pepys +is a voluptuous figure, in the style of Charles the Second, with regular +and handsome features below his splendid wig, and eyes that are both +keen and heavy, penetrating and luxurious. These two men (who, in the +course of their work, had to compare notes on several occasions, and +between whom we have the record of more than one meeting) were among the +most famous gossips of the world. But Evelyn's gossip is a succession of +solemnities compared with the racy scandal, the infantile and insatiable +curiosity, and the incredible frankness of the pagan diarist. + +Look at his face again, and you will find it impossible not to feel a +certain amount of surprise. Of all the unlikely faces with which history +has astonished the readers of books, there are none more surprising than +those of three contemporaries in the later seventeenth century. +Claverhouse, with his powerful character and indomitable will, with his +Titanic daring and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularly +beautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was only +equalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his +picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose +large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and +very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a +miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently +unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of mean +and vulgar predicament. + +Since the deciphering and publication of his Diary, a great deal has +been written concerning it. The best accounts of it are Henry B. +Wheatley's _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in_, and Robert Louis +Stevenson's little essay in his _Short Studies of Men and Books_. The +object of the present lecture is not to give any general account of the +time and its public events, upon which the Diary touches at a thousand +points, but rather to set the spirit of this man in contrast with that +of John Bunyan, which we have just considered. The men are very typical, +and any adequate conception of the spirit of either will give a true +cross-section of the age in which he lived. Pepys, it must be confessed, +is much more at home in his times than Bunyan ever could be. One might +even say that the times seem to have been designed as a background for +the diarist. There is as little of the spirit of a stranger and pilgrim +in Pepys, even in his most pathetic hours, as there is in John Bunyan +the spirit of a man at home, even in his securest. It was a very pagan +time, and Pepys is the pagan _par excellence_ of that time, the bright +and shining example of the pagan spirit of England. + +His lot was cast in high places, to which he rose by dint of great +ability and indomitable perseverance in his office. He talks with the +King, the Duke of York, the Archbishop, and all the other great folks of +the day; and no volume has thrown more light on the character of Charles +the Second than his. We see the King at the beginning kissing the Bible, +and proclaiming it to be the thing which he loves above all other +things. He rises early in the morning, and practises others of the less +important virtues. We see him touching all sorts of people for the +King's evil, a process in which Pepys is greatly interested at first, +but which palls when it has lost its novelty. Similarly, the diarist is +greatly excited on the first occasion when he actually hears the King +speak, but soon begins to criticise him, finding that he talks very much +like other people. He describes the starvation of the fleet, the country +sinking to the verge of ruin, and the maudlin scenes of drunkenness at +Court, with a minuteness which makes one ashamed even after so long an +interval. However revolting or shameful the institution may be, the fact +that it is an institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. +He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would +mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and +his readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. +"How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the +country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the +bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "that +every one about the Court is mad." + +In politics he had been a republican in his early days, and when Charles +the First's head fell at Whitehall, he had confided to a friend the +dangerous remark that if he were to preach a sermon on that event he +would choose as his text the words, "The memory of the wicked shall +rot." The later turn of events gave him abundant opportunities for +repenting of that indiscretion, and he repents at intervals all through +his Diary. For now he is a royalist in his politics, having in him not a +little of the spirit of the Vicar of Bray, and of Bunyan's Mr. By-ends. + +The political references lead him beyond England, and we hear with +consternation now and again about the dangerous doings of the +Covenanters in Scotland. We hear much also of France and Holland, and +still more of Spain. Outside the familiar European lands there is a +fringe of curious places like Tangier, which is of great account at that +time, and is destined in Pepys' belief to play an immense part in the +history of England, and of the more distant Bombain in India, which he +considers to be a place of little account. Here and there the terror of +a new Popish plot appears. The kingdom is divided against itself, and +the King and the Commons are at drawn battle with the Lords, while every +one shapes his views of things according as his party is in or out of +power. + +Three great historic events are recorded with singular minuteness and +interest in the Diary, namely, the Plague, the Dutch War, and the Fire +of London. + +As to the Plague, we have all the vivid horror of detail with which +Defoe has immortalised it, with the additional interest that here no +consecutive history is attempted, but simply a record of daily +impressions of the streets and houses. On his first sight of the red +cross upon a door, the diarist cries out, "Lord, have mercy upon us," in +genuine terror and pity. The coachman sickens on his box and cannot +drive his horses home. The gallant draws the curtains of a sedan chair +to salute some fair lady within, and finds himself face to face with the +death-dealing eyes and breath of a plague-stricken patient. Few people +move along the streets, and at night the passenger sees and shuns the +distant lights of the link-boys guiding the dead to their burial. A +cowardly parson flies upon some flimsy excuse from his dangerous post, +and makes a weak apology on his first reappearance in the pulpit. +Altogether it is a picture unmatched in its broken vivid flashes, in +which the cruelty and wildness of desperation mingle with the despairing +cry of pity. + +The Dutch War was raging then, not on the High Seas only, but at the +very gates of England; and Pepys, whose important and responsible +position as Clerk of the Acts of the Navy gave him much first-hand +information, tells many great stories in his casual way. We hear the +guns distinctly and loud, booming at the mouth of the Thames. The +press-gang sweeps the streets, and starving women, whose husbands have +been taken from them, weep loudly in our ears. Sailors whose wages have +not been paid desert their ships, in some cases actually joining the +Dutch and fighting against their comrades. One of the finest passages +gives a heartrending and yet bracing picture of the times. "About a +dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach-side with tears in their +eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest began, and said to Sir W. +Coventry, 'We are here a dozen of us, that have long known and loved, +and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done +the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any +other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our +lives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a +fire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us, out of all which, choose +you one to be commander; and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve +him; and, if possible, do that which shall show our memory of our dead +commander, and our revenge.' Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved, as +well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping, and took their names, +and so parted." + +Perhaps, however, the finest work of all is found in the descriptions of +the Fire of London. From that night when he is awakened by the red glare +of the fire in his bedroom window, on through the days and weeks of +terror, when no man knew how long he would have a home, we follow by the +light of blazing houses the story of much that is best and much that is +worst in human nature. The fire, indeed, cleanses the city from the last +dregs of the plague which are still lingering there, but it also stirs +up the city until its inhabitants present the appearance of ants upon a +disturbed ant-hill. And not the least busy among them, continually +fussing about in all directions, is the diarist himself, eagerly +planning for the preservation of his money, dragging it hither and +thither from hiding-place to hiding-place in the city, and finally +burying it in bags at dead of night in a garden. Nothing is too small +for him to notice. The scrap of burnt paper blown by the wind to a +lady's hand, on which the words are written, "Time is, it is done," is +but one of a thousand equally curious details. + +His own character, as reflected in the narrative of these events, is +often little to his credit, and the frank and unblushing selfishness of +his outlook upon things in general is as amusing as it is shameful. And +yet, on the other hand, when most men deserted London, Pepys remained in +it through the whole dangerous time of the plague, taking his life in +his hand and dying daily in his imagination in spite of the quaint +precautions against infection which he takes care on every occasion to +describe. Through the whole dismal year, with plague and fire raging +around him, he sticks to his post and does his work as thoroughly as the +disorganised circumstances of his life allow. If we could get back to +the point of view of those who thought about Pepys and formed a judgment +of him before his Diary had been made public, we should be confronted +with the figure of a man as different from the diarist as it is possible +for two men to be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, a +man who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror of +all the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no means +unimportant, even in a time so full of dangers and so critical for the +destinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him in +his day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, so +carefully written in such an unintelligible cipher, locked nightly with +its little key, and hidden in some secure place. When at last the +writing was deciphered, there came forth upon us, from the august and +honourable state in which the Navy Commissioner had lain so long, this +flood of small talk, the greatest curiosity known to English literature. +Other men than Pepys have suffered in reputation from the yapping of +dogs and the barn-door cackle that attacked their memories. England +blushed as she heard the noise when the name of Carlyle became the +centre of such commotion. But if Samuel Pepys has suffered in the same +way he has no one to thank for it but himself; for, if his own +hand-writing had not revealed it, no one could possibly have guessed +it from the facts of his public career. Yet what a rare show it is, that +multitude of queer little human interests that intermingle with the talk +about great things! It may have been quite wrong to translate it, and +undoubtedly much of it was disreputable enough for any man to write, yet +it will never cease to be read; nor will England cease to be glad that +it was translated, so long as the charm of history is doubled by touches +of strange imagination and confessions of human frailty. + +Pepys' connection with literature is that rather of a virtuoso than of a +student in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History of +the Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashion +from that of the immortality which the Diary has achieved. But his life +was crowded with business and its intervals with pleasures. The weakness +of his eyes also militated against any serious contribution to +literature, and instead of the History, for which he had gathered much +material and many manuscripts, he gave us only the little volume +entitled _Memoirs of the Navy_, which, however, shows a remarkable grasp +of his subject, and of all corresponding affairs, such as could only +have been possessed by a man of unusually thorough knowledge of his +business. He collected what was for his time a splendid library, +consisting of some three thousand volumes, now preserved in his College +(Magdalene College, Cambridge), very carefully arranged and catalogued. +We read much of this library while it is accumulating--much more about +the mahogany cases in which the books were to stand than about the books +themselves, or his own reading of them. The details of their arrangement +were very dear to his curious mind. He tells us that where the books +would not fit exactly to the shelves, but were smaller than the space, +he had little gilded stilts made, adjusted to the size of each book, and +placed under the volumes, which they lifted to the proper height. Little +time can have been left over for the study of at least the stiffer works +in that library, although there are many notes which show that he was in +some sense a reader, and that books served the same purpose as events +and personalities in leading him up and down the byways of what he +always found to be a curious and interesting world. + +But the immortal part of Pepys is undoubtedly his Diary. Among others of +the innumerable curious interests which this man cultivated was that of +studying the secret ciphers which had been invented and used by literary +people in the past. From his knowledge of these he was enabled to invent +a cipher of his own, or rather to adopt one which he altered somewhat to +serve his uses. Having found this sufficiently secret code, he was now +able to gratify his immense interest in himself and his inordinate +personal vanity by writing an intimate narrative of his own life. The +Diary covers nine and a half years in all, from January 1660 to May +1669. For nearly a century and a half it lay dead and silent, until Rev. +J. Smith, with infinite diligence and pains, discovered the key to it, +and wrote his translation. A later translation has been made by Rev. +Mynors Bright, which includes some passages by the judgment of the +former translator considered unnecessary or inadvisable. + +Opinions differ as to the wisdom, and indeed the morality, of forcing +upon the public ear the accidentally discovered secrets which a dead man +had guarded so carefully. There is, of course, the possibility that, as +some think, Pepys desired that posterity should have the complete record +in all its frankness and candour. If this be so, one can only say that +the wish is evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind. It seems much more +probable that he wrote the Diary for the luxury of reading it to +himself, always intending to destroy it before his death. But a piece of +work so intimate as this is, in a sense, a living part of the man who +creates it, and one can well imagine him putting off the day of its +destruction, and grudging that it should perish with all its power of +awakening old chords of memory and revitalising buried years. For his +own part he was no squeamish moralist and if it were only for his own +eyes he would enjoy passages which the more fastidious public might +judge differently. + +So it comes to pass that this amazing _omnium gatherum_ of a book is +among the most living of all the gifts of the past to the present, +telling everything and telling it irresistibly. His hat falls through a +hole, and he writes down all about the incident as faithfully as he +describes the palace of the King of France, and the English war with +Holland. His nature is amazingly complicated, and yet our judgment of it +is simplified by his passion for telling everything, no matter how +discreditable or how ignoble the detail may be. He is a great man and a +great statesman, and he is the liveliest of our English crickets on the +hearth. One set of excerpts would present him as the basest, another set +as the pleasantest and kindliest of men; and always without any +exception he is refreshing by his intense and genial interest in the +facts of the world. Of the many summaries of himself which he has given +us, none is more characteristic than the following, with which he closes +the month of April of the year 1666: "Thus ends this month; my wife in +the country, myself full of pleasure and expence; in some trouble for my +friends, and my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, +which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost +anything." He is essentially a virtuoso who has been forced by +circumstances into the necessity of being also a public man, and has +developed on his own account an extraordinary passion for the +observation of small and wayside things. At the high table of those +times, where Milton and Bunyan sit at the mighty feast of English +literature, he is present also: but he is under the table, a mischievous +and yet observant child, loosening the neckerchiefs of those who are too +drunk, and picking up scraps of conversation which he will retail +outside. There is something peculiarly pathetic in the whole picture. +One remembers Defoe, who for so many years lived in the reputation of +honourable politics and in the odour of such sanctity as Robinson Crusoe +could give, until the discovery of certain yellow papers revealed the +base political treachery for which the great island story had been a +kind of anodyne to conscience. So Samuel Pepys would have passed for a +great naval authority and an anxious friend of England when her foes +were those of her own household, had he only been able to make up his +mind to destroy these little manuscript volumes. + +Why did he write them, one still asks? Readers of Robert Browning's +poems, _House_ and _Shop_, will remember the scorn which that poet pours +upon any one who unlocks his heart to the general public. And these +narrations of Pepys' are certainly of such a kind that if he intended +them to be read by any public in any generation of England, he must be +set down as unique among sane men. Stevenson indeed considers that there +was in the Diary a side glance at publication, but the proof which he +adduces from the text does not seem sufficient to sustain so remarkable +a freak of human nature, nor does the fact that on one occasion Pepys +set about destroying all his papers except the Diary, appear to prove +very much one way or another. Stevenson calls it inconsistent and +unreasonable in a man to write such a book and to preserve it unless he +wanted it to be read. But perhaps no writing of diaries is quite +reasonable; and as for his desire to have it read by others than +himself, we find that his Diary was so close a secret that he expresses +regret for having mentioned it to Sir William Coventry. No other man +ever heard of it in Pepys' lifetime, "it not being necessary, nor maybe +convenient, to have it known." + +Why, then, did he write it? Why does anybody write a diary? Probably the +answer nearest to the truth will be that every one finds himself +interesting, and some people have so keen an interest in themselves that +it becomes a passion, clamorous to be gratified. Now as Bacon tells us, +"Writing maketh an exact man," and the writing of diaries reduces to the +keenest vividness our own impressions of experience and thoughts about +things. Pepys was, above all other men, interested in himself. He was +intensely in love with himself. The beautiful, jealous, troublesome, and +yet inevitable Mrs. Pepys was but second in her husband's affections +after all. He was his own wife. One remembers fashionable novels of the +time of _Evelina_ or the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, and recollects how the +ladies there speak lover-like of their diaries, and, when writing them, +feel themselves always in the best possible company. For Pepys, his +Diary does not seem to have been so much a refuge from daily cares and +worries, nor a preparation for the luxury of reading it in his old age, +as an indulgence of intense and poignant pleasure in the hour of +writing. + +His interest in himself was quite extraordinary. When his library was +collected and his books bound and gilded they were doubtless a treasured +possession of which he was hugely proud. But this was not so much a +possession as it was a kind of _alter ego_, a fragment of his living +self, hidden away from all eyes but his own. No trifle in his life is +too small for record. He cannot change his seat in the office from one +side of the fireplace to another without recording it. The gnats trouble +him at an inn in the country. His wig takes fire and crackles, and he is +mighty merry about it until he discovers that it is his own wig that is +burning and not somebody else's. He visits the ships, and, remembering +former days, notes down without a blush the sentence, "Poor ship, that I +have been twice merry in." Any one could have written the Diary, so far +as intellectual or even literary power is concerned, though perhaps few +would have chosen precisely Pepys' grammar in which to express +themselves. But nobody else that ever lived could have written it with +such sheer abandonment and frankness. He has a positive talent, nay, a +genius for self-revelation, for there must be a touch of genius in any +man who is able to be absolutely true. Other men have struggled hard to +gain sincerity, and when it is gained the struggle has made it too +conscious to be perfectly sincere. Pepys, with utter unconsciousness, is +sincere even in his insincerities. Some of us do not know ourselves and +our real motives well enough to attempt any formal statement of them. +Others of us may suspect ourselves, but would die before we would +confess our real motives even to ourselves, and would fiercely deny them +if any other person accused us of them. But this man's barriers are all +down. There is no reserve, but frankness everywhere and to an unlimited +extent. There is no pose in the book either of good or bad, and it is +one of the very few books of which such a statement could be made. He +has been accused of many things, but never of affectation. The bad +actions are qualified by regrets, and the disarmed critic feels that +they have lost any element of tragedy which they might otherwise have +had. The good actions are usually spoiled by some selfish _addendum_ +which explains and at the same time debases them. Surely the man who +could do all this constantly through so many hundreds of pages, must be +in his way a unique kind of genius, to have so clear an eye and so +little self-deception. + +The Diary is full of details, for he is the most curious man in the +world. One might apply to him the word catholicity if it were not far +too big and dignified an epithet. The catholicity of his mind is that of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_. The interest of the book is inexhaustible, +because to him the whole world was just such a book. His world was +indeed + + So full of a number of things + He was sure we should all be as happy as kings. + +Like Chaucer's Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly." Now he lights upon +a dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet again +upon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. He +will drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like a +bird, and he will tell you a tale of a boy who was disinherited because +he crowed like a cock. He will walk across half the country to see +anything new. His heart is full of a great love of processions, +raree-shows of every kind, and, above all, novelty. His confession that +the sight of the King touching for the evil gave him no pleasure because +he had seen it before, applies to most things in his life. For such a +man, this world must indeed have been an interesting place. + +We join him in well-nigh every meal he sits down to, from the first days +when they lived so plainly, on to the greater times of the end, when he +gives a dinner to his friends, which was "a better dinner than they +understood or deserved." He delights in all the detail of the table. The +cook-maid, whose wages were £4 per annum, had no easy task to satisfy +her fastidious master, and Mrs. Pepys must now and then rise at four in +the morning to make mince-pies. Any new kind of meat or drink especially +delights him. He finds ortolans to be composed of nothing but fat, and +he often seems, in his thoughts on other nations, to have for his first +point of view the sight of foreigners at dinner. But this is only part +of the insatiable and omnivorous interest in odds and ends which is +everywhere apparent. The ribbons he has seen at a wedding, the starving +seamen who are becoming a danger to the nation, the drinking of wine +with a toad in the glass, a lightning flash that melted fetters from the +limbs of slaves, Harry's chair (the latest curiosity of the +drawing-rooms, whose arms rise and clasp you into it when you sit down), +the new Messiah, who comes with a brazier of hot coals and proclaims the +doom of England--these, and a thousand other details, make up the +furniture of this most miscellaneous mind. + +Everything in the world amuses him, and from first to last there is an +immense amount of travelling, both physical and mental. With him we +wander among companies of ladies and gentlemen walking in gardens, or +are rowed up and down the Thames in boats, and it is always exciting and +delightful. That is a kind of allegory of the man's view of life. But +nothing is quite so congenial to him, after all, as plays at the +theatre. One feels that he would never have been out of theatres had it +been possible, and in order to keep himself to his business he has to +make frequent vows (which are generally more or less broken) that he +will not go to see a play again until such and such a time. When the vow +is broken and the play is past he lamentably regrets the waste of +resolution, and stays away for a time until the next outburst comes. The +plays were then held in the middle of the day, and must have cut in +considerably upon the working-time of business men; although, to be +sure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon +things were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and the +flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient +physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste in +the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patience +with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of _Twelfth Night_, +_Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Othello_; while he constantly informs us +that he "never saw anything so good in his life" as the now +long-forgotten productions of little playwrights of his time. He would, +we suspect, prefer at all times a puppet show to a play; partly, no +doubt, because that was the fashion, and partly because that type of +drama was nearer his size. Throughout the volumes of the Diary there are +few things of which he speaks with franker and more enthusiastic delight +than the enjoyment which he derives from punchinello. + +Next to the delight which he derived from the theatre must be mentioned +that which he continually found in music. He seems to have made an +expert and scientific study of it, and the reader hears continually the +sound of lutes, harpsichords, violas, theorbos, virginals, and +flageolets. He takes great numbers of music lessons, but quarrels with +his teacher from time to time. He praises extravagantly such music as he +hears, or criticises it unsparingly, passing on one occasion the +desperate censure "that Mrs. Turner sings worse than my wife." + +His interest in science is as curious and miscellaneous as his interest +in everything else. He was indeed President of the Royal Society of his +time, and he is immensely delighted with Boyle and his new discoveries +concerning colours and hydrostatics. Yet so rare a dilettante is he, +in this as in other things, that we find this President of the Royal +Society bringing in a man to teach him the multiplication table. He has +no great head for figures, and we find him listening to long lectures +upon abstruse financial questions, not unlike the bimetallism +discussions of our own day, which he finds so clear, while he is +listening, that nothing could be clearer, but half an hour afterwards he +does not know anything whatever about the subject. + +Under the category of his amusements, physic must be included; for, like +other egoists, he was immensely interested in his real or imaginary +ailments, and in the means which were taken to cure them. On some days +he will sit all day long taking physic. He derives an immense amount of +amusement from the process of doctoring himself, and still more from +writing down in all their detail both his symptoms and their treatment. +His pharmacopoeia is by no means scientific, for he includes within it +charms which will cure one of anything, and he always keeps a hare's +foot by him, and will sometimes tell of troubles which came to him +because he had forgotten it. + +He is constantly passing the shrewdest of judgments upon men and things, +or retailing them from the lips of others. "Sir Ellis Layton is, for a +speech of forty words, the wittiest man that ever I knew in my life, but +longer he is nothing." "Mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy +do abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a +fool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much +in the wrong." "How little merit do prevail in the world, but only +favour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in; and +that diligence only keeps me so, and will, living as I do among so many +lazy people that the diligent man becomes necessary, that they cannot do +anything without him." "To the Cocke-pitt where I hear the Duke of +Albemarle's chaplain make a simple sermon: among other things, +reproaching the imperfection of humane learning, he cried, 'All our +physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not +able to number the days of a man'--which, God knows, is not the fault of +arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The +blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and +every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and +honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as +short as I can, and obscure." "But he do tell me that the House is in +such a condition that nobody can tell what to make of them, and, he +thinks, they were never in before; that everybody leads and nobody +follows." "My Lord Middleton did come to-day, and seems to me but a +dull, heavy man; but he is a great soldier, and stout, and a needy +Lord." A man who goes about the world making remarks of that kind, would +need a cipher in which to write them down. His world is everything to +him, and he certainly makes the most of it so far as observation and +remark are concerned. + +If Pepys' curiosity and infinitely varied shrewdness and observation may +be justly regarded as phenomenal, the complexity of his moral character +is no less amazing. He is full of industry and ambition, reading for his +favourite book Bacon's _Faber Fortunæ_, "which I can never read too +often." He is "joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see, +that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and has sent me masters that +do observe that I take pains." Again he is "busy till night blessing +myself mightily to see what a deal of business goes off a man's hands +when he stays at it." Colonel Birch tells him "that he knows him to be a +man of the old way of taking pains." + +This is interesting in itself, and it is a very marked trait in his +character, but it gains a wonderful pathos when we remember that this +infinite taking of pains was done in a losing battle with blindness. +There is a constantly increasing succession of references in the Diary +to his failing eyesight and his fears of blindness in the future. The +references are made in a matter-of-fact tone, and are as free from +self-pity as if he were merely recording the weather or the date. All +the more on that account, the days when he is weary and almost blind +with writing and reading, and the long nights when he is unable to read, +show him to be a very brave and patient man. He consults Boyle as to +spectacles, but fears that he will have to leave off his Diary, since +the cipher begins to hurt his eyes. The lights of the theatre become +intolerable, and even reading is a very trying ordeal, notwithstanding +the paper tubes through which he looks at the print, and which afford +him much interest and amusement. So the Diary goes on to its pathetic +close:--"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with +my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any +longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time +that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I +must forbear; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have +it kept by my people in long-hand, and must be contented to set down +no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be +anything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, +here and there, a note in shorthand with my own hand. + +"And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to +see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that +will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!--S.P." + +It is comforting to know that, in spite of these fears, he did not grow +blind, but preserved a certain measure of sight to the end of his +career. + +In regard to money and accounts, his character and conduct present the +same extraordinary mixture as is seen in everything else that concerns +him. Money flows profusely upon valentines, gloves, books, and every +sort of thing conceivable; yet he grudges the price of his wife's dress +although it is a sum much smaller than the cost of his own. He allows +her £30 for all expenses of the household, and she is immensely pleased, +for the sum is much larger than she had expected. The gift to her of a +necklace worth £60 overtops all other generosity, and impresses himself +so much that we hear of it till we are tired. A man in such a position +as his, is bound to make large contributions to public objects, both in +the forms of donations and of loans; but caution tempers his public +spirit. A characteristic incident is that in which he records his +genuine shame that the Navy Board had not lent any money towards the +expenses caused by the Fire and the Dutch War. But when the loan is +resolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naïveté, how he rushes in to +begin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a larger +sum, which he would have to equal if he came after them. He hates +gambling,--it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him,--and he +records, conscientiously and very frequently, the gradual growth of his +estate from nothing at all to thousands of pounds, with constant thanks +to God, and many very quaint little confessions and remarks. + +He was on the one hand confessedly a coward, and on the other hand a man +of the most hasty and violent temper. Yet none of his readers can +despise him very bitterly for either of these vices. For he disarms all +criticism by the incredibly ingenious frankness of his confessions; and +the instances of these somewhat contemptible vices alternate with bits +of real gallantry and fineness, told in the same perfectly natural and +unconscious way. + +His relations with his wife and other ladies would fill a volume in +themselves. It would not be a particularly edifying volume, but it +certainly would be without parallel in the literature of this or any +other country for sheer extremity of frankness. Mrs. Pepys appears to +have been a very beautiful and an extremely difficult lady, disagreeable +enough to tempt him into many indiscretions, and yet so virtuous as to +fill his heart with remorse for all his failings, and still more with +vexation for her discoveries of them. But below all this surface play of +pretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and +genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about +her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with +abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her +capricious and imperious little humours. + +These curious mixtures of character, however, are but byplay compared +with the phenomenal and central vanity, which alternately amazes and +delights us. After all the centuries there is a positive charm about +this grown man who, after all, never seems to have grown up into +manhood. He is as delighted with himself as if he were new, and as +interested in himself as if he had been born yesterday. He prefers +always to talk with persons of quality if he can find them. "Mighty glad +I was of the good fortune to visit him (Sir W. Coventry), for it keeps +in my acquaintance with him, and the world sees it, and reckons my +interest accordingly." His public life was distinguished by one great +speech made in answer to the accusations of some who had attacked him +and the Navy Board in the House of Commons. That speech seems certainly +to have been distinguished and extraordinarily able, but it certainly +would have cost him his soul if he had not already lost that in other +ways. Every sentence of flattery, even to the point of being told that +he is another Cicero, he not only takes seriously, but duly records. + +There is an immense amount of snobbery, blatant and unashamed. A certain +Captain Cooke turns out to be a man who had been very great in former +days. Pepys had carried clothes to him when he was a little +insignificant boy serving in his father's workshop. Now Captain Cooke's +fortunes are reversed, and Pepys tells us of his many and careful +attempts to avoid him, and laments his failure in such attempts. He +hates being seen on the shady side of any street of life, and is +particularly sensitive to such company as might seem ridiculous or +beneath his dignity. His brother faints one day while walking with him +in the street, on which his remark is, "turned my head, and he was +fallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into a +great fright; and, to see my brotherly love! I did presently lift him up +from the ground." This last sentence is so delightful that, were it not +for the rest of the Diary, it would be quite incredible in any human +being past the age of short frocks. All this side of his character +culminates in the immense amount of information which we have concerning +his coach. He has great searching of heart as to whether it would be +good policy or bad to purchase it. All that is within him longs to have +a coach of his own, but, on the other hand, he fears the jealousy of his +rivals and the increased demands upon his generosity which such a luxury +may be expected to bring. At last he can resist no longer, and the coach +is purchased. No sooner does he get inside it than he assumes the air of +a gentleman whose ancestors have ridden in coaches since the beginning +of time. "The Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and +now and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, there +were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's." + +A somewhat amazing fact in this strange and contradictory character is +the constant element of subtlety which blends with so much frankness. He +wants to do wrong in many different ways but he wants still more to do +it with propriety, and to have some sort of plausible excuse which will +explain it in a respectable light. Nor is it only other people whom he +is bent on deceiving. Were that all, we should have a very simple type +of hypocritical scoundrel, which would be as different as possible from +the extraordinary Pepys. There is a sense of propriety in him, and a +conscience of obeying the letter of the law and keeping up appearances +even in his own eyes. If he can persuade himself that he has done that, +all things are open to him. He will receive a bribe, but it must be +given in such a way that he can satisfy his conscience with ingenious +words. The envelope has coins in it, but then he opens it behind his +back and the coins fall out upon the floor. He has only picked them up +when he found them there, and can defy the world to accuse him of having +received any coins in the envelope. That was the sort of conscience +which he had, and whose verdicts he never seems seriously to have +questioned. He vows he will drink no wine till Christmas, but is +delighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is not +necessarily included in his vow. He vows he will not go to the play +until Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goes +with the borrowed money; or goes to a new playhouse which was not open +when the vow was made. He buys books which no decent man would own to +having bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has only +read them and has not put them in his library. Thus, along the whole +course of his life, he cheats himself continually. He prefers the way of +honour if it be consistent with a sufficient number of other +preferences, and yet practises a multitude of curiously ingenious +methods of being excusably dishonourable. On the whole, in regard to +public business and matters of which society takes note, he keeps his +conduct surprisingly correct, but all the time he is remembering, not +without gusto, what he might be doing if he were a knave. It is a +curious question what idea of God can be entertained by a man who plays +tricks with himself in this fashion. Of Pepys certainly it cannot be +said that God "is not in all his thoughts," for the name and the +remembrance are constantly recurring. Yet God seems to occupy a quite +hermetically sealed compartment of the universe; for His servant in +London shamelessly goes on with the game he is playing, and appears to +take a pride in the very conscience he systematically hoodwinks. + +It is peculiarly interesting to remember that Samuel Pepys and John +Bunyan were contemporaries. There is, as we said, much in common between +them, and still more in violent contrast. He had never heard of the +Tinker or his Allegory so far as his Diary tells us, nor is it likely +that he would greatly have appreciated the _Pilgrim's Progress_ if it +had come into his hands. Even _Hudibras_ he bought because it was the +proper thing to do, and because he had met its author, Butler; but he +never could see what it was that made that book so popular. Bunyan and +Pepys were two absolutely sincere men. They were sincere in opposite +ways and in diametrically opposite camps, but it was their sincerity, +the frank and natural statement of what they had to say, that gave its +chief value to the work of each of them. It is interesting to remember +that Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in the +year 1678. The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, and +his imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record: while Bunyan's +charge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promise +not to repeat the offence. Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probably +have approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who were +living for conscience' sake, like Dr. Johnson's friend, Dr. Campbell, of +whom it was said he never entered a church, but always took off his hat +when he passed one. On the whole Pepys' references to the Fanatiques, as +he calls them, are not only fair but favourable. He is greatly +interested in their zeal, and impatient with the stupidity and brutality +of their persecutors. + +In regard to outward details there are many interesting little points of +contact between the Diary and the _Pilgrims Progress_. We hear of Pepys +purchasing Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_; Bartholomew and Sturbridge Fairs +come in for their own share of notice; nor is there wanting a +description of such a cage as Christian and Faithful were condemned to +in Vanity Fair. Justice Keelynge, the judge who condemned Bunyan, is +mentioned on several occasions by Pepys, very considerably to his +disadvantage. But by far the most interesting point that the two have in +common is found in that passage which is certainly the gem of the whole +Diary. Bunyan, in the second part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, +introduces a shepherd boy who sings very sweetly upon the Delectable +Mountains. It is the most beautiful and idyllic passage in the whole +allegory, and has become classical in English literature. Yet Pepys' +passage will match it for simple beauty. He rises with his wife a little +before four in the morning to make ready for a journey into the country +in the neighbourhood of Epsom. There, as they walk upon the Downs, they +come "where a flock of sheep was; and the most pleasant and innocent +sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd and his little boy +reading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him; so I +made the boy read to me, which he did.... He did content himself +mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the +most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it +brought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two or +three days after." + +Such is some slight conception, gathered from a few of many thousands of +quaint and sparkling revelations of this strange character. Over against +the "ingenious dreamer," Bunyan, here is a man who never dreams. He is +the realist, pure and unsophisticated; and the stray touches of pathos, +on which here and there one chances in his Diary, are written without +the slightest attempt at sentiment, or any other thought than that they +are plain matters of fact. He might have stood for this prototype of +many of Bunyan's characters. Now he is Mr. Worldly Wiseman, now Mr. +By-ends, and Mr. Hold-the-World; and taken altogether, with all his +good and bad qualities, he is a fairly typical citizen of Vanity Fair. + +There are indeed in his character exits towards idealism and +possibilities of it, but their promise is never fulfilled. There is, for +instance, his kindly good-nature. That quality was the one and +all-atoning virtue of the times of Charles the Second, and it was +supposed to cover a multitude of sins. Yet Charles the Second's was a +reign of constant persecution, and of unspeakable selfishness in high +places. Pepys persecutes nobody, and yet some touch of unblushing +selfishness mars every kindly thing he does. If he sends a haunch of +venison to his mother, he lets you know that it was far too bad for his +own table. He loves his father with what is obviously a quite genuine +affection, but in his references to him there is generally a significant +remembrance of himself. He tells us that his father is a man "who, +besides that he is my father, and a man that loves me, and hath ever +done so, is also, at this day, one of the most careful and innocent men +of the world." He advises his father "to good husbandry and to be living +within the bounds of £50 a year, and all in such kind words, as not only +made both them but myself to weep." He hopes that his father may recover +from his illness, "for I would fain do all I can, that I may have him +live, and take pleasure in my doing well in the world." Similarly, when +his uncle is dying, we have a note "that he is very ill, and so God's +Will be done." When the uncle is dead, Pepys' remark is, "sorry in one +respect, glad in my expectations in another respect." When his +predecessor dies, he writes, "Mr. Barlow is dead; for which God knows my +heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, +by whose death he gets £100 per annum." + +Another exit towards idealism of the Christian and spiritual sort might +be supposed to be found in his abundant and indeed perpetual references +to churches and sermons. He is an indomitable sermon taster and critic. +But his criticisms, although they are among the most amusing of all his +notes, soon lead us to surrender any expectation of escape from paganism +along this line. "We got places, and staid to hear a sermon; but it, +being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of it +we went away, and I home, and dined; and then my wife and I by water to +the Opera." This is not, perhaps, surprising, and may in some measure +explain his satisfaction with Dr. Creeton's "most admirable, good, +learned, and most severe sermon, yet comicall," in which the preacher +"railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the +Presbyterians," and ripped up Hugh Peters' preaching, calling him "the +execrable skellum." One man preaches "well and neatly"; another "in a +devout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, +and that he would preach holily"; while Mr. Mills makes "an unnecessary +sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people." +On the whole, his opinion of the Church is not particularly high, and he +seems to share the view of the Confessor of the Marquis de Caranen, +"that the three great trades of the world are, the lawyers, who govern +the world; the Churchmen who enjoy the world; and a sort of fellows whom +they call soldiers, who make it their work to defend the world." + +It must be confessed that, when there were pretty ladies present and +when his wife was absent, the sermons had but little chance. "To +Westminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with my +perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great +pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what +with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done." +Sometimes he goes further, as at St. Dunstan's, where "I heard an able +sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, +whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got +further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take +pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again--which, +seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design." + +He visits cathedrals, and tries to be impressed by them, but more +interesting things are again at hand. At Rochester, "had no mind to stay +there, but rather to our inne, the White Hart, where we drank." At +Canterbury he views the Minster and the remains of Beckett's tomb, but +adds, "A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a +great while." There is something ludicrously incongruous about the idea +of Samuel Pepys in a cathedral, just as there is about his presence in +the Great Plague and Fire. Among any of these grand phenomena he is +altogether out of scale. He is a fly in a thunderstorm. + +His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can +lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God +continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, +with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his +last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking +of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as +of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On +a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind +of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and +home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter +merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when +in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will +recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, +he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse +hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman +can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an +audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, +but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is +this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing +the knave and dissimulation." + +Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly +governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion +was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience +enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within +the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man--a +conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are +constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems +as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which +he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which +there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are +all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are? + +Pepys was a pagan man in a pagan time, if ever there was such a man. The +deepest secret of him is his intense vitality. Here, on the earth, he is +thoroughly alive, and puts his whole heart into most of his actions. He +is always in the superlative mood, finding things either the best or the +worst that "he ever saw in all his life." His great concern is to be +merry, and he never outgrows the crudest phases of this desire, but +carries the monkey tricks of a boy into mature age. He will draw his +merriment from any source. He finds it "very pleasant to hear how the +old cavaliers talk and swear." At the Blue Ball, "we to dancing, and +then to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then +to dance and sing; and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve +at night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I +love to do, enjoy myself." "This day my wife made it appear to me that +my late entertainment of this week cost me above £12, an expence which I +am almost ashamed of, though it is but once in a great while, and is the +end for which, in the most part, we live, to have such a merry day once +or twice in a man's life." + +The only darkening element in his merriment is his habit of examining it +too anxiously. So greedy is he of delight that he cannot let himself go, +but must needs be measuring the extent to which he has achieved his +desire. Sometimes he finds himself "merry," but at other times only +"pretty merry." And there is one significant confession in connection +with some performance of a favourite play, "and indeed it is good, +though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are." +This is one of the very few touches of anything approaching to cynicism +which are to be found in his writings. His greed of merriment overleaps +itself, and the confession of that is the deepest note in all his music. + +Thus all the avenues leading beyond the earth were blocked. Other men +escape along the lines of kindliness, love of friends, art, poetry, or +religion. In all these avenues he walks or dances, but they lead him +nowhere. At the bars he stands, an absolute worldling and pagan, full of +an insatiable curiosity and an endless hunger and thirst. There is no +touch of eternity upon his soul: his universe is Vanity Fair. + + + + +LECTURE VII + +SARTOR RESARTUS + + +We now begin the study of the last of the three stages in the battle +between paganism and idealism. Having seen something of its primitive +and classical forms, we took a cross section of it in the seventeenth +century, and now we shall review one or two of its phases in our own +time. The leap from the seventeenth century to the twentieth necessarily +omits much that is vital and interesting. The eighteenth century, in its +stately and complacent fashion, produced some of the most deliberate and +finished types of paganism which the world has seen, and these were +opposed by memorable antagonists. We cannot linger there, however, but +must pass on to that great book which sounded the loudest bugle-note +which the nineteenth century heard calling men to arms in this warfare. + +Nothing could be more violent than the sudden transition from Samuel +Pepys, that inveterate tumbler in the masque of life, whose absurdities +and antics we have been looking at but now, to this solemn and +tremendous book. Great in its own right, it is still greater when we +remember that it stands at the beginning of the modern conflict between +the material and spiritual development of England. Every student of the +fourteenth century is familiar with two great figures, typical of the +two contrasted features of its life. On the one hand stands Chaucer, +with his infinite human interest, his good-humour, and his inexhaustible +delight in man's life upon the earth. On the other hand, dark in shadows +as Chaucer is bright with sunshine, stands Langland, colossal in his +sadness, perplexed as he faces the facts of public life which are still +our problems, earnest as death. There is no one figure which corresponds +to Chaucer in the modern age, but Carlyle is certainly the counterpart +of Langland. Standing in the shadow, he sends forth his great voice to +his times, now breaking into sobs of pity, and anon into shrieks of +hoarse laughter, terrible to hear. He, too, is bewildered, and he comes +among his fellows "determined to pluck out the heart of the +mystery"--the mystery alike of his own times and of general human life +and destiny. + +The book is in a great measure autobiographical, and is drawn from deep +wells of experience, thought, and feeling. Inasmuch as its writer was a +very typical Scotsman, it also was in a sense a manifesto of the +national convictions which had made much of the noblest part of Scottish +history, and which have served to stiffen the new races with which +Scottish emigrants have blended, and to put iron into their blood. It is +a book of incalculable importance, and if it be the case that it finds +fewer readers in the rising generation than it did among their fathers, +it is time that we returned to it. It is for want of such strong meat as +this that the spirit of an age tends to grow feeble. + +The object of the present lecture is neither to explain _Sartor +Resartus_ nor to summarise it. It certainly requires explanation, and it +is no wonder that it puzzled the publishers. Before it was finally +accepted by Fraser, its author had "carried it about for some two years +from one terrified owl to another." When it appeared, the criticisms +passed on it were amusing enough. Among those mentioned by Professor +Nichol are, "A heap of clotted nonsense," and "When is that stupid +series of articles by the crazy tailor going to end?" A book which could +call forth such abuse, even from the dullest of minds, is certainly in +need of elucidation. Yet here, more perhaps than in any other volume one +could name, the interpretation must come from within. The truth which it +has to declare will appeal to each reader in the light of his own +experience of life. And the endeavour of the present lecture will simply +be to give a clue to its main purpose. Every reader, following up that +clue for himself, may find the growing interest and the irresistible +fascination which the Victorians found in it. And when we add that +without some knowledge of _Sartor_ it is impossible to understand any +serious book that has been written since it appeared, we do not +exaggerate so much as might be supposed on the first hearing of so +extraordinary a statement. + +The first and chief difficulty with most readers is a very obvious and +elementary one. What is it all about? As you read, you can entertain no +doubt about the eloquence, the violent and unrestrained earnestness of +purpose, the unmistakable reserves of power behind the detonating words +and unforgettable phrases. But, after all, what is it that the man is +trying to say? This is certainly an unpromising beginning. Other great +prophets have prophesied in the vernacular; but "he that speaketh in an +unknown tongue speaketh not unto men but unto God; for no man +understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries." Yet +there are some things which cannot convey their full meaning in the +vernacular, thoughts which must coin a language for themselves; and +although at first there may be much bewilderment and even irritation, +yet in the end we shall confess that the prophecy has found its proper +language. + +Let us go back to the time in which the book was written. In the late +twenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century a quite +exceptional group of men and women were writing books. It was one of +those galaxies that now and then over-crowd the literary heavens with +stars. To mention only a few of the famous names, there were Byron, +Scott, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and the Brownings. It fills one +with envy to think of days when any morning might bring a new volume +from any one of these. Emerson was very much alive then, and was already +corresponding with Carlyle. Goethe died in 1832, but not before he had +found in Carlyle one who "is almost more, at home in our literature than +ourselves," and who had penetrated to the innermost core of the German +writings of his day. + +At that time, too, momentous changes were coming upon the industrial and +political life of England. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway +was opened, and in 1832 the Reform Bill was passed. Men were standing in +the backwash of the French Revolution. The shouts of acclamation with +which the promise of that dawn was hailed, had been silenced long ago by +the bloody spectacle of Paris and the career of Napoleon Buonaparte. The +day of Byronism was over, and polite England was already settling down +to the conventionalities of the Early Victorian period. The romantic +school was passing away, and the new generation was turning from it to +seek reality in physical science. But deep below the conventionality and +the utilitarianism alike there remained from the Revolution its legacy +of lawlessness, and many were more intent on adventure than on +obedience. + +It was in the midst of this confused _mêlée_ of opinions and impulses +that Thomas Carlyle strode into the lists with his strange book. On the +one hand it is a Titanic defence of the universe against the stage +Titanism of Byron's _Cain_. On the other hand it is a revolt of reality +against the empire of proprieties and appearances and shams. In a +generation divided between the red cap of France and the coal-scuttle +bonnet of England Carlyle stands bareheaded under the stars. Along with +him stand Benjamin Disraeli, combining a genuine sympathy for the poor +with a most grotesque delight in the aristocracy; and John Henry Newman, +fierce against the Liberals, and yet the author of "Lead, kindly Light." + +The book was handicapped more heavily by its own style than perhaps any +book that ever fought its way from neglect and vituperation to +idolatrous popularity. There is in it an immense amount of gag and +patter, much of which is brilliant, but so wayward and fantastic as to +give a sense of restlessness and perpetual noise. The very title is +provoking, and not less so is the explanation of it--the pretended +discovery of a German volume upon "Clothes, their origin and influence," +published by Stillschweigen and Co., of Weissnichtwo, and written by +Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. The puffs from the local newspaper, and the +correspondence with Hofrath "Grasshopper," in no wise lessen the odds +against such a work being taken seriously. + +Again, as might be expected of a Professor of "Things in General," the +book is discursive to the point of bewilderment. The whole progeny of +"aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils" breaks loose upon us just as +we are about to begin such a list of human apparel as never yet was +published save in the catalogue of a museum collected by a madman. A dog +with a tin kettle at his tail rushes mad and jingling across the street, +leaving behind him a new view of the wild tyranny of Ambition. A great +personage loses much sawdust through a rent in his unfortunate nether +garments. Sirius and the Pleiades look down from above. The book is +everywhere, and everywhere at once. The _asides_ seem to occupy more +space than the main thesis, whatever that may be. Just when you think +you have found the meaning of the author at last, another display of +these fireworks distracts your attention. It is not dark enough to see +their full splendour, yet they confuse such daylight as you have. + +Yet the main thesis cannot long remain in doubt. Through whatever +amazement and distraction, it becomes clear enough at last. Clothes, +which at once reveal and hide the man who wears them, are an allegory of +the infinitely varied aspects and appearances of the world, beneath +which lurk ultimate realities. But essential man is a naked animal, not +a clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drastic +stripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor will +not linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown's +button, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to the +essential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than an +interesting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that. +Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. This +philosophy of clothes, then, is religion and not _belles lettres_. The +reason for our sojourn on earth, and the only ground of any hope for a +further sojourn elsewhere, is that in God's name we do battle with the +devil. + +The quest of reality must obviously be wide as the universe, but if we +are to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it +_somewhere_. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal of +things--a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion of +theories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring the +search down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on its +remaining there. For this end the device of biography is adopted, and we +see the meaning of all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and +of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book +I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and +experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to +reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical and immortal biography. + +To the childless old people, Andreas and Gretchen Futteral, leading +their sweet orchard life, there comes, in the dusk of evening, a +stranger of reverend aspect--comes, and leaves with them the "invaluable +Loan" of the baby Teufelsdröckh. Thenceforward, beside the little +Kuhbach stream, we watch the opening out of a human life, from infancy +to boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood. The story has been told a +million times, but never quite in this fashion before. For rough +delicacy, for exquisitely tender sternness, the biography is unique. + +From the sleep of mere infancy the child is awakened to the +consciousness of creatorship by the gift of tools with which to make +things. Tales open up for him the long vistas of history; and the +stage-coach with its slow rolling blaze of lights teaches him geography, +and the far-flung imaginative suggestiveness of the road; while the +annual cattle-fair actually gathers the ends of the earth about his +wondering eyes, and gives him his first impression of the variety of +human life. + +Childhood brings with it much that is sweet and gentle, flowing on like +the little Kuhbach; and yet suggests far thoughts of Time and Eternity, +concerning which we are evidently to hear more before the end. The +formal education he receives--that "wood and leather education"--calls +forth only protest. But the development of his spirit proceeds in spite +of it. So far as the passive side of character goes, he does +excellently. On the active side things go not so well. Already he begins +to chafe at the restraints of obedience, and the youthful spirit is +beating against its bars. The stupidities of an education which only +appeals to the one faculty of memory, and to that mainly by means of +birch-rods, increase the rebellion, and the sense of restraint is +brought to a climax when at last old Andreas dies. Then "the dark +bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale +kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and +generations, stood before him; the inexorable word NEVER! now +first showed its meaning." + +The youth is now ready to enter, as such a one inevitably must, upon the +long and losing battle of faith and doubt. He is at the theorising stage +as yet, not having learned to make anything, but only to discuss things. +And yet the time is not wasted if the mind have been taught to think. +For "truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can +have." + +The immediate consequence and employment of this unripe time of +half-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is much +reminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, and +tutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdröckh's desultory period. The +climax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, to +which the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed--well +for all concerned if it did not end in his feeding on the chickens +instead! It is an unwholesome time with the lad--a time of sullen +contempt alternating with loud rebellion, of mingled vanity and +self-indulgence, and of much sheer devilishness of temper. + +Upon this exaggerated and most disagreeable period, lit by "red streaks +of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness," there +comes suddenly the master passion of romantic love. Had this adventure +proved successful, we should have simply had the old story, which ends +in "so they lived happily ever after." What the net result of all the +former strivings after truth and freedom would have been, we need not +inquire. For this is another story, equally old and to the end of time +ever newly repeated. There is much of Werther in it, and still more of +Jean Paul Richter. Its finest English counterpart is Longfellow's +_Hyperion_--the most beautiful piece of our literature, surely, that has +ever been forgotten--in which Richter's story lives again. But never has +the tale been more exquisitely told than in _Sartor Resartus_. For one +sweet hour of life the youth has been taken out of himself and pale +doubt flees far away. Life, that has been but a blasted heath, blooms +suddenly with unheard-of blossoms of hope and of delight. Then comes the +end. "Their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dewdrops, rushed +into one,--for the first time, and for the last! Thus was Teufelsdröckh +made immortal by a Kiss. And then? Why, then--thick curtains of Night +rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and +through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, +towards the Abyss." + +The sorrows of Teufelsdröckh are but too well known. Flung back upon his +former dishevelment of mind from so great and calm a height, the crash +must necessarily be terrible. Yet he will not take up his life where he +left it to follow Blumine. Such an hour inevitably changes a man, for +better or for worse. There is at least a dignity about him now, even +while the "nameless Unrest" urges him forward through his darkened +world. The scenes of his childhood in the little Entepfuhl bring no +consolation. Nature, even in his wanderings among her mountains, is +equally futile, for the wanderer can never escape from his own shadow +among her solitudes. Yet is his nature not dissolved, but only +"compressed closer," as it were, and we watch the next stage of this +development with a sense that some mysteriously great and splendid +experience is on the eve of being born. + +Thus we come to those three central chapters--chapters so fundamental +and so true to human life, that it is safe to prophesy that they will be +familiar so long as books are read upon the earth--"The Everlasting No," +"Centre of Indifference" and "The Everlasting Yea." + +In "The Everlasting No" we watch the work of negation upon the soul of +man. His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and the +unbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened into +Unbelief; shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have +the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." "Is there no God, then; but at +best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the +outside of his Universe, and _seeing_ it go? Has the word Duty no +meaning?" + +"Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, +shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and +receive no Answer but an Echo." Faith, indeed, lies dormant but alive +beneath the doubt. But in the meantime the man's own weakness paralyses +action; and, while this paralysis lasts, all faith appears to have +departed. He has ceased to believe in himself, and to believe in his +friends. "The very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as +believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, +of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable +Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind men limb +from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death!" + +He is saved from suicide simply by the after-shine of Christianity. +The religion of his fathers lingers, no longer as a creed, but as a +powerful set of associations and emotions. It is a small thing to cling +to amid the wrack of a man's universe; yet it holds until the appearance +of a new phase in which he is to find escape from the prison-house. He +has begun to realise that fear--a nameless fear of he knows not +what--has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, +pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous." Fear affects men in widely +different ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies" +obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleared +itself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. But +Teufelsdröckh is prouder and more violent of spirit than the sedate and +patrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. +"What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever +pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What +is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: +and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, +will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou not +suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, +trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it +come, then; I will meet it and defy it!" + +This is no permanent or stable resting-place, but it is the beginning of +much. It is the assertion of self in indignation and wild defiance, +instead of the former misery of a man merely haunted by himself. This is +that "Baphometic Fire-baptism" or new-birth of spiritual awakening, +which is the beginning of true manhood. The Everlasting No had said: +"Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the +Devil's); to which my whole Me now made answer: I am not thine, but +Free, and forever hate thee!" + +The immediate result of this awakening is told in "Centre of +Indifference"--_i.e._, indifference to oneself, one's own feelings, and +even to fate. It is the transition from subjective to objective +interests, from eating one's own heart out to a sense of the wide and +living world by which one is surrounded. It is the same process which, +just about this time, Robert Browning was describing in _Paracelsus_ and +_Sordello_. Once more Teufelsdröckh travels, but this time how +differently! Instead of being absorbed by the haunting shadow of +himself, he sees the world full of vital interests--cities of men, +tilled fields, books, battlefields. The great questions of the +world--the true meanings alike of peace and war--claim his interest. The +great men, whether Goethe or Napoleon, do their work before his +astonished eyes. "Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, +look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and +pertinently enough note what is passing there." He has +reached--strangely enough through self-assertion--the centre of +indifference to self, and of interest in other people and things. And +the supreme lesson of it all is the value of _efficiency_. Napoleon "was +a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the +cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carrière ouverte aux talens_ +(the tools to him that can handle them)." + +This bracing doctrine carries us at once into The Everlasting Yea. It is +not enough that a man pass from the morbid and self-centered mood to an +interest in the outward world that surrounds him. That might transform +him simply into a curious but heartless dilettante, a mere tourist of +the spirit, whose sole desire is to see and to take notes. But that +could never satisfy Carlyle; for that is but self-indulgence in its more +refined form of the lust of the eyes. It was not for this that the +Everlasting No had set Teufelsdröckh wailing, nor for this that he had +risen up in wrath and bidden defiance to fear. From his temptation in +the wilderness the Son of Man must come forth, not to wander +open-mouthed about the plain, but to work his way "into the higher +sunlit slopes of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is +in Heaven only." + +In other words, a great compassion for his fellow-men has come upon him. +"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow-man: with an +infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou +not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou +bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, +so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my +Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears +from thy eyes!" The words remind us of the famous passage, occurring +early in the book, which describes the Professor's Watchtower. It was +suggested by the close-packed streets of Edinburgh's poorer quarter, as +seen from the slopes of the hills which stand close on her eastern side. +Probably no passage ever written has so vividly and suggestively massed +together the various and contradictory aspects of the human tragedy. + +One more question, however, has yet to be answered before we have solved +our problem. What about happiness? We all cry aloud for it, and make its +presence or absence the criterion for judging the worth of days. +Teufelsdröckh goes to the heart of the matter with his usual directness. +It is this search for happiness which is the explanation of all the +unwholesomeness that culminated in the Everlasting No. "Because the +THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, +soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act of +Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago +thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and +predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other +than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after +somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not +given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_." In effect, happiness +is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the +amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be +hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: +fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a +luxury to die in hemp." + +Such teaching is neither sympathetic enough nor positive enough to be of +much use to poor mortals wrestling with their deepest problems. Yet in +the very negation of happiness he discovers a positive religion--the +religion of the Cross, the Worship of Sorrow. Expressed crudely, this +seems to endorse the ascetic fallacy of the value of self-denial for its +own sake. But from that it is saved by the divine element in sorrow +which Christ has brought--"Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the +EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein +whoso walks and works, it is well with him." + +This still leaves us perilously near to morbidness. The Worship of +Sorrow might well be but a natural and not less morbid reaction from the +former morbidness, the worship of self and happiness. From that, +however, it is saved by the word "works," which is spoken with emphasis +in this connection. So we pass to the last phase of the Everlasting Yea, +in which we return to the thesis upon which we began, viz., that "Doubt +of any sort cannot be removed except by action." "Do the Duty which +_lies nearest thee_, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty +will already have become clearer.... Yes here, in this poor, miserable, +hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or +nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, +be free.... Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal +fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou +hast in thee; out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to +do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the +Night cometh, wherein no man can work." + +Thus the goal of human destiny is not any theory, however true; not any +happiness, however alluring. It is for practical purposes that the +universe is built, and he who would be "in tune with the universe" must +first and last be practical. In various forms this doctrine has +reappeared and shown itself potent. Ritschl based his system on +practical values in religion, and Professor William James has proclaimed +the same doctrine in a still wider application in his Pragmatism. The +essential element in both systems is that they lay the direct stress of +life, not upon abstract theory but upon experience and vital energy. +This transference from theorising and emotionalism to the prompt and +vigorous exercise of will upon the immediate circumstance, is Carlyle's +understanding of the word Conversion. + +When it comes to the particular question of what work the Professor is +to do, the answer is that he has within him the Word Omnipotent, waiting +for a man to speak it forth. And here in this volume upon Clothes, this +_Sartor Resartus_, is his deliberate response to the great demand. At +first he seems here to relapse from the high seriousness of the chapters +we have just been reading, and to come with too great suddenness to +earth again. Yet that is not the case; for, as we shall see, the rest of +the volume is the attempt to reconstruct the universe on the principles +he has discovered within his own experience. The story to which we have +been listening is Teufelsdröckh's way of discovering reality; now we are +to have the statement of it on the wider planes of social and other +philosophy. This we shall briefly review, but the gist of the book is in +what we have already found. To most readers the quotations must have +been old and well-remembered friends. Yet they will pardon the +reappearance of them here, for they have been amongst the most powerful +of all wingéd words spoken in England for centuries. The reason for the +popularity of the book is that these biographical chapters are the +record of normal and typical human experience. This, or something like +this, will repeat itself so long as human nature lasts; and men, grown +discouraged with the mystery and bewilderment of life, will find heart +from these chapters to start "once more on their adventure, brave and +new." + +This, then, is Teufelsdröckh's reconstruction of the world; and the +world of each one of us requires some such reconstruction. For life is +full of deceptive outward appearances, from which it is the task of +every man to come back in his own way to the realities within. The +shining example of such reconstruction is that of George Fox, who sewed +himself a suit of leather and went out to the woods with it--"Every +stitch of his needle pricking into the heart of slavery, and +world-worship, and the Mammon god." The leather suit is an allegory of +the whole. The appearances of men and things are but the fantastic +clothes with which they cover their nakedness. They take these clothes +of theirs to be themselves, and the first duty and only hope of a man is +to divest himself of all such coverings, and discover what manner of man +he really is. + +This process of divesting, however, may yield either of two results. A +man may take, for the reality of himself, either the low view of human +nature, in which man is but "a forked straddling animal with bandy +legs," or the high view, in which he is a spirit, and unutterable +Mystery of Mysteries. It is the latter view which Thomas Carlyle +champions, through this and many other volumes, against the +materialistic thought of his time. + +The chapter on Dandies is a most extraordinary attack on the keeping up +of appearances. The Dandy is he who not only keeps up appearances but +actually worships them. He is their advocate and special pleader. His +very office and function is to wear clothes. Here we have the illusion +stripped from much that we have taken for reality. Sectarianism is a +prominent example of it, the reading of fashionable novels is another. +In the former two are seen the robes of eternity flung over one very +vulgar form of self-worship, and in the latter the robe of fashionable +society is flung over another. The reality of man's intercourse with +Eternity and with his fellow-men has died within these vestures, but the +eyes of the public are satisfied, and never guess the corpse within. +Sectarianism and Vanity Fair are but common forms of self-worship, in +which every one is keeping up appearances, and is so intent upon that +exercise that all thought of reality has vanished. + +A shallower philosopher would have been content with exposing these and +other shams; and consequently his philosophy would have led nowhere. +Carlyle is a greater thinker, and one who takes a wider view. He is no +enemy of clothes, although fools have put them to wrong uses and made +them the instruments of deception. His choice is not between worshipping +and abandoning the world and its appearances. He will frankly confess +the value of it and of its vesture, and so we have the chapter on +Adamitism, in defence of clothes, which acknowledges in great and +ingenious detail the many uses of the existing order of institutions. +But still, through all such acknowledgment, we are reminded constantly +of the main truth. All appearance is for the sake of reality, and all +tools for expressing the worker. When the appearance becomes a +substitute for the reality, and the tools absorb the attention that +should be devoted to the work for whose accomplishment they exist, then +we have relapsed into the fundamental human error. The object of the +book is to plunge back from appearance to reality, from clothes to him +who wears them. "Who am I? What is this ME?... some embodied, +visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind." + +This swift retreat upon reality occurs at intervals throughout the whole +book, and in connection with every conceivable department of human life +and interest. In many parts there is little attempt at sequence or +order. The author has made voluminous notes on men and things, and the +whole fantastic structure of _Sartor Resartus_ is a device for +introducing these disjointedly. In the remainder of this lecture we +shall select and displace freely, in order to present the main teachings +of the book in manageable groups. + +1. _Language and Thought._--Language is the natural garment of thoughts, +and while sometimes it performs its function of revealing them, it often +conceals them. Many people's whole intellectual life is spent in dealing +with words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all. Still more +commonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have come +to be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought. +Thus the _Name_ is the first garment wrapped around the essential +ME; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, is +simply an attempt at right naming. The names by which we call things are +apt to become labelled pigeon-holes in which we bury them. Having +catalogued and indexed our facts, we lose sight of them thenceforward, +and think and speak in terms of the catalogue. If you are a Liberal, it +is possible that all you may know or care to know about Conservatism is +the name. Nay, having catalogued yourself a Liberal, you may seldom even +find it necessary to inquire what the significance of Liberalism really +is. If you happen to be a Conservative, the corresponding risks will +certainly not be less. + +The dangers of these word-garments, and the habit of losing all contact +with reality in our constant habit of living among mere words, naturally +suggest to Carlyle his favourite theme--a plea for silence. We all talk +too much, and the first lesson we have to learn on our way to reality is +to be oftener silent. This duty of silence, as has been wittily +remarked, Carlyle preaches in thirty-seven volumes of eloquent English +speech. "SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised to them (were +this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the +element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at +length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of +Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.... Nay, in thy own mean +perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the +morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties." Andreas, in his +old camp-sentinel days, once challenged the emperor himself with the +demand for the password. "Schweig, Hund!" replied Frederich; and +Andreas, telling the tale in after years would add, "There is what I +call a King." + +Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require +something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their +silences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently +expounded. Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousand +thoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol. In itself it +may be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all--a clouted +shoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing. +Yet such a thing may so work upon men's silences as to fill them with +the glimmer of a divine idea. + +Other symbols there are which _have_ intrinsic value--works of art, +lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternity +working through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passing +shows. Religious symbols are the highest of all, and highest among these +stands Jesus of Nazareth. "Higher has the human Thought not yet reached: +this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, +infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew +enquired into, and anew made manifest." In other words, Jesus stands for +all that is permanently noble and permanently real in human life. + +Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time at +length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but +meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can +never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding +generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them +from the Babel of meaningless words. + +2. _Body and Spirit._--Souls are "rendered visible in bodies that took +shape and will lose it, melting into air." Thus bodies, and not spirits, +are the true apparitions, the souls being the realities which they both +reveal and hide. In fact, body is literally a garment of flesh--a +garment which the soul has for a time put on, but which it will lay +aside again. One of the greatest of all the idolatries of appearance is +our constant habit of judging one another by the attractiveness of the +bodily vesture. Many of the judgments which we pass upon our fellows +would be reversed if we trained ourselves to look through the vestures +of flesh to the men themselves--the souls that are hidden within. + +The natural expansion of this is in the general doctrine of matter and +spirit. Purely material science--science which has lost the faculty of +wonder and of spiritual perception--is no true science at all. It is but +a pair of spectacles without an eye. For all material things are but +emblems of spiritual things--shadows or images of things in the +heavens--and apart from these they have no reality at all. + +3. _Society and Social Problems._--It follows naturally that a change +must come upon our ways of regarding the relations of man to man. If +every man is indeed a temple of the divine, and therefore to be revered, +then much of our accepted estimates and standards of social judgment +will have to be abandoned. Society, as it exists, is founded on class +distinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness and +wealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me is +the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning +virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable +too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude +intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living man like." How far away +we are from all this with our mammon-worship and our fantastic social +unrealities, every student of our times must know, or at least must have +often heard. He would not have heard it so often, however, had not +Thomas Carlyle cried it out with that harsh voice of his, in this and +many others of his books. It was his gunpowder, more than any other +explosive of the nineteenth century, that broke up the immense +complacency into which half England always tends to relapse. + +He is not hopeless of the future of society. Society is the true +Phoenix, ever repeating the miracle of its resurrection from the ashes +of the former fire. There are indestructible elements in the race of +man--"organic filaments" he calls them--which bind society together, and +which ensure a future for the race after any past, however lamentable. +Those "organic filaments" are Carlyle's idea of Social Reality--the real +things which survive all revolution. There are four such realities which +ensure the future for society even when it seems extinct. + +First, there is the fact of man's brotherhood to man--a fact quite +independent of man's willingness to acknowledge that brotherhood. +Second, there is the common bond of tradition, and all our debt to the +past, which is a fact equally independent of our willingness to +acknowledge it. Third, there is the natural and inevitable fact of man's +necessity for reverencing some one above him. Obedience and reverence +are forthcoming, whenever man is in the presence of what he _ought_ to +reverence, and so hero-worship is secure. + +These three bonds of social reality are inseparable from one another. +The first, the brotherhood of man, has often been used as the watchword +of a false independence. It is only possible on the condition of +reverence and obedience for that which is higher than oneself, either in +the past or the present. "Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for +Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your +Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them +were even your only possible freedom." These three, then, are the social +realities, and all other social distinctions and conventionalities are +but clothes, to be replaced or thrown away at need. + +But there is a fourth bond of social reality--the greatest and most +powerful of all. That reality is Religion. Here, too, we must +distinguish clothes from that which they cover--forms of religion from +religion itself. Church-clothes, indeed, are as necessary as any other +clothes, and they will harm no one who remembers that they are but +clothes, and distinguishes between faith and form. The old forms are +already being discarded, yet Religion is so vital that it will always +find new forms for itself, suited to the new age. For religion, in one +form or in another, is absolutely essential to society; and, being a +grand reality, will continue to keep society from collapse. + +4. From this we pass naturally to the great and final doctrine in which +the philosophy of clothes is expounded. That doctrine, condensed into a +single sentence, is that "the whole Universe is the Garment of God." +This brings us back to the song of the _Erdgeist_ in Goethe's _Faust_:-- + + "In Being's floods, in Action's storm, + I walk and work, above, beneath, + Work and weave in endless motion! + Birth and Death, + An infinite ocean; + A seizing and giving + The fire of Living: + 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, + And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." + +This is, of course, no novelty invented by Goethe. We find it in Marius +the Epicurean, and he found it in ancient wells of Greek philosophy. +Carlyle's use of it has often been taken for Pantheism. In so mystic a +region it is impossible to expect precise theological definition, and +yet it is right to remember that Carlyle does not identify the garment +with its Wearer. The whole argument of the book is to distinguish +appearance from reality in every instance, and this is no exception. +"What is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the +'living garment of God'? O Heavens, is it in very deed He, then, that +ever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives and +loves in me?... The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house +with spectres: but godlike and my Father's." "This fair Universe, were +it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City +of God; through every star, through every grass-blade, and most +through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But +Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, +hides Him from the foolish." + +Such is some very broken sketch of this great book. It will at least +serve to recall to the memory of some readers thoughts and words which +long ago stirred their blood in youth. No volume could so fitly be +chosen as a background against which to view the modern surge of the +age-long battle. But the charm of _Sartor Resartus_ is, after all, +personal. We go back to the life-story of Teufelsdröckh, out of which +such varied and such lofty teachings sprang, and we read it over and +over again because we find in it so much that is our own story too. + + + + +LECTURE VIII + +PAGAN REACTIONS + + +In the last lecture we began the study of the modern aspects of our +subject with Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Now, in a rapid sketch, we +shall look at some of the writings which followed that great book; and, +with it as background, we shall see them in stronger relief. It is +impossible to over-estimate the importance of the influence which was +wielded by Carlyle, and especially by his _Sartor Resartus_. His was a +gigantic power, both in literature and in morals. At first, as we have +already noted, he met with neglect and ridicule in abundance, but +afterwards these passed into sheer wonder, and then into a wide and +devoted worship. Everybody felt his power, and all earnest thinkers were +seized in the strong grip of reality with which he laid hold upon his +time. + +The religious thought and faith both of England and of Scotland felt +him, but his mark was deepest upon Scotland, because of two interesting +facts. First of all, Carlyle represented that old Calvinism which had +always fitted so exactly the national character and spirit; and second, +there were in Scotland many people who, while retaining the Calvinistic +spirit, had lost touch with the old definite creed. Nothing could be +more characteristic of Carlyle than this Calvinism of the spirit which +had passed beyond the letter of the old faith. He stands like an old +Covenanter in the mist; and yet a Covenanter grasping his father's iron +sword. It is because of these two facts _Sartor Resartus_ has taken so +prominent a place in our literature. It stands for a kind of conscience +behind the manifold modern life of our day. Beneath the shrieks and the +laughter of the time we hear in it the boom of great breakers. Never +again can we forget, amidst the gaieties of any island paradise, the +solemn ocean that surrounds it. Carlyle's teaching sounds and recurs +again and again like the Pilgrims' March in _Tannhäuser_ breaking +through the overture, and rivalling until it vanquishes the music of the +Venusberg. + +Yet it was quite inevitable that there should be strong reaction from +any such work as this. To the warm blood and the poignant sense of the +beauty of the world it brought a sense of chill, a forbidding sombreness +and austerity. Carlyle's conception of Christianity was that of the +worship of sorrow; and, while the essence of his gospel was labour, yet +to many minds self-denial seemed to be no longer presented, as in the +teaching of Jesus, as a means towards the attainment of further +spiritual ends. It had become an end in itself, and one that few would +desire or feel to be justified. In the reaction it was felt that +self-development had claims upon the human spirit as well as +self-denial, and indeed that the happy instincts of life had no right to +be so winsome unless they were meant to be obeyed. The beauty of the +world could not be regarded as a mere trap for the tempting of people, +if one were to retain any worthy conception of the Powers that govern +the world. From this point of view the Carlylians appeared to enter into +life maimed. That, indeed, we all must do, as Christ told us; but they +seemed to do it like the beggars of Colombo, with a deliberate and +somewhat indecent exhibition of their wounds. + +Carlyle found many men around him pagan, worshipping the earth without +any spiritual light in them. He feared that many others were about to go +in the same direction, so he cried aloud that the earth was too small, +and that they must find a larger object of worship. For the earth he +substituted the universe, and led men's eyes out among the immensities +and eternities. Professor James tells a story of Margaret Fuller, the +American transcendentalist, having said with folded hands, "I accept the +universe," and how Carlyle, hearing this, had answered, "Gad, she'd +better!" It was this insistence upon the universe, as distinguished from +the earth, which was the note of _Sartor Resartus_. + +The reactionaries took Carlyle at his word. They said, "Yes, we shall +worship the universe"; but they went on to add that Carlyle's universe +is not universal. It is at once too vague and too austere. There are +other elements in life besides those to which he called +attention--elements very definite and not at all austere--and they too +have a place in the universe and a claim upon our acceptance. Many of +these are in every way more desirable to the type of mind that rebelled +than the aspects of the universe on which Carlyle had insisted, and so +they went out freely among these neglected elements, set them over +against his kind of idealism, and became themselves idealists of other +sorts. + +Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, found his idealism in the purely +mental region. Rossetti was the idealist of the heart, with its whole +world of emotions, and that subtle and far-reaching inter-play between +soul and body for which Carlyle had always made too little allowance. +Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw, proclaiming themselves idealists of +the social order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrines +at which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples, +but they are one in this, that each has protested against that +one-sidedness for which Carlyle stood. Yet each is a one-sided protest, +and falls again into the snare of setting the affections upon things +which are not eternal, and so wedding man to the green earth again. + +Thus we find paganism--in some quarters paganism quite openly +confessed--occupying a prominent place in our literature to-day. Before +we examine some of its aspects in detail a word or two of preliminary +warning may be permissible. It is a mistake to take the extremer forms +of this reaction too seriously, although at the present time this is +very frequently done. One must remember that such a spirit as this is to +be found in every age, and that it always creates an ephemeral +literature which imagines itself to be a lasting one. It is nothing new. +It is as old and as perennial as the complex play of the human mind and +human society. + +Another reason for not taking this phase too seriously is that it was +quite inevitable that some such reaction should follow upon the huge +solemnities of Carlyle. Just as in literature, after the classic +formality of Johnson and his contemporaries, there must come the +reaction of the Romantic School, which includes Sir Walter Scott, Byron, +and Burns; so here there must be an inevitable reaction from austerity +to a daring freedom which will take many various forms. From Carlyle's +solemnising liturgy we were bound to pass to the slang and colloquialism +of the man in the street and the woman in the modern novel. Body and +spirit are always in unstable equilibrium, and an excess of either at +once swings the fashion back to the other extreme. Carlyle had his day +largely in consequence of what one may call the eighteenth-century +glut--the Georgian society and its economics, and the Byronic element in +literature. The later swing back was as inevitable as Carlyle had been. +Perhaps it was most clearly noticed after the deaths of Browning and +Tennyson, in the late eighties and the early nineties. But both before +and since that time it has been very manifest in England. + +But beyond all these things there is the general fact that before any +literature becomes pagan the land must first have been paganised. Of +course there is always here again a reaction of mutual cause and effect +between literature and national spirit. Carlyle himself, in his doctrine +of heroes, was continually telling us that it is the personality which +produces the _zeitgeist_, and not _vice versa_. On the other hand it is +equally certain that no personality is independent of his age and the +backing he finds in it, or the response which he may enlist for his +revolt from it. Both of these are true statements of the case; as to +which is ultimate, that is the old and rather academic question of +whether the oak or the acorn comes first. We repeat that it is +impossible, in this double play of cause and effect, to say which is the +ultimate cause and which the effect. The controversy which was waged in +the nineteenth century between the schools of Buckle and Carlyle is +likely to go on indefinitely through the future. But what concerns us at +present is this, that all paganism which finds expression in a +literature has existed in the age before it found that expression. The +literature is indeed to some extent the creator of the age, but to a far +greater extent it is the expression of the age, whose creation is due to +a vast multiplicity of causes. + +Among these causes one of the foremost was political advance and +freedom--the political doctrines, and the beginnings of Socialistic +thought, which had appeared about the time when _Sartor Resartus_ was +written. The Reform Bill of 1832 tended to concentrate men's attention +upon questions of material welfare. Commercial and industrial prosperity +followed, keeping the nation busy with the earth. In very striking +language Lord Morley describes this fact, in language specially striking +as coming from so eminently progressive a man.[4] "Far the most +penetrating of all the influences that are impairing the moral and +intellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to be mentioned. The +first of them is the immense increase of material prosperity, and the +second is the immense decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. The +evil wrought by the one fills up the measure of the evil wrought by the +other. We have been, in spite of momentary declensions, on a flood-tide +of high profits and a roaring trade, and there is nothing like a roaring +trade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, +especially if they be newly acquired, in slackening moral vigour, is a +proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened by any tradition of public +duty such as lingers among the English nobles, nor as yet by any common +custom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow in +the United States. Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxury +and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed +us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and +unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and +the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for +pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element +in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over +all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, +or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered +among us the real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding +degree has been discouraged ... the sense of intellectual +responsibility.... Practically, and as a matter of history, a society is +seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals and +spirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth and +nursing the political spirit." + +The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand, +industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand the +beginnings of a Socialism equally pagan. The motto of both schools was +that a man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things that he +possesseth, that you should seek first all these things, and that the +Kingdom of God and His righteousness may be added unto you, if you have +any room for them. Make yourself secure of all these other things; seek +comfort whether you be rich or poor; make this world as agreeable to +yourself as your means will allow, and seek to increase your means of +making it still more agreeable. After you have done all that, anything +that is left over will do for your idealism. Your God can be seen to +after you have abundantly provided for the needs of your body. Nothing +could be more characteristic paganism than this, which makes material +comfort the real end of life, and all spiritual things a residual +element. It is the story which Isaiah tells, with such sublimity of +sarcasm, of the huntsman and craftsman who warms his hands and cries to +himself, "Aha! I am warm. I have seen the fire." He bakes bread and +roasts flesh, and, with the residue of the same log which he has used +for kindling his fire, he maketh a god. So this modern god of England, +when England had become materialised, was just that ancient fire-worship +and comfort-worship in its nineteenth-century phase. In the first demand +of life there is no thought of God or of idealism of any kind. These, if +they appear at all, have to be made out of what is left. "Of the residue +he maketh a god." + +It is by insidious degrees that materialism invades a nation's life. At +first it attacks the externals, appearing mainly in the region of work, +wealth, and comfort. But, unless some check is put upon its progress, it +steadily works its way to the central depths, attacking love and sorrow, +and changing them to sensuality and cynicism. Then the nation's day is +over, and its men and women are lost souls. Many instances might be +quoted in which this progress has actually been made in the literature +of England. At present we are only pointing to the undoubted fact that +the forces of materialism have been at work among us. If proof of this +were needed, nothing could afford it more clearly than our loss of peace +and dignity in modern society. Many costly luxuries have become +necessities, and they have increased the pace of life to a rush and fury +which makes business a turmoil and social life a fever. A symbolic +embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the motor car and the aeroplane +as they are often used. These indeed need not be ministers of paganism. +The glory of swift motion and the mounting up on wings as eagles reach +very near to the spiritual, if not indeed across its borderland, as +exhilarating and splendid stimuli to the human spirit. But, on the other +hand, they may be merely instruments for gratifying that insane human +restlessness which is but the craving for new sensations. Along the +whole line of our commercial and industrial prosperity there runs one +great division. There are some who, in the midst of all change, have +preserved their old spiritual loyalties, and there are others who have +substituted novelty for loyalty. These are the idealists and the pagans +of the twentieth century. + +Another potent factor in the making of the new times was the scientific +advance which has made so remarkable a difference to the whole outlook +of man upon the earth. Darwin's great discovery is perhaps the most +epoch-making fact in science that has yet appeared upon the earth. The +first apparent trend of evolution seemed to be an entirely materialistic +reaction. This was due to the fact that believers in the spiritual had +identified with their spirituality a great deal that was unnecessary and +merely casual. If the balloon on which people mount up above the earth +is any such theory as that of the six days' creation, it is easy to see +how when that balloon is pricked the spiritual flight of the time +appears to have ended on the ground. + +Of course all that has long passed by. Of late years Haeckel has been +crying out that all his old friends have deserted him and have gone over +to the spiritual side--a cry which reminds one of the familiar juryman +who finds his fellows the eleven most obstinate men he has ever known. +The conception of evolution has long since been taken over by the +idealists, and has become perhaps the most splendidly Christian and +idealistic idea of the new age. When Darwin published his _Origin of +Species_, Hegel cried out in Germany, "Darwin has destroyed design." +To-day Darwin and Hegel stand together as the prophets of the +unconquerable conviction of the reality of spirit. From the days of +Huxley and Haeckel we have passed over to the days of Bergson and Sir +Oliver Lodge. + +The effect of all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenon +to watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which has +invaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has become +an atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one were +to say to any company of British people, one by one, that they were +pagans, doubtless many of them would resent it, and yet more or less it +would be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for every +one of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation. +Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story of +Aaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Moses +rebuked him, said naïvely, "There came out this calf." That exactly +describes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic example +of spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it. +Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It was +the Melchizedek among cattle--without father, without mother, without +descent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning of +days or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and there +comes out this calf--it is a way such calves have. + +Thus it is with our modern paganism. We all of us want to be idealists, +and we sometimes try, but there are hidden causes which draw us back +again to the earth. These causes lie in the opportunities that occur one +by one: in politics, in industrial and commercial matters, in scientific +theories, or by mere reaction. The earth is more habitable than once it +was, and we all desire it. It masters us, and so the golden calf +appears. + +We shall now glance very rapidly at a few out of the many literary +forces of our day in which we may see the various reactions from +Carlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenth +century in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, but +it lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horribly +shocked when George Eliot published _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam +Bede_ in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and its +respectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. It +was afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship of +respectability comes to be a very dangerous kind of worship, and its +idol is perhaps the most formidable of all the gods. + +Meanwhile that glorious band of idealists, whose chief representatives +were Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin, to be joined later by George +Meredith, were fighting paganism in the spirit of Arthur's knights, keen +to drive the heathen from the land. Tennyson, the most popular of them +all, probably achieved more than any other in this conflict. Ruskin was +too contradictory and bewildering, and so failed of much of his effect. +Browning and Meredith at first were reckoned unintelligible, and had to +wait their day for a later understanding. Still, all these, and many +others of lesser power than theirs, were knights of the ideal, warring +against the domination of dead and unthinking respectability. + +Matthew Arnold came upon the scene, with his great protest against the +preponderance of single elements in life, and his plea for wholeness. In +this demand for whole and not one-sided views of the world, he is more +nearly akin to Goethe than perhaps any other writer of our time. His +great protest was against the worship of machinery, which he believed to +be taking the place of its own productions in England. He conceived of +the English people as being under a general delusion which led them to +mistake means for ends. He spoke of them as "Barbarians, Philistines, +and Populace," according to the rank in life they held; and accused them +of living for such ends as field sports, the disestablishment of the +Church of England, and the drinking of beer. He pointed out that, so far +as real culture is concerned, these can at best be but means towards +other ends, and can never be in themselves sufficient to satisfy the +human soul. He protested against Carlyle, although in the main thesis +the two are entirely at one. "I never liked Carlyle," he said; "he +always seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle." He took Carlyle +for the representative of what he called "Hebraism," and he desired to +balance the undue preponderance of that by insisting upon the necessity +of the Hellenistic element in culture. Both of these are methods of +idealism, but Arnold protested that the human spirit is greater than any +of the forces that bear it onwards; and that after you have said all +that Carlyle has to say, there still remains on the other side the +intellect, with rights of its own. He did not exclude conscience, for he +held that conduct made up three-fourths of life. He was the idealist of +a whole culture as against all one-sidedness; but curiously, by flinging +himself upon the opposite side from Carlyle, he became identified in the +popular mind with what it imagined to be Hellenic paganism. This was +partly due to his personal idiosyncrasies, his fastidiousness of taste, +and the somewhat cold style of the _exquisite_ in expression. These +deceived many of his readers, and kept them from seeing how great and +prophetic a message it was that came to England beneath Arnold's +mannerisms. + +Dante Gabriel Rossetti appeared, and many more in his train. He, more +perfectly than any other, expressed the marriage of sense and soul in +modern English poetry. He was the idealist of emotion, who, in the +far-off dim borderlands between sense and spirit, still preserved the +spiritual search, nor ever allowed himself to be completely drugged with +the vapours of the region. There were others, however, who tended +towards decadence. Some of Rossetti's readers, whose sole interest lay +in the lower world, claimed him as well as the rest for their guides, +and set a fashion which is not yet obsolete. There is no lack of +solemnity among these. The scent of sandalwood and of incense is upon +their work, and you feel as you read them that you are worshipping in +some sort of a temple with strange and solemnising rites. Indeed they +insist upon this, and assiduously cultivate a kind of lethargic and +quasi-religious manner which is supposed to be very impressive. But +their temple is a pagan temple, and their worship, however much they may +borrow for it the language of a more spiritual cult, is of the earth, +earthy. + +Mr. Thomas Hardy was the inevitable sequel to George Eliot. Everybody +knows how beautiful and how full of charm his lighter writings can be; +and in his more tragic work there is much that is true, terrifically +expressed. Yet he has got upon the wrong side of the world, and can +never see beyond the horror of its tragedy. Consequently in him we have +another form of paganism, not this time that which the seductive earth +with its charms is suggesting, but the hopeless paganism which sees the +earth only in its bitterness. In _The Return of the Native_ he says: +"What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their Aeschylus +imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned revelling in the +general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects +of natural laws, and see the quandary man is in by their operation." It +is no wonder that he who expressed the spirit of the modern age in these +words should have closed his well-known novel with the bitter saying +that the upper powers had finished their sport with _Tess_. "To have +lost the God-like conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have +acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper +which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, +though disappointed, forswears compromise." Here is obviously a man who +would love the highest if he saw it, who would fain welcome and proclaim +the ideals if he could only find them on the earth; but who has found +instead the bitterness of darkness, the sarcasm and the sensationalism +of an age that the gods have left. He is too honest to shout _pour +encourager les autres_ when his own heart has no hope in it; and his +greater books express the wail and despair of our modern paganism. + +Breaking away from him and all such pessimistic voices came the glad +soul of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose old-fashioned revelling in the +situation is the exact counter-blast to Hardy's modernism, and is one of +those perennial human things which are ever both new and old. It is not +that Stevenson has not seen the other side of life. He has seen it and +he has suffered from it deeply, both in himself and in others; yet still +indomitably he "clings to his paddle." "I believe," he says, "in an +ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still +believe it." + +Then there came the extraordinary spirit of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. At +first sight some things that he has written appear pagan enough, and +have been regarded as such. The God of Christians seems to inhabit and +preside over an amazing Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeed +throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a +most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, +during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, +they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the +pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, +was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds +us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic +pagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He is +everything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, telling +of days far in the future, can make them as living and real as the hours +of to-day. It was the late Professor James who said of him, "Kipling is +elemental; he is down among the roots of all things. He is universal +like the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be able +to get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under a +pyramid." In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be most +interesting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether his +permanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wild +Titanic paganism, or of that ancient Calvinistic God whom Macandrew +worships in the temple of his engine-room. + +We now come to a later phase, for which we may take as representative +writers the names of Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Science, for +the meantime at least, has disentangled herself from her former +materialism, and a nobly ideal and spiritual view of science has come +again. It may even be hoped that the pagan view will never be able again +to assert itself with the same impressiveness as in the past. But social +conditions are to-day in the throes of their strife, and from that +quarter of the stage there appear such writers as those we are now to +consider. They both present themselves as idealists. Mr. Wells has +published a long volume about his religion, and Mr. Shaw prefaces his +plays with essays as long or even longer than the plays themselves, +dealing with all manner of the most serious subjects. The surface +flippancy both of prefaces and plays has repelled some readers in spite +of all their cleverness, and tended towards an unjust judgment that he +is upsetting the universe with his tongue in his cheek all the time. +Later one comes to realise that this is not the case, that Mr. Shaw does +really take himself and his message seriously, and from first to last +conceives himself as the apostle of a tremendous creed. Among many other +things which they have in common, these writers have manifested the +tendency to regard all who ever went before them as, in a certain sense, +thieves and robbers; at least they give one the impression that the +present has little need for long lingering over the past. Mr. Wells, for +instance, cannot find words strong enough to describe the emancipation +of the modern young man from Mr. Kipling with his old-fashioned +injunction, "Keep ye the law." There are certain laws which Mr. Wells +proclaims on the housetops that he sees no necessity for keeping, and so +Mr. Kipling is buried under piles of opprobrium--"the tumult and the +bullying, the hysteria and the impatience, the incoherence and the +inconsistency," and so on. As for Mr. Bernard Shaw, we all know his own +view of the relation in which he stands to William Shakespeare. + +Mr. Wells has written many interesting books, and much could be said of +him from the point of view of science, or of style, or of social theory. +That, however, is not our present concern, either with him or with Mr. +Shaw. It is as idealist or pagan influences that we are discussing them +and the others. Mr. Wells boasts a new morality in his books, and Mr. +Shaw in his plays. One feels the same startling sense of a _volte face_ +in morality as a young recruit is said to do when he finds all the +precepts of his childhood reversed by the ethics of his first +battlefield. Each in his own way falls back upon crude and primitive +instincts and justifies them.[5] + +Mr. Wells takes the change with zest, and seems to treat the adoption of +a new morality in the same light-hearted spirit as he might consider the +buying of a new hat. From the first he has a terrifying way of dealing +familiarly with vast things. Somehow he reminds one of those jugglers +who, for a time, toss heavy balls about, and then suddenly astonish the +audience by introducing a handkerchief, which flies lightly among its +ponderous companions. So Mr. Wells began to juggle with worlds. He has +latterly introduced that delicate thing, the human soul and conscience, +into the play, and you see it precariously fluttering among the +immensities of leaping planets. He persuades himself that the common +morality has not gripped people, and that they really don't believe in +it at all. He aims at a way of thinking which will be so great as to be +free from all commonplace and convention. Honesty is to be practically +the only virtue in the new world. If you say what you mean, you will +earn the right to do anything else that you please. Mr. Wells in this is +the counterpart of those plain men in private life so well known to us +all, who perpetually remind us that they are people who call a spade a +spade. Such men are apt to interpret this dictum as a kind of charter +which enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that may +occur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us fail +to find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may be +impressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in it +which masquerades as immensity. + +This smallness is due first of all to sheer ignorance. When a man tells +us that he prefers Oliver Goldsmith to Jesus Christ, he merely shows +that upon the subject he is discussing he is not educated, and does not +know what he is talking about. A second source of pettiness is to be +found in the mistake of imagining that mere smartness of diction and +agility of mind are signs of intellectual keenness. The mistake is as +obvious as it is unfortunate. Smartness can be learned with perhaps the +least expenditure of intellect that is demanded by any literary exercise +of the present day. It is a temptation which a certain kind of clever +man always has to face, and it only assumes a serious aspect when it +leads the unthinking to mistake it for a new and formidable element of +opposition to things which he has counted sacred. + +The whole method is not so very subtle after all. Pick out a vice or a +deformity. Do not trouble to acquaint yourself too intimately with the +history of morals in the past, but boldly canonise your vice or your +deformity with ritual of epigram and paradox. Proclaim loudly and +eloquently that this is your faith, and give it a pathetic aspect by +dwelling tenderly upon any trouble which it may be likely to cost those +who venture to adopt it. It is not perhaps a very admirable way to deal +with such subjects. The whole world of tradition and the whole +constitution of human nature are against you. Men have wrestled with +these things for thousands of years, and they have come to certain +conclusions which the experience of all time has enforced upon them. By +a dash of bold imagination you may discount all that laborious past, and +leave an irrevocable stain upon the purity of the mind of a generation. +Doubtless you will have a following--such teachers have ever had those +who followed them--and yet time is always on the side of great +traditions. If enlightened thought has in any respect to change them, it +changes them reverently, and knowing what their worth has been. Sooner +or later all easy ignoring of them is condemned as sheer impertinence. +There is singularly little reason for being impressed by this hasty, +romantic, and loud-sounding crusade against Christian morality and its +Ideal. + +In Mr. George Bernard Shaw we have a very different man. Nobody denies +Mr. Shaw's cleverness, least of all Mr. Shaw himself. He is depressingly +clever. He exhibits the spectacle of a man trying to address his +audience while standing on his head--and succeeding. + +He has been singularly fortunate in his biographer, Mr. Chesterton, and +one of the things that make this biography such pleasing reading is the +personal element that runs through it all. The introduction is +characteristic and delightful: "Most people either say that they agree +with Bernard Shaw, or that they do not understand him. I am the only +person who understands him, and I do not agree with him." It is not +unnatural that he should take his friend a little more seriously than +most of us will be prepared to do. It really is a big thing to stand on +the shoulders of William Shakespeare, and we shall need time to consider +it before we subscribe to the statue. + +For there is here an absolutely colossal egotism. There are certain +newspapers which usually begin with a note of the hours of sunrise and +sunset. During the recent coal strike, some of these newspapers inserted +first of all a notice that they would not be sent out so early as usual, +and then cheered our desponding hearts by assuring us that the sun rises +at 5.37 notwithstanding--as if by permission of the newspaper. Mr. Shaw +somehow gives us a similar impression. Most things in the universe seem +to go on by his permission, and some of them he is not going to allow to +go on much longer. He will tilt without the slightest vestige of +humility against any existing institution, and the tourney is certainly +one of the most entertaining and most extraordinary of our time. + +No one can help admiring Mr. Shaw. The dogged persistence which has +carried him, unflinching, through adversity into his present fame, +without a single compromise or hesitation, is, apart altogether from the +question of the truth of his opinions, an admirable quality in a man. We +cannot but admire his immense forcefulness and agility, the fertility of +his mind, and the swiftness of its play. But we utterly refuse to fall +down and worship him on account of these. Indeed the kind of awe with +which he is regarded in some quarters seems to be due rather to the +eccentricities of his expression than to the greatness of his message or +the brilliance of his achievements. + +There is no question of his earnestness. The Puritan is deep in Mr. +Shaw, in his very blood. He has indeed given to the term Puritan a +number of unexpected meanings, and yet no one can justly question his +right to it. His _Plays for Puritans_ are not exceptional in this +matter, for all his work is done in the same spirit. His favourite +author is John Bunyan, about whom he tells us that he claims him as the +precursor of Nietzsche, and that in his estimation John Bunyan's life +was one long tilt against morality and respectability. The claim is +sufficiently grotesque, yet there is a sense in which he has a right to +John Bunyan, and is in the same line as Thomas Carlyle. He is trying +sincerely to speak the truth and get it spoken. He appears as another of +the destroyers of shams, the breakers of idols. He may indeed be claimed +as a pagan, and his influence will certainly preponderate in that +direction; and yet there is a strain of high idealism which runs +perplexingly through it all. + +The explanation seems to be, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, that the man is +incomplete. There are certain elementary things which, if he had ever +seen them as other people do, would have made many of his positions +impossible. "Shaw is wrong," says Mr. Chesterton, "about nearly all the +things one learns early in life while one is still simple." Among those +things which he has never seen are the loyalties involved in love, +country, and religion. The most familiar proof of this in regard to +religion is his extraordinary tirade against the Cross of Calvary. It is +one of the most amazing passages in print, so far as either taste or +judgment is concerned. It is significant that in this very passage he +actually refers to the "stable at Bethany," and the slip seems to +indicate from what a distance he is discussing Christianity. It is +possible for any of us to measure himself against the Cross and Him who +hung upon it, only when we have travelled very far away from them. When +we are sufficiently near, we know ourselves to be infinitesimal in +comparison. Nor in regard to home, and all that sanctifies and defends +it, does Mr. Shaw seem ever to have understood the real morality that is +in the heart of the average man. The nauseating thing which he quotes as +morality is a mere caricature of that vital sense of honour and +imperative conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still alive +among us. "My dear," he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, your +conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody +names." Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of that +instinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of its +expressions, has yet proved its moral and practical worth during many a +century of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this, +because those who discard patriotism have only to state their case +clearly in order to discredit it. + +We do not fear greatly the permanent influence of these fundamental +errors. The great heart of the civilised world still beats true, and is +healthy enough to disown so maimed an account of human nature. Yet there +is danger in any such element in literature as this. Mr. Shaw's +biographer has virtually told us that in these matters he is but a child +in whom "Irish innocence is peculiar and fundamental." The pleadings of +the nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly very +touching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes him +for, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views of +libertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuse +any such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism and +his childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because more +piquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the ten +commandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is always +considerable. If a child is playing in a powder magazine, the more +childish and innocent he is the more dangerous he will prove; and the +explosion, remember, will be just as violent if lit by a child's hand as +if it had been lit by an anarchist's. We have in England borne long +enough with people trifling with the best intentions among explosives, +moral and social, and we must consider our own safety and that of +society when we are judging them. + +As to the relation in which Mr. Shaw stands to paganism, his relations +to anything are so "extensive and peculiar" that they are always +difficult to define. But the later phase of his work, which has become +famous in connection with the word "Superman," is due in large part to +Nietzsche, whose strange influence has reversed the Christian ideals for +many disciples on both sides of the North Sea. So this idealist, who, in +_Major Barbara_, protests so vigorously against paganism, has become one +of its chief advocates and expositors. One of his characters somewhere +says, "I wish I could get a country to live in where the facts were not +brutal and the dreams were not unreal." It may be admitted that there +are many brutal facts and perhaps more unreal dreams; but, for our part, +that which keeps us from becoming pagans is that we have found facts +that are not brutal and dreams which are the realest things in life. + + + + +LECTURE IX + +MR. G.K. CHESTERTON'S POINT OF VIEW + + +There is on record the case of a man who, after some fourteen years of +robust health, spent a week in bed. His illness was apparently due to a +violent cold, but he confessed, on medical cross-examination, that the +real and underlying cause was the steady reading of Mr. Chesterton's +books for several days on end. + +No one will accuse Mr. Chesterton of being an unhealthy writer. On the +contrary, he is among the most wholesome writers now alive. He is +irresistibly exhilarating, and he inspires his readers with a constant +inclination to rise up and shout. Perhaps his danger lies in that very +fact, and in the exhaustion of the nerves which such sustained +exhilaration is apt to produce. But besides this, he, like so many of +our contemporaries, has written such a bewildering quantity of +literature on such an amazing variety of subjects, that it is no wonder +if sometimes the reader follows panting, through the giddy mazes of the +dance. He is the sworn enemy of specialisation, as he explains in his +remarkable essay on "The Twelve Men." The subject of the essay is the +British jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants a +library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle of +that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done +which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing +round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of +Christianity." For the judging of a criminal or the propagation of the +gospel, it is necessary to procure inexpert people--people who come to +their task with a virgin eye, and see not what the expert (who has lost +his freshness) sees, but the human facts of the case. So Mr. Chesterton +insists upon not being a specialist, takes the world for his parish, and +wanders over it at will. + +This being so, it is obvious that he cannot possibly remember all that +he has said, and must necessarily abound in inconsistencies and even +contradictions. Yet that is by no means always unconscious, but is due +in many instances to the very complex quality and subtle habit of his +mind. Were he by any chance to read this statement he would deny it +fiercely, but we would repeat it with perfect calmness, knowing that he +would probably have denied any other statement we might have made upon +the subject. His subtlety is partly due to the extraordinary rapidity +with which his mind leaps from one subject to another, partly to the +fact that he is so full of ideas that many of his essays (like Mr. +Bernard Shaw's plays) find it next to impossible to get themselves +begun. He is so full of matter that he never seems to be able to say +what he wants to say, until he has said a dozen other things first. + +The present lecture is mainly concerned with his central position, as +that is expounded in _Heretics_ and _Orthodoxy_. Our task is not to +criticise, nor even to any considerable extent to characterise his +views, but to state them as accurately as we can. It is a remarkable +phenomenon of our time that all our literary men are bent on giving us +such elaborate and solemnising confessions of their faith. It is an age +notorious for its aversion to dogma, and yet here we have Mr. Huxley, +Mr. Le Gallienne, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Wells (to mention only a few of many), +who in this creedless age proclaim in the market-place, each his own +private and brand-new creed. + +Yet Mr. Chesterton has perhaps a special right to such a proclamation. +He believes in creeds vehemently. And, besides, the spiritual biography +of a man whose mental development has been so independent and so +interesting as his, must be well worth knowing. Amid the many weird +theologies of our time we have met with nothing so startling, so +arresting, and so suggestive since Mr. Mallock published his _New +Republic_ and his _Contemporary Superstitions_. There is something +common to the two points of view. To some, they come as emancipating and +most welcome reinforcements, relieving the beleaguered citadel of faith. +But others, who differ widely from them both, may yet find in them so +much to stimulate thought and to rehabilitate strongholds held +precariously, as to awaken both appreciation and gratitude. + +Mr. Chesterton's political opinions do not concern us here. It is a +curious fact, of which innumerable illustrations may be found in past +and present writers, that political radicalism so often goes along with +conservative theology, and _vice versa_. Mr. Chesterton is no exception +to the rule. His orthodoxy in matters of faith we shall find to be +altogether above suspicion. His radicalism in politics is never long +silent. He openly proclaims himself at war with Carlyle's favourite +dogma, "The tools to him who can use them." "The worst form of slavery," +he tells us, "is that which is called Cæsarism, or the choice of some +bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means +that men choose a representative, not because he represents them but +because he does not." And if it be answered that the worst form of +cruelty to a nation or to an individual is that abuse of the principle +of equality which is for ever putting incompetent people into false +positions, he has his reply ready: "The one specially and peculiarly +un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man should +rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is +heathen." + +But this, and much else of its kind, although he works it into his +general scheme of thinking, is not in any sense an essential part of +that scheme. Our subject is his place in the conflict between the +paganism and the idealism of the times, and it is a sufficiently large +one. But before we come to that, we must consider another matter, which +we shall find to be intimately connected with it. + +That other matter is his habit of paradox, which is familiar to all his +readers. It is a habit of style, but before it became that it was +necessarily first a habit of mind, deeply ingrained. He disclaims it so +often that we cannot but feel that he protesteth too much. He +acknowledges it, and explains that "paradox simply means a certain +defiant joy which belongs to belief." Whether the explanation is or is +not perfectly intelligible, it must occur to every one that a writer who +finds it necessary to give so remarkable an explanation can hardly be +justified in his astonishment when people of merely average intelligence +confess themselves puzzled. His aversion to Walter Pater--almost the +only writer whom he appears consistently to treat with disrespect--is +largely due to Pater's laborious simplicity of style. But it was a +greater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed out +that the language which appealed to the understanding of the common man +was also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton's +habit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. He +has a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he will never understand. + +Paradox, when it has become a habit, is always dangerous. Introduced on +rare and fitting occasions, it may be powerful and even convincing, but +when it is repeated constantly and upon all sorts of subjects, we cannot +but dispute its right and question its validity. Its effect is not +conviction but vertigo. It is like trying to live in a house constructed +so as to be continually turning upside down. After a certain time, +during which terror and dizziness alternate, the most indulgent reader +is apt to turn round upon the builder of such a house with some +asperity. And, after all, the general judgment may be right and Mr. +Chesterton wrong. + +Upon analysis, his paradox reveals as its chief and most essential +element a certain habit of mind which always tends to see and appreciate +the reverse of accepted opinions. So much is this the case that it is +possible in many instances to anticipate what he will say upon a +subject. It is on record that one reader, coming to his chapter on Omar +Khayyám, said to himself, "Now he will be saying that Omar is not drunk +enough"; and he went on to read, "It is not poetical drinking, which is +joyous and instinctive; it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic as +an investment, as unsavoury as a dose of camomile." Similarly we are +told that Browning is only felt to be obscure because he is too +pellucid. Such apparent contradictoriness is everywhere in his work, but +along with it goes a curious ingenuity and nimbleness of mind. He cannot +think about anything without remembering something else, apparently out +of all possible connection with it, and instantly discovering some +clever idea, the introduction of which will bring the two together. +Christianity "is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like +a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the +pattern of the cross." + +In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitute +almost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes. One +such mechanical process is the play with the derivatives of words. Thus +he reminds us that the journalist is, in the literal and derivative +sense, a _journalist_, while the missionary is an eternalist. Similarly +"lunatic," "evolution," "progress," "reform," are etymologically +tortured into the utterance of the most forcible and surprising truths. +This curious word-play was a favourite method with Ruskin; and it has +the disadvantage in Mr. Chesterton which it had in the earlier critic. +It appears too clever to be really sound, although it must be confessed +that it frequently has the power of startling us into thoughts that are +valuable and suggestive. + +Another equally simple process is that of simply reversing sentences and +ideas. "A good bush needs no wine." "Shakespeare (in a weak moment, I +think) said that all the world is a stage. But Shakespeare acted on the +much finer principle that a stage is all the world." Perhaps the most +brilliant example that could be quoted is the plea for the combination +of gentleness and ferocity in Christian character. When the lion lies +down with the lamb, it is constantly assumed that the lion becomes +lamblike. "But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of +the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion, instead of the +lion eating the lamb." + +By this process it is possible to attain results which are +extraordinarily brilliant in themselves and fruitful in suggestion. It +is a process not difficult to learn, but the trouble is that you have to +live up to it afterwards, and defend many curious propositions which may +have been arrived at by its so simple means. Take, for instance, the +sentence about the stage being all the world. That is undeniably clever, +and it contains an idea. But it is a haphazard idea, arrived at by a +short-cut, and not by the high road of reasonable thinking. Sometimes a +truth may be reached by such a short-cut, but such paradoxes are +occasionally no better than chartered errors. + +Yet even when they are that, it may be said in their favour that they +startle us into thought. And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as a +quickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers. Moreover, by +adopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkable +thing. He has proved what an astonishing number of paradoxical surprises +there actually are, lying hidden beneath the apparent commonplace of the +world. Every really clever paradox astonishes us not merely with the +sense of the cleverness of him who utters it, but with the sense of how +many strange coincidences exist around us, and how many sentences, when +turned outside in, will yield new and startling truths. However much we +may suspect that the performance we are watching is too clever to be +trustworthy, yet after all the world does appear to lend itself to such +treatment. + +There is, for example, the paradox of the love of the world--"Somehow +one must love the world without being worldly." Again, "Courage is +almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking +the form of a readiness to die." The martyr differs from the suicide in +that he cherishes a disdain of death, while the motive of the suicide is +a disdain of life. Charity, too, is a paradox, for it means "one of two +things--pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people." +Similarly Christian humility has a background of unheard-of arrogance, +and Christian liberty is possible only to the most abject bondsmen in +the world. + +This long consideration of Mr. Chesterton's use of paradox is more +relevant to our present subject than it may seem. For, curiously enough, +the habit of paradox has been his way of entrance into faith. At the age +of sixteen he was a complete agnostic, and it was the reading of Huxley +and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh which brought him back to orthodox +theology. For, as he read, he found that Christianity was attacked on +all sides, and for all manner of contradictory reasons; and this +discovery led him to the conviction that Christianity must be a very +extraordinary thing, abounding in paradox. But he had already discovered +the abundant element of paradox in life; and when he analysed the two +sets of paradoxes he found them to be precisely the same. So he became a +Christian. + +It may seem a curious way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who are +accustomed to regard the strait gate as of Gothic architecture may be +shocked to find a man professing to have entered through this +Alhambra-like portal. But it is a lesson we all have to learn sooner or +later, that there are at least eleven gates besides our own, and that +every man has to enter by that which he finds available. Paradox is the +only gate by which Mr. Chesterton could get into any place, and the +Kingdom of Heaven is no exception to the rule. + +His account of this entrance is characteristic. It is given in the first +chapter of his _Orthodoxy_. There was an English yachtsman who set out +upon a voyage, miscalculated his course, and discovered what he thought +to be a new island in the South Seas. It transpired afterwards that he +had run up his flag on the pavilion of Brighton, and that he had +discovered England. That yachtsman is Mr. Chesterton himself. Sailing +the great sea of moral and spiritual speculation, he discovered a land +of facts and convictions to which his own experience had guided him. On +that strange land he ran up his flag, only to make the further and more +astonishing discovery that it was the Christian faith at which he had +arrived. Nietzsche had preached to him, as to Mr. Bernard Shaw, his +great precept, "Follow your own will." But when Mr. Chesterton obeyed he +arrived, not at Superman, but at the ordinary old-fashioned morality. +That, he found, is what we like best in our deepest hearts, and desire +most. So he too "discovered England." + +He begins, like Margaret Fuller, with the fundamental principle of +accepting the universe. The thing we know best and most directly is +human nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediately +known and knowable. Like R.L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and +comically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre is +this man," says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, +lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, +growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair +like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing +to set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier, known as his +fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes!" In like manner Mr. +Chesterton discovers man--that appalling mass of paradox and +contradiction--and it is the supreme discovery in any spiritual search. + +Having discovered the fundamental fact of human nature, he at once gives +in his allegiance to it. "Our attitude towards life can be better +expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of +criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, +it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world +is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is +miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the +turret, and the more miserable it is, the less we should leave it." + +There is a splendid courage and heartiness in his complete acceptance of +life and the universe. In a time when clever people are so busy +criticising life that they are in danger of forgetting that they have to +live it, so busy selecting such parts of it as suit their taste that +they ignore the fact that the other parts are there, he ignores nothing +and wisely accepts instead of criticising. Mr. Bernard Shaw, as we have +seen, will consent to tolerate the universe _minus_ the three loyalties +to the family, the nation, and God. Mr. Chesterton has no respect +whatever for any such mutilated scheme of human life. His view of the +institution of the family is full of wholesome common sense. He +perceives the immense difficulties that beset all family life, and he +accepts them with immediate and unflinching loyalty, as essential parts +of our human task. His views on patriotism belong to the region of +politics and do not concern us here. In regard to religion, he finds the +modern school amalgamating everything in characterless masses of +generalities. They deny the reality of sin, and in matters of faith +generally they have put every question out of focus until the whole +picture is blurred and vague. He attacks this way of dealing with +religion in one of his most amusing essays, "The Orthodox Barber." The +barber has been sarcastic about the new shaving--presumably in reference +to M. Gillett's excellent invention. "'It seems you can shave yourself +with anything--with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker' (here I +began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) 'or a shovel +or a----' Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothing +about the matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetorical +vein. 'Or a button-hook,' I said, 'or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram +or a piston-rod----' He resumed, refreshed with this assistance, 'Or a +curtain-rod or a candlestick or a----' 'Cow-catcher,' I suggested +eagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. Then I +asked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thing +eloquently and at length. 'The funny part of it is,' he said, 'that the +thing isn't new at all. It's been talked about ever since I was a boy, +and long before.'" Mr. Chesterton rejoins in a long and eloquent and +most amusing sermon, the following extracts from which are not without +far-reaching significance. + +"'What you say reminds me in some dark and dreamy fashion of something +else. I recall it especially when you tell me, with such evident +experience and sincerity, that the new shaving is not really new. My +friend, the human race is always trying this dodge of making everything +entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it +shifts on to another.... It would be nice if we could be shaved without +troubling anybody. It would be nicer still if we could go unshaved +without annoying anybody-- + + "'But, O wise friend, chief Barber of the Strand, + Brother, nor you nor I have made the world. + +Whoever made it, who is wiser, and we hope better than we, made it under +strange limitations, and with painful conditions of pleasure.... But +every now and then men jump up with the new something or other and say +that everything can be had without sacrifice, that bad is good if you +are only enlightened, and that there is no real difference between being +shaved and not being shaved. The difference, they say, is only a +difference of degree; everything is evolutionary and relative. +Shavedness is immanent in man.... I have been profoundly interested in +what you have told me about the New Shaving. Have you ever heard of a +thing called the New Theology?' He smiled and said that he had not." + +In contrast with all this, it is Mr. Chesterton's conviction that the +facts must be unflinchingly and in their entirety accepted. With +characteristic courage he goes straight to the root of the matter and +begins with the fact of sin. "If it be true (as it certainly is) that a +man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious +philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the +existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union +between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to +think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat." It is as if +he said, Here you have direct and unmistakable experience. A man knows +his sin as he knows himself. He may explain it in either one way or +another way. He may interpret the universe accordingly in terms either +of heaven or of hell. But the one unreasonable and impossible thing to +do is to deny the experience itself. + +It is thus that he treats the question of faith all along the line. If +you are going to be a Christian, or even fairly to judge Christianity, +you must accept the whole of Christ's teaching, with all its +contradictions, paradoxes, and the rest. Some men select his charity, +others his social teaching, others his moral relentlessness, and so on, +and reject all else. Each one of these aspects of the Christian faith is +doubtless very interesting, but none of them by itself is an adequate +representation of Christ. "They have torn the soul of Christ into silly +strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by +His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His +garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the +coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout." + +The characteristic word for Mr. Chesterton and his attitude to life is +_vitality_. He has been seeking for human nature, and he has found it at +last in Christian idealism. But having found it, he will allow no +compromise in its acceptance. It is life he wants, in such wholeness as +to embrace every element of human nature. And he finds that Christianity +has quickened and intensified life all along the line. It is the great +source of vitality, come that men might have life and that they might +have it more abundantly. He finds an essential joy and riot in creation, +a "tense and secret festivity." And Christianity corresponds to that +riot. "The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while +it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to +give room for good things to run wild." It has let loose the wandering, +masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or another +of them shall run wild, but all of them together. The ideal of wholeness +which Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass of +theories, but a world of living things. Christ will put a check on none +of the really genuine elements in human nature. In Him there is no +compromise. His love and His wrath are both burning. All the separate +elements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimate +way of peace and safety. The various colours of life must not be mixed +but kept distinct. The red and white of passion and purity must not be +blended into the insipid pink of a compromising and consistent +respectability. They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazing +Cross of St. George on its shield of white. + +Chaucer's "Daisy" is one of the greatest conceptions in all poetry. It +has stood for centuries as the emblem of pure and priceless womanhood, +with its petals of snowy white and its heart of gold. Mr. Chesterton +once made a discovery that sent him wild with joy-- + + "Then waxed I like the wind because of this, + And ran like gospel and apocalypse + From door to door, with wild, anarchic lips, + Crying the very blasphemy of bliss." + +The discovery was that "the Daisy has a ring of red." Purity is not the +enemy of passion; nor must passion and purity be so toned down and blent +with one another, as to give a neutral result. Both must remain, and +both in full brilliance, the virgin white and the passionate blood-red +ring. + +In the present age of reason, the cry is all for tolerance, and for +redefinition which will remove sharp contrasts and prove that everything +means the same as everything else. In such an age a doctrine like this +seems to have a certain barbaric splendour about it, as of a crusader +risen from the dead. But Mr. Chesterton is not afraid of the +consequences of his opinions. If rationalism opposes his presentation of +Christianity, he will ride full tilt against reason. In recent years, +from the time of Newman until now, there has been a recurring habit of +discounting reason in favour of some other way of approach to truth and +life. Certainly Mr. Chesterton's attack on reason is as interesting as +any that have gone before it, and it is even more direct. Even on such a +question as the problem of poverty he frankly prefers imagination to +study. In art he demands instinctiveness, and has a profound suspicion +of anybody who is conscious of possessing the artistic temperament. As a +guide to truth he always would follow poetry in preference to logic. He +is never tired of attacking rationality, and for him anything which is +rationalised is destroyed in the process. + +In one of his most provokingly unanswerable sallies, he insists that the +true home of reason is the madhouse. "The madman is not the man who has +lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except +his reason." When we say that a man is mad, we do not mean that he is +unable to conduct a logical argument. On the contrary, any one who knows +madmen knows that they are usually most acute and ingeniously consistent +in argument. They isolate some one fixed idea, and round that they build +up a world that is fiercely and tremendously complete. Every detail fits +in, and the world in which they live is not, as is commonly supposed, a +world of disconnected and fantastic imaginations, but one of iron-bound +and remorseless logic. No task is more humiliating, nor more likely to +shake one's sense of security in fundamental convictions, than that of +arguing out a thesis with a lunatic. + +Further, beneath this rationality there is in the madman a profound +belief in himself. Most of us regard with respect those who trust their +own judgment more than we find ourselves able to trust ours. But not the +most confident of them all can equal the unswerving confidence of a +madman. Sane people never wholly believe in themselves. They are liable +to be influenced by the opinion of others, and are willing to yield to +the consensus of opinion of past or present thinkers. The lunatic cares +nothing for the views of others. He believes in himself against the +world, with a terrific grip of conviction and a faith that nothing can +shake. + +Mr. Chesterton applies his attack upon rationality to many subjects, +with singular ingenuity. In the question of marriage and divorce, for +instance, the modern school which would break loose from the ancient +bonds can present their case with an apparently unassailable show of +rationality. But his reply to them and to all other rationalists is that +life is not rational and consistent but paradoxical and contradictory. +To make life rational you have to leave out so many elements as to make +it shrink from a big world to a little one, which may be complete, but +can never be much of a world. Its conception of God may be a complete +conception, but its God is not much of a God. But the world of human +nature is a vast world, and the God of Christianity is an Infinite God. +The huge mysteries of life and death, of love and sacrifice, of the wine +of Cana and the Cross of Calvary--these outwit all logic and pass all +understanding. So for sane men there comes in a higher authority. You +may call it common sense, or mysticism, or faith, as you please. It is +the extra element by virtue of which all sane thinking and all religious +life are rendered possible. It is the secret spring of vitality alike in +human nature and in Christian faith. + +At this point it may be permissible to question Mr. Chesterton's use of +words in one important point. He appears to fall into the old error of +confounding reason with reasoning. Reason is one thing and argument +another. It may be impossible to express either human nature or +religious faith in a series of syllogistic arguments, and yet both may +be reasonable in a higher sense. Reason includes those extra elements to +which Mr. Chesterton trusts. It is the synthesis of our whole powers of +finding truth. Many things which cannot be proved by reasoning may yet +be given in reason--involved in any reasonable view of things as a +whole. Thus faith includes reason--it _is_ reason on a larger scale--and +it is the only reasonable course for a man to take in a world of +mysterious experience. If the matter were stated in that way, Mr. +Chesterton would probably assent to it. Put crudely, the fashion of +pitting faith against reason and discarding reason in favour of faith, +is simply sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. The result is +that you must fall to the ground at the feet of the sceptic, who asks, +"How can you believe that which you have confessed there is no reason to +believe?" We have abundant reason for our belief, and that reason +includes those higher intuitions, that practical common sense, and that +view of things as a whole, which the argument of the mere logician +necessarily ignores. + +With this reservation,[6] Mr. Chesterton's position in regard to faith +is absolutely unassailable. He is the most vital of our modern +idealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism +has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines +excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is that +of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not +any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means, +Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its +affairs--swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in the +heart of every man. The fashionable modern gospel of Pragmatism is +telling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about the ultimate +truth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for life here and +now, and the practical needs which they serve. But the most practical of +all man's needs is his need of some contact with a higher world than +that of sense. "To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that +he is a man." In the scale of differences between important and +unimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not the material +that counts. "An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of +science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of +the other world, but from ignorance of this world." "The moment any +matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever +spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably +mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality." + +Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter of +faith. Mr. Chesterton is an optimist, not because he fits into this +world, but because he does not fit into it. Pagan optimism is content +with the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit into +it and find it sufficient. This is that optimism of which Browning +speaks with scorn-- + + "Tame in earth's paddock as her prize," + +and which he repudiates in the famous lines, + + "Then, welcome each rebuff + That turns earth's smoothness rough, + Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! + Be our joys three parts pain! + Strive, and hold cheap the strain; + Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!" + +Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here on +the earth there are other things which claim us from beyond. The higher +instincts which discover these are not tools to be used for making the +most of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded. He is an +idealist who has been out beyond the world. There he has found a whole +universe of mysterious but commanding facts, and has discovered that +these and these alone can satisfy human nature. + +The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritual +claims. How can we be sure that the ideals which claim us from beyond +are realities, and not mere dream shapes? There is no answer but this, +that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the reality +of our most pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, +and arrived prematurely at the end of all things. With the habit of +questioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience. +Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place. We believe in +ourselves and we doubt the truth that is in us. But we ourselves, the +crude reality which we actually are, are altogether unreliable; while +the vision is always trustworthy. We are for ever changing the vision to +suit the world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the world +to bring it into conformity with the unchanging vision. The very essence +of orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of ideals that cannot +be changed--ideals which were the first, and shall be the last. + +If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers' powers of attention by +rapid and surprising movements among very difficult themes, he certainly +has charming ways of relieving the strain. The favourite among all such +methods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales. In "The Dragon's +Grandmother" he introduces us to the arch-sceptic who did not believe in +them--that fresh-coloured and short-sighted young man who had a curious +green tie and a very long neck. It happened that this young man had +called on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of the +usual modern problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentment +on _Grimm's Fairy Tales_. "When he incidentally mentioned that he did +not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. 'Man,' I said, +'who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is much +easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard is +a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is far easier +to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does +not like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and +swear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say +seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that +you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the +void.'" The reason for this unexpected outbreak is a very deep one. +"Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild +and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of +routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the +fairy tale is--what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The +problem of the modern novel is--what will a madman do with a dull world? +In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In +the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers +from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos." + +In other words, the ideals, the ultimate convictions, are the +trustworthy things; the actual experience of life is often matter not +for distrust only but for scorn and contempt. And this philosophy Mr. +Chesterton learned in the nursery, from that "solemn and star-appointed +priestess," his nurse. The fairy tale, and not the problem-novel, is the +true presentment of human nature and of life. For, in the first place it +preserves in man the faculty most essential to human nature--the faculty +of wonder, without which no man can live. To regain that faculty is to +be born again, out of a false world into a true. The constant repetition +of the laws of Nature blunts our spirits to the amazing character of +every detail which she reproduces. To catch again the wonder of common +things-- + + "the hour + Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower" + +--is to pass from darkness into light, from falsehood to truth. "All the +towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately +upon one assumption: a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing +goes on repeating itself it is probably dead: a piece of clockwork." But +that is mere blindness to the mystery and surprise of everything that +goes to make up actual human experience. "The repetition in Nature +seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry +schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed +signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed +bent on being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a +thousand times." + +That is one fact, which fairy tales emphasise--the constant demand for +wonder in the world, and the appropriateness and rightness of the +wondering attitude of mind, as man passes through his lifelong gallery +of celestial visions. The second fact is that all such vision is +conditional, and "hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things +conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling +things that are let loose depend upon one thing which is forbidden." +This is the very note of fairyland. "You may live in a palace of gold +and sapphire, _if_ you do not say the word 'cow'; or you may live +happily with the King's daughter, _if_ you do not show her an onion." +The conditions may seem arbitrary, but that is not the point. The point +is that there always _are_ conditions. The parallel with human life is +obvious. Many people in the modern world are eagerly bent on having the +reward without fulfilling the condition, but life is not made that way. +The whole problem of marriage is a case in point. Its conditions are +rigorous, and people on all sides are trying to relax them or to do away +with them. Similarly, all along the line, modern society is seeking to +live in a freedom which is in the nature of things incompatible with the +enjoyment or the prosperity of the human spirit. There is an _if_ in +everything. Life is like that, and we cannot alter it. Quarrel with the +seemingly arbitrary or unreasonable condition, and the whole fairy +palace vanishes. "Life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as +brittle as the window-pane." + +From all this it is but a step to the consideration of dogma and the +orthodox Christian creed. Mr. Chesterton is at war to the knife with +vague modernism in all its forms. The eternal verities which produce +great convictions are incomparably the most important things for human +nature. No "inner light" will serve man's turn, but some outer light, +and that only and always. "Christianity came into the world, firstly in +order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, +but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a +divine company and a divine captain." This again is human nature. No man +can live his life out fully without being mastered by convictions that +he cannot challenge, and for whose origin he is not responsible. The +most essentially human thing is the sense that these, the supreme +conditions of life, are not of man's own arranging, but have been and +are imposed upon him. + +At almost every point this system may be disputed. Mr. Chesterton, who +never shrinks from pressing his theories to their utmost length, scoffs +at the modern habit of "saying that such-and-such a creed can be held in +one age, but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was +credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. +You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on +Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a +view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not +suitable to half-past four." That is precisely what many of us do say. +Our powers of dogmatising vary to some extent with our moods, and to a +still greater extent with the reception of new light. There are many +days on which the dogmas of early morning are impossible and even absurd +when considered in the light of evening. + +But it is not our task to criticise Mr. Chesterton's faith nor his way +of dealing with it. Were we to do so, most of us would probably strike a +balance. We would find many of his views and statements unconvincing; +and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mind +to see fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The main +point in his orthodoxy is unquestionably a most valuable contribution to +the general faith of his time and country. That point is the adventure +which he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in the +discovery of England. He set out to find the empirical truth of human +nature and the meaning of human life, as these are to be explored in +experience. When he found them, it was infinitely surprising to him to +become aware that the system in which his faith had come at last to rest +was just Christianity--the only system which could offer any adequate +and indeed exact account of human nature. The articles of its creed he +recognised as the points of conviction which are absolutely necessary to +the understanding of human nature and to the living of human life. + +Thus it comes to pass that in the midst of a time resounding with pagan +voices old and new, he stands for an unflinching idealism. It is the +mark of pagans that they are children of Nature, boasting that Nature is +their mother: they are solemnised by that still and unresponsive +maternity, or driven into rebellion by discovering that the so-called +mother is but a harsh stepmother after all. Mr. Chesterton loves Nature, +because Christianity has revealed to him that she is but his sister, +child of the same Father. "We can be proud of her beauty, since we have +the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, +but not to imitate." + +It follows that two worlds are his, as is the case with all true +idealists. The modern reversion to paganism is founded on the +fundamental error that Christianity is alien to Nature, setting up +against her freedom the repellent ideal of asceticism, and frowning upon +her beauty with the scowl of the harsh moralist. For Mr. Chesterton the +bleakness is all on the side of the pagans, and the beauty with the +idealists. They do not look askance at the green earth at all. They gaze +upon it with steady eyes, until they are actually looking through it, +and discovering the radiance of heaven there, and the sublime brightness +of the Eternal Life. The pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, +are painfully reasonable and often sad. The Christian virtues are faith, +hope, and charity--each more unreasonable than the last, from the point +of view of mere mundane common sense; but they are gay as childhood, and +hold the secret of perennial youth and unfading beauty, in a world which +upon any other terms than these is hastening to decay. + + + + +LECTURE X + +THE HOUND OF HEAVEN + + +In bringing to a close these studies of the long battle between paganism +and idealism,--between the life which is lived under the attraction of +this world and which seeks its satisfaction there, and that wistful life +of the spirit which has far thoughts and cannot settle down to the green +and homely earth,--it is natural that we should look for some literary +work which will describe the decisive issue of the whole conflict. Such +a work is Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_, which is certainly one +of the most remarkable poems that have been published in England for +many years. + +To estimate its full significance it is necessary in a few words to +recapitulate the course of thought which has been followed in the +preceding chapters. We began with the ancient Greeks, and distinguished +the high idealism of their religious conceptions from the paganism into +which these declined. The sense of the sacredness of beauty, forced upon +the Greek spirit by the earth itself, was a high idealism, without which +no conception of life or of the universe can be anything but a maimed +and incomplete expression of their meaning. Yet, for lack of some +sufficiently powerful element of restraint and some sufficiently daring +faith in spiritual reality, Hellenism sank back upon the mere earth, and +its dying fires lit up a world too sordid for their sacred flame. In +_Marius the Epicurean_ the one thing lacking was supplied by the faith +of early Christianity. The Greek idealism of beauty was not only +conserved but enriched, and the human spirit was revived, by that heroic +faith which endured as seeing the invisible. The two _Fausts_ revealed +the struggle at later stages of the development of Christianity. +Marlowe's showed it under the light of mediæval theology and Goethe's +under that of modern humanism, with the curious result that in the +former tragedy the man is the pagan and the devil the idealist, while in +the latter this order is reversed. Omar Khayyám and Fiona Macleod +introduce the Oriental and the Celtic strains. In both there is the cry +of the senses and the strong desire and allurement of the green earth; +but in Fiona Macleod there is the dominant undertone of the eternal and +the spiritual, never silent and finally overwhelming. + +The next two lectures, in a cross-section of the seventeenth century, +showed John Bunyan keenly alive to the literature and the life of the +world of Charles the Second's time, yet burning straight flame of +spiritual idealism with these for fuel. Over against him stood Samuel +Pepys, lusty and most amusing, declaring in every page of his _Diary_ +the lengths to which unblushing paganism can go. + +Representative of modern literature, Carlyle comes first with his +_Sartor Resartus_. At the ominous and uncertain beginning of our modern +thought he stood, blowing loud upon his iron trumpet a great blast of +harsh but grand idealism, before which the walls of the pagan Jericho +fell down in many places. Yet such an inspiring challenge as his was +bound to produce _reactions_, and we have them in many forms. Matthew +Arnold presses upon his time, in clear and unimpassioned voice, the +claim of neglected Hellenism. Rossetti, with heavy, half-closed eyes, +hardly distinguishes the body from the soul. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Titan +of the modern world, whose heart is sore with disillusion and the +bitterness of the earth, and yet blind to the light of heaven that still +shines upon it, has lived into the generation which is reading Mr. Wells +and Mr. Shaw. These appear to be outside of all such distinctions as +pagan and idealist; but their influence is strongly on the pagan side. +Mr. Chesterton appears, with his quest of human nature, and he finds it +not on earth but in heaven. He is the David of Christian faith, come to +fight against the heretic Goliaths of his day; and, so far as his style +and literary manner go, he continues the ancient rôle, smiting Goliath +with his own sword. + +Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_ is for many reasons a fitting close +and climax to these studies. He is as much akin to Shelley and Swinburne +as Mr. Chesterton is akin to Mr. Bernard Shaw. From them he has gathered +not a little of his style and diction. He is with them, too, in his +passionate love of beauty, without which no idealist can possibly be a +fair judge of paganism. "With many," he tells us in that _Essay on +Shelley_ which Mr. Wyndham pronounces the most important contribution to +English letters during the last twenty years--"with many the religion of +beauty must always be a passion and a power, and it is only evil when +divorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty." In this confession we +are brought back to the point where we began. The gods of Greece were +ideals of earthly beauty, and by them, while their worship remained +spiritual, men were exalted far above paganism. And now, as we are +drawing to a close, it is fitting that we should again remind ourselves +that religious idealism must recover "the Christ beautiful," if it is to +retain its hold upon humanity. In this respect, religion has greatly and +disastrously failed, and he who can redeem that failure for us will +indeed be a benefactor to his race. Religion should lead us not merely +to inquire in God's holy place, but to behold the beauty of the Lord; +and to behold it in all places of the earth until they become holy +places for us. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, has taught the world that +wild joy of which Mr. Chesterton speaks such exciting things. It remains +for Thompson to remind us that he whose visage was more marred than any +man yet holds that secret of surpassing beauty after which the poets' +hearts are seeking so wistfully. + +Besides all this, we shall find here something which has not as yet been +hinted at in our long quest. The sound of the age-long battle dies away. +Here is a man who does not fight for any flag, but simply tells us the +mysterious story of his own soul and ours. It is a quiet and a fitting +close for our long tale of excursions and alarums. But into the quiet +ending there enters a very wonderful and exciting new element. We have +been watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like some +receding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. Here the +ideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. It halts for its +pilgrims--"the star which chose to stoop and stay for us." Nay, more, it +turns upon them and pursues them. The ideal is alive and aware--a real +and living force among the great forces of the universe. It is out after +men, and in this great poem we are to watch it hunting a soul down. The +whole process of idealism is now suddenly reversed, and the would-be +captors of celestial beauty are become its captives. + +As has been already stated, we must be in sympathetic understanding with +the pagan heart in order to be of any account as advocates of idealism. +No reader of Thompson's poetry can doubt for a moment his fitness here. +From the days of Pindar there has been a brilliant succession of singers +and worshippers of the sun, culminating in the matchless song of +Shelley. In Francis Thompson's poems of the sun, the succession is taken +up again in a fashion which is not unworthy of the splendours of +paganism at its very highest. + + "And the sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven, + Before his way + Went forth the trumpet of the March + Before his way, before his way, + Dances the pennon of the May! + O Earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long + Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree + Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, + Behold how all things are made true! + Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you + Exceeding glad and strong!" + +The great song takes us back to the days of Mithra and the _sol +invictus_ of Aurelian. That outburst of sunshine in the evening of the +Roman Empire, rekindling the fires of Apollo's ancient altars for men +who loved the sunshine and felt the wonder of it, is repeated with +almost added glory in Thompson's marvellous poems. + +Yet for Francis Thompson all this glory of the sun is but a symbol. The +world where his spirit dwells is beyond the sun, and in nature it +displays itself to man but brokenly. In the bloody fires of sunset, in +the exquisite white artistry of the snow-flake, this supernatural +world is but showing us a few of its miracles, by which the miracles of +Christian faith are daily and hourly matched for sheer wonder and +beauty. The idealist claims as his inheritance all those things in which +the pagan finds his gods, and views them as the revelations of the +Master Spirit. + +It is difficult to write about Thompson's poetry without writing mainly +about himself. In _The Hound of Heaven_, as in much else that he has +written, there is abundance of his own experience, and indeed his poems +often remind us of the sorrows of Teufelsdröckh. That, however, is not +the purpose of this lecture; and, beyond a few notes of a general kind, +we shall leave him to reveal himself. Except for Mr. Meynell's +illuminative and all too short introduction to his volume of _Thompson's +Selected Poems_, there are as yet only scattered articles in magazines +to tell his strange and most pathetic story. His writings are few, +comprising three short books of poetry, his prose _Essay on Shelley_, +and a _Life of St. Ignatius_, which is full of interest and almost +overloaded with information, but which may be discounted from the list +of his permanent contributions to literature or to thought. Yet that +small output is enough to establish him among the supreme poets of our +land. + +Apart from its poetic power and spiritual vision, his was an acute and +vivid mind. On things political and social he could express himself in +little casual flashes whose shrewd and trenchant incisiveness challenge +comparison with Mr. Chesterton's own asides. His acquaintance with +science seems to have been extensive, and at times he surprises us with +allusions and metaphors of an unusually technical kind, which he somehow +renders intelligible even to the non-scientific reader. These are doubly +illuminative, casting spiritual light on the material world, and +strengthening with material fact the tenuous thoughts of the spiritual. +The words which he used of Shelley are, in this respect, applicable to +himself. "To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarefied mental or +spiritual music traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of +outward things." + +His style and choice of words are an achievement in themselves, as +distinctive as those of Thomas Carlyle. They, and the attitude of mind +with which they are congruous, have already set a fashion in our poetry, +and some of its results are excellent. In _Rose and Vine_, and in other +poems of Mrs. Rachel Annand Taylor, we have the same blend of power and +beauty, the same wildness in the use of words, and the same languor and +strangeness as if we had entered some foreign and wonderfully coloured +world. In _Ignatius_ the style and diction are quite simple, ordinary, +and straightforward, but that biography is decidedly the least effective +of his works. It would seem that here as elsewhere among really great +writings the style is the natural and necessary expression of the +individual mind and imagination. The _Life of Shelley_, which is +certainly one of the masterpieces of English prose, has found for its +expression a style quite unique and distinctive, in which there are +constant reminders of other stylists, yet no imitation of any. The +poetry is drugged, and as we read his poems through in the order of +their publication, we feel the power of the poppy more and more. At last +the hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though in +flashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild and beautiful as ever. +His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric and +arresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a sense +of things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mystic +rite, in a ritual which demanded language choice and strange. + +Something of this may be due to narcotics, and to the depressing tragedy +of his life. More of it is due to Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne. But +these do not explain the style, nor the thoughts which clothed +themselves in it. Both style and thoughts are native to the man. What he +borrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right to +borrow--a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned +from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it +has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a +lotos-flower in our buttonhole--harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not +matter--is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this +man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself +would willingly have put his own flowers there. + +Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the +unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and +brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his _Essay on Shelley_, +which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the +Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we +shall be clothed, but seek first--seek _first_, not seek _only_--the +spirit, and all these things will be added unto us." He discusses his +own style with an unexpected frankness. His view of the use of +imagination is expressed in the suggestive and extraordinary words--"To +sport with the tangles of Neæra's hair may be trivial idleness or +caressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neræa is that of +heartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mere +intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics; +or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a _Sensitive +Plant_." If a man is passionate, and passion is choosing her own +language in his work, he may be forgiven much. If he chooses strange +words deliberately and in cold blood, there is no reason why we should +forgive him anything. + +So much has been necessary as an introduction, but our subject is +neither the man Francis Thompson nor his poetry in general, but the one +poem which is at once the most characteristic expression of his +personality and of his poetic genius. _The Hound of Heaven_ has for its +idea the chase of man by the celestial huntsman. God is out after the +soul, pursuing it up and down the universe. God,--but God incarnate in +Jesus Christ, whose love and death are here the embodiment and +revelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men so +constantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possible +form of earthly experience--at least in every clean and noble form, for +there is nothing suggestive of low covert or the mire. It is simply the +second-best as a refuge from the best that is depicted here--the earth +at its pagan finest, in whose charm or homeliness the soul would fain +hide itself from the spiritual pursuit. And the Great Huntsman is +remorseless in his determination to win the soul for the very best of +all. The soul longs for beauty, for interest, for comfort; and in the +beautiful, various, comfortable life of the earth she finds them. The +inner voice still tells of a nobler heritage; but she understands and +loves these earthly things, and would fain linger among them, shy of the +further flight. + +The whole conception of the poem is the counterpart of Browning's +_Easter Day_, where the soul chooses and is allowed to choose the same +regions of the lesser good and beauty for its home. In that poem the +soul is permitted to devote itself for ever to the finest things that +earth can give--life, literature, scientific knowledge, love. The +permission sends it wild with joy, and having chosen, it settles down +for ever to the earth-bound life. But eternity is too long for the earth +and all that is upon it. It wears time out, and all the desire of our +mortality ages and grows weary. The spirit, made for immortal thoughts +and loves and life, finds itself the ghastly prisoner of that which is +inevitably decaying; but its immortality postpones the decent and +appropriate end to an eternal mockery and doom. At last, in the +tremendous close, it wakens to the unspeakable blessedness of _not_ +being satisfied with anything that earth can give, and so proves itself +adequate for its own inheritance of immortality. In Thompson's poem the +soul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things until +satiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels; +and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn from +it by the imperious Best of All that claims her for its own. + +There is no obvious sequence of the phases of the poem, nor any logical +order connecting them into a unity of experience. They may or may not be +a rescript of Thompson's own inner life, but every detail might be +placed in another order without the slightest loss to the meaning or the +truth. The only guiding and unifying element is a purely artistic +one--that of the Hound in full cry, and the unity of the poem is but +that of a day's hunting. One would like to know what remote origin it is +to which we owe the figure. Thompson was a Greek scholar, and some such +legend as that of Actæon may well have been in his mind. But the chase +of dogs was a common horror in the Middle Ages, and many of the mediæval +fiends are dog-faced. In those days, when conscience had as yet received +none of our modern soporifics, and men believed in hell, many a guilty +sinner knew well the baying of the hell-hounds, masterless and +bloody-fanged, that chased the souls of even good men up to the very +gates of heaven. Conscience and remorse ran wild, and the Hound of Hell +was a characteristic part of the machinery that made the tragedy of life +so terrific in those old days. But here, by a _tour de force_ in which +is summed up the entire transformation from ancient to modern thought, +the hell-hounds are transformed into the Hound of Heaven. That something +or some one is out after the souls of men, no man who has understood his +inner life can question for a moment. But here the great doctrine is +proclaimed, that the Huntsman of the soul is Love and not Hate, eternal +Good and not Evil. No matter what cries may freeze the soul with horror +in the night, what echoes of the deep-voiced dogs upon the trail of +memory and of conscience, it is God and not the devil that is pursuing. + +The poem, by a strange device of rhythm, keeps up the chase in the most +vividly dramatic realism. The metre throughout is irregular, and the +verses swing onward for the most part in long, sweeping lines. But five +times, at intervals in the poem, the sweep is interrupted by a stanza of +shorter lines, varied slightly but yet in essence the same-- + + "But with unhurrying chase, + And unperturbèd pace, + Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, + They beat--and a Voice beat + More instant than the Feet-- + All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." + +By this device of rhythm the footfall of the Hound is heard in all the +pauses of the poem. In the short and staccato measures you hear the +patter of the little feet padding after the soul from the unseen +distance behind. It is a daring use of the onomatopoeic device in +poetry, and it is effective to a wonder, binding the whole poem into the +unity of a single chase. + +The first nine lines are the story of a soul subjective as yet and +self-absorbed. The first covert in which it seeks to hide is its own +life--the thoughts and tears and laughter, the hopes and fears of a man. +This is in most men's lives the first attempt at escape. The verses here +give the inner landscape, the country of a soul's experience, with +wonderful compression. Then comes the patter of the Hound's feet, and +for the rest we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in +the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated +transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his +_Sordello_, the turning-point between the early introspective and the +later dramatic periods. + +Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, the +inevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit. +The story is shortly told in nine lines. The human and the divine love +are rivals here; pagan _versus_ ideal affection. The hunted heart is not +allowed to find refuge or solace in human love. The man knows that it is +Love that follows him: yet it is the warm, red, earthly passion that he +craves for, and the divine pursuer seems cold, exacting, and austere. + +Finding no refuge in human love from this "tremendous Lover," he seeks +it next in a kind of imaginative materialism, half-scientific, +half-fantastic. He appeals at "the gold gateways of the stars" and at +"the pale ports o' the moon" for shelter. He seeks to hide beneath the +vague and blossom-woven veil of far sky-spaces, or, in lust of swift +motion, "clings to the whistling mane of every wind!" Here is a choice +of paganism at its most modern and most impressive. The cosmic +imagination, revelling in the limitless fields of time and space, will +surely be sufficient for a man's idealism, without any insistence upon +further definition. Here are Carlyle's Eternities and Immensities--are +they not enough? The answer is that these are but the servants of One +mightier than they. Incorruptible and steadfast in their allegiance, +they will neither offer pity nor will they allow peace to him who is not +loyal to their Master. And the hunted soul is stung by a fever of +restlessness that chases him back across "the long savannahs of the +blue" to earth again, with the recurring patter of the little feet +behind him. + +Doubling upon the course, the quarry seeks the surest refuge to be found +on earth. Children are still here, and in their simplicity and innocence +there is surely a hiding-place that will suffice. Here is no danger of +earthly passion, no Titanic stride among the vast things of the +universe. Are they not the true idealists, the children? Are they not +the authentic guardians of fairyland and of heaven? Francis Thompson is +an authority here, and his love of children has expressed itself in much +exquisite prose and poetry. "Know you what it is to be a child? It is to +be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a +spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in +love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so +little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn +pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and +nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its +own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of +infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... +He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to +watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. +The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. +He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright +mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He +teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of +its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its floor +is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of +ether. He chases the rolling world." He who could write thus, and who +could melt our hearts with _To Monica Thought Dying_ and its refrain, + + "A cup of chocolate, + One farthing is the rate, + You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw" + +--surely he must have had some wonderful right of entrance into the +innocent fellowships of childhood. Still more intimate, daring in its +incredible humility and simpleness, is his _Ex Ore Infantium_:-- + + "Little Jesus, wast Thou shy + Once, and just as small as I? + And what did it feel like to be + Out of Heaven, and just like me?... + Hadst Thou ever any toys, + Like us little girls and boys? + And didst Thou play in Heaven with all + The angels, that were not too tall?... + So, a little Child, come down + And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; + Take me by the hand and walk, + And listen to my baby-talk." + +But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul. + + "I turned me to them very wistfully; + But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair + With dawning answers there, + Their angel plucked them from me by the hair." + +Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, to +Nature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pure +abandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one with +cloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide. + + "I was heavy with the even, + When she lit her glimmering tapers + Round the day's dead sanctities. + I laughed in the morning's eyes, + I triumphed and I saddened with all weather." + +Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr. +Chesterton, he holds the key of fairyland, like him also he can retain +through life his wonder at the grass. His nature-poetry is nearer +Shelley than anything that has been written since Shelley died. In it + + "The leaves dance, the leaves sing, + The leaves dance in the breath of spring," + +or-- + + "The great-vanned Angel March + Hath trumpeted + His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead-- + Beat his strong vans o'er earth and air and sea + And they have heard; + Hark to the _Jubilate_ of the bird." + +These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem _To a +Snowflake_--the delicate silver filigree of verse--rank him among the +most privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing very +close to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flying +soul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and +sheltering, but it is not for him. It is as when sunset changes the +glory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenly +fallen night. Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead to +him. Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she is not friend but +stranger. Her language is another tongue from his-- + + "In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek," + +--and the padding of the feet is heard again. + +Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain +attempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God has +been too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vain +endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last. + + "Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! + My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me, + And smitten me to my knee. + I am defenceless utterly." + +So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, he +remembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when + + "In the rash lustihead of my young powers, + I shook the pillaring hours + And pulled my life upon me," + +and, + + "The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist + I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist." + +All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God. + +There follows a protest against those demands. To him it appears that +they are the call for sheer sacrifice and death. He had sought +self-realisation in every lovely field that lay open to the earth. But +now the trumpeter is sounding, "from the hid battlements of Eternity," +the last word and final meaning of human life. His is a dread figure, +"enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned." His demand is +for death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the green +earth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God. + +It is the Cross that he has seen in nature and beyond it. Long ago it +was set up in England, that same Cross, when Cynewulf sang his _Christ_. +On Judgment Day he saw it set on high, streaming with blood and flame +together, amber and crimson, illuminating the Day of Doom. Thompson has +found it, not on Calvary only, but everywhere in nature, and by _tour de +force_ he blends the sunset with Golgotha and finds that the lips of +Nature proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the garden of the +monastery there stands a cross, and the sun is setting over it. + + "Thy straight + Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me! + What secret would thy radiant finger show? + Of thy bright mastership is this the key? + Is _this_ thy secret then, and is it woe? + + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That king-maker of Creation + Who ere Hellas hailed Apollo + Gave thee, angel-god, thy station; + + Thou art of Him a type memorial. + Like Him thou hangst in dreadful pomp of blood + Upon thy Western rood; + And His stained brow did veil like thine to night. + + Now, with wan ray that other sun of Song + Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul. + One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long + 'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole. + + Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory, + Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields; + Brightness may emanate in Heaven from Thee: + Here Thy dread symbol only shadow yields." + +This is ever the first appearance of the Highest when men see it. And, +to the far-seeing eyes of the poet, nature must also wear the same +aspect. Apollo, when his last word is said, must speak the same language +as Christ. Paganism is an elaborate device to do without the Cross. Yet +it is ever a futile device, for the Cross is in the very grain and +essence of all life; it is absolutely necessary to all permanent and +satisfying gladness. Francis Thompson is not the first who has shrunk +back from the bitter truth. Many others have found the bitterness of the +Cross a lesson too dreadful for their joyous or broken hearts to learn. +Who are we that we should judge them? Have we not all rebelled at this +bitter aspect of the Highest, and said, in our own language-- + + "Ah! is Thy love indeed + A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed + Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?" + +Finally we have the answer of Christ to the soul He has chased down +after so long a following-- + + "Strange, piteous, futile thing! + Wherefore should any set thee love apart? + Seeing none but I makes much of nought (He said), + And human love needs human meriting: + How hast thou merited-- + Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? + Alack, thou knowest not + How little worthy of any love thou art! + Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, + Save Me, save only Me? + All which I took from thee I did but take, + Not for thy harms, + But just that thou mightst seek it in My arms. + All which thy child's mistake + Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: + Rise, clasp my hand, and come." + +And the poem ends upon the patter of the little feet-- + + "Halts by me that footfall: + Is my gloom, after all, + Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? + Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, + I am He Whom thou seekest! + Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me." + +It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and it +tells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Cross +over the pagan gods. It is through pain and not through indulgence that +the ideals gain for themselves eternal life. Until the soul has been +transformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself and +be at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be in +vain. And in our hearts we all know this quite well. We really desire +the Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day of +the wise surrender. This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxes +and contradictions. + +As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced to +the aspect of the age-long conflict by _The Hound of Heaven_ is that the +parts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest, +the Highest is out in full cry after the soul. In this the whole quest +crosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simply +as a study of human nature. Beyond the human region, out among those +Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that +which loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. The +Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it. He is found of +those that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep may +flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered +hour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things +which we would fain choose instead of Him--He alone. The deep wisdom of +the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, +so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret +of fulfilment. Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find +it. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything: +to have Him is to have all things added unto us. + +So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience, +but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live. +Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all its +idols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which she +repudiates: + + "Worship not me but God, the angels urge." + +The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven--the angels of +nature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, of +little children and of grave science and all learning. The desire of the +soul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorseless +footsteps down every quiet and familiar street. The land of heart's +desire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about our +heads. + + "Not where the whirling systems darken, + And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- + The drift of pinions, would we hearken, + Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. + + The angels keep their ancient places;-- + Turn but a stone, and start a wing! + 'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces, + That miss the many-splendoured thing. + + But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) + Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss + Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder + Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross. + + Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, + Cry;--clinging Heaven by the hems; + And lo, Christ walking on the water, + Not of Genesareth, but Thames."[7] + + + + +_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _King Lear_, Act III. scene vi. + +[2] Compare the song of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth beginning, + + "Who would true valour see" + + with Shakespeare's + + "Who doth ambition shun." + + _As You Like It_, II. v. + +[3] For these and other points of resemblance, cf. Professor Firth's +Leaflet on Bunyan (_English Association Papers_, No. 19). + +[4] _On Compromise_, published 1874. + +[5] In his latest volume (_Marriage_), Mr. Wells has spoken in a +different tone from that of his other recent works. It is a welcome +change, and it may be the herald of something more positive still, and +of a wholesome and inspiring treatment of the human problems. But behind +it lie _First and Last Things_, _Tono Bungay_, _Ann Veronica_, and _The +New Macchiavelli_. + +[6] Mr. Chesterton perceives this, though he does not always express it +unmistakably. He tells us that he does not mean to attack the authority +of reason, but that his ultimate purpose is rather to defend it. + +[7] These verses, probably unfinished and certainly left rough for +future perfecting, were found among Francis Thompson's papers when he +died. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Among Famous Books, by John Kelman + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + +***** This file should be named 18104-8.txt or 18104-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/1/0/18104/ + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Among Famous Books + +Author: John Kelman + +Release Date: April 2, 2006 [EBook #18104] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + + + + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>AMONG</h1> +<h1>FAMOUS BOOKS</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>JOHN KELMAN, D.D.</h2> + +<h3> </h3> +<h3>HODDER AND STOUGHTON</h3> +<h3>LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO</h3> + + +<h3> </h3> +<h3><i>Printed in 1912</i></h3> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>The object of the following lectures is twofold. They were delivered in +the first place for the purpose of directing the attention of readers to +books whose literary charm and spiritual value have made them +conspicuous in the vast literature of England. Such a task, however, +tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity, depending absolutely +upon the taste of the individual, and the chances of his experience in +reading.</p> + +<p>I have accordingly taken for the general theme of the book that constant +struggle between paganism and idealism which is the deepest fact in the +life of man, and whose story, told in one form or another, provides the +matter of all vital literature. This will serve as a thread to give +continuity of thought to the lectures, and it will keep them near to +central issues.</p> + +<p>Having said so much, it is only necessary to add one word more by way of +explanation. In quest of the relations between the spiritual and the +material, or (to put it otherwise) of the battle between the flesh and +the spirit, we shall dip into three different periods of time: (1) +Classical, (2) Sixteenth Century, (3) Modern. Each of these has a +character of its own, and the glimpses which we shall have of them ought +to be interesting in their own right. But the similarity between the +three is more striking than the contrast, for human nature does not +greatly change, and its deepest struggles are the same in all +generations.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + + + + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE I</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_I"><span class="smcap">The Gods of Greece</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE II</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_II"><span class="smcap">Marius the Epicurean</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE III</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_III"><span class="smcap">The Two Fausts</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE IV</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_IV"><span class="smcap">Celtic Revivals of Paganism</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE V</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_V"><span class="smcap">John Bunyan</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE VI</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_VI"><span class="smcap">Pepys' Diary</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE VII</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_VII"><span class="smcap">Sartor Resartus</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE VIII</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_VIII"><span class="smcap">Pagan Reactions</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE IX</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_IX"><span class="smcap">Mr. G.K. Chesterton's Point of View</span></a></p> + +<p class='lecture'>LECTURE X</p> +<p class="title"><a href="#LECTURE_X"><span class="smcap">The Hound of Heaven</span></a></p> + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_I" id="LECTURE_I"></a>LECTURE I</h2><h2>THE GODS OF GREECE</h2> + + +<p>It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modern +thought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The division +is an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less than +justice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associated +Greece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel with +that of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an interesting +word, whose etymology reminds us of a time when Christianity had won the +towns, while the villages still worshipped heathen gods. It is difficult +to define the word without imparting into our thought of it the idea of +the contrast between Christian dogma and all other religious thought and +life. This, however, would be an extremely unfair account of the matter, +and, in the present volume, the word will be used without reference +either to nationality or to creed, and it will stand for the +materialistic and earthly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> tendency as against spiritual idealism of any +kind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a thing which has died out +with the passing of heathen systems of religion. It is terribly alive in +the heart of modern England, whether formally believing or unbelieving. +Indeed there is the twofold life of puritan and pagan within us all. A +recent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally a +cannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South Sea +Islands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but to +be one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is +this universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such a +study as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary or +local phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do with +the question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject.</p> + +<p>Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type +of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that +distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become +hard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive national +idealisms without supplying any new ones. The Roman ploughman must have +missed the fauns whom he had been accustomed to expect in the thicket at +the end +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> of his furrow, when the new faith told him that these were +nothing but rustling leaves. When the swish of unseen garments beside +the old nymph-haunted fountain was silenced, his heart was left lonely +and his imagination impoverished. Much charm and romance vanished from +his early world with the passing of its pagan creatures, and indeed it +is to this cause that we must trace the extraordinarily far-reaching and +varied crop of miraculous legends of all sorts which sprang up in early +Catholic times. These were the protest of unconscious idealism against +the bare world from which its sweet presences had vanished.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of which that Britons speken greet honour,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The elf-queen, with hir joly companye,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">This was the olde opinion, as I rede.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But now can no man see none elves mo.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">For now the grete charitee and prayeres</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of limitours and othere holy freres,</span><br /> +</p><p class="spacer"><br /></p> +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">This maketh that there been no fayeryes.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">For ther as wont to walken was an elf,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Ther walketh now the limitour himself."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Against this impoverishment the human revolt was inevitable, and it +explains the spirit in such writers as Shelley and Goethe. Children of +nature, who love the sun and the grass, and are at home +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> upon the earth, +their spirits cry for something to delight and satisfy them, nearer than +speculations of theology or cold pictures of heaven. Wordsworth, in his +famous lines, has expressed the protest in the familiar words:—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i6">"Great God, I'd rather be</span><br /> +<span class="i1">A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The early classic thought which found its most perfect expression in the +mythology of Greece was not originally or essentially pagan. It was +humanistic, and represented the response of man's spirit to that free +and beautiful spirit which he found in nature around him. All such +symbolism of Greek religion as that of the worship of Dionysus and +Ceres, shows this. In these cults the commonest things of life, the wine +and corn wherewith man sustained himself, assumed a higher and richer +meaning. Food and drink were not mere sensual gratifications, but divine +gifts, as they are in the twenty-third Psalm; and the whole material +world was a symbol and sacrament of spiritual realities and blessings. +Similarly the ritual of Eleusis interpreted man's common life into a +wonderful world of mystic spirituality. Thus there was a great fund of +spiritual insight +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> of the finest and most beautiful sort in the very +heart of that life which has thoughtlessly been adopted as the type of +paganism.</p> + +<p>Yet the history of Greece affords the explanation and even the +justification of the popular idea. The pagan who is in us all, tends +ever to draw us downwards from sacramental and symbolic ways of thinking +to the easier life of the body and the earth. On the one hand, for blood +that is young and hot, the life of sense is overwhelming. On the other +hand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression of +the world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealism +difficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dream +before the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpses +by every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as well +as some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defended +against the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for the +Greek, God was the view; but when the traveller goes forward into the +view, he meets with many things which it is dangerous to identify with +God. For the young spirit of the early times the temptation to +earthliness was overwhelming. The world was fair, its gates were open, +and its barriers all down. Men took from literature and from religion +just as much of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> spirituality as they understood and as little as they +desired, and the effect was swift and inevitable in that degeneration +which reached its final form in the degraded sensuality of the later +Roman Empire.</p> + +<p>The confusing element in all such inquiry lies in the fact that one can +never get an unmixed paganism nor a perfect idealism. Just as the claims +of body and spirit are in our daily life inextricably interwoven, so the +Greek thought hung precariously between the two, and was always more or +less at the mercy of the individual interpreter and of the relative +strength of his tastes and passions. So we shall find it all through the +course of these studies. It would be preposterous to deny some sort of +idealism to almost any pagan who has ever lived. The contrast between +pagan and idealist is largely a matter of proportion and preponderating +tendency: yet the lines are clear enough to enable us to work with this +distinction and to find it valuable and illuminating.</p> + +<p>The fundamental fact to remember in studying any of the myths of Greece +is, that we have here a composite and not a simple system of thought and +imagination. There are always at least two layers: the primitive, and +the Olympian which came later. The primitive conceptions were those +afforded by the worship of ghosts, of dead persons, and of animals. Miss +Jane Harrison has pointed out in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> great detail the primitive elements +which lingered on through the Olympian worship. Perhaps the most +striking instance which she quotes is the Anthesteria, or festival of +flowers, at the close of which the spirits were dismissed with the +formula, "Depart, ye ghosts, the revels now are ended." Mr. Andrew Lang +has suggested that the animals associated with gods and goddesses (such +as the mouse which is found in the hand, or the hair, or beside the feet +of the statues of Apollo, the owl of Minerva, etc.) are relics of the +earlier worship. This would satisfactorily explain much of the +disreputable element which lingered on side by side with the noble +thoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a splendid race of gods, +representing the highest human ideals, arrived with the Greeks; but for +the sake of safety, or of old association, the primitive worship was +retained and blended with the new. In the extreme case of human +sacrifice, it was retained in the form of surrogates—little wooden +images, or even actual animals, being sacrificed in lieu of the older +victims. But all along the line, while the new gods brought their +spiritual conceptions, the older ones held men to a cruder and more +fleshly way of thinking. There is a similar blend of new and old in all +such movements as that of the Holy Grail and the Arthurian legends, +where we can see +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the combination of Christian and pagan elements so +clearly as to be able to calculate the moral and spiritual effect of +each. Thus we have in the early Greek mythology much of real paganism +involved in the retention of the old and earth-bound gods which attached +themselves to the nobler Olympians as they came, and dragged them down +to the ancient level.</p> + +<p>This blending may be seen very clearly in the mythology of Homer and +Hesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace of +superposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties of +Chronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of the +morality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continue +for a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and +man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably +follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently +than they.</p> + +<p>Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society +improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly +towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the +gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the +sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories. +Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> religion in a sunny good temper +which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. Æschylus is +sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of +the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of +humanity his scepticism rises in protest.</p> + +<p>It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the +various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths. +The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities +stand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and +goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer +and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the +personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The +Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals +of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of +the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol +of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean +characteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, and +every one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East will +sympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God."</p> + +<p>As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with the +name of Plutarch +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more +or less completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir George +Cox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story is +beautifully told in every case, and when we have enjoyed it and felt +something of the exquisiteness of the conception and of the variety and +range of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had first +told it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that all +we have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise, +until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountable +upon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore. +If you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun +and the lamb the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in +religion and astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to +school one day. This nature element, however, had undoubtedly a very +considerable part in the origin of myths, and when Max Müller combines +it with philology it opens a vast field of extraordinarily interesting +interpretations resting upon words and their changes.</p> + +<p>A further theory of myths is that which regards them as the stories of +races told as if they had been the lives of individuals. This, as is +well known, has had permanent effects upon the interpretation +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> not only +of Greek but of Hebrew ancient writings, and it throws light upon some +of those chapters of Genesis which, without it, are but strings of +forgotten and unpronounceable names.</p> + +<p>But beyond all such explanations, after we have allowed for them in +every possible way, there remains a conviction that behind these +fascinating stories there is a certain irreducible remainder of actual +fact. Individual historic figures, seen through the mists of time, walk +before our eyes in the dawn. Long before history was written men lived +and did striking deeds. Heroic memories and traditions of such +distinguished men passed in the form of fireside tales from one +generation to another through many centuries. Now they come to us, +doubtless hugely exaggerated and so far away from their originals as to +be unrecognisable, and yet, after all, based upon things that happened. +For the stories have living touches in them which put blood into the +glorious and ghostly figures, and when we come upon a piece of genuine +human nature there is no possibility of mistaking it. This thing has +been born, not manufactured: nor has any portrait that is lifelike been +drawn without some model. Thus, through all the mist and haze of the +past, we see men and women walking in the twilight—dim and uncertain +forms indeed, yet stately and heroic. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p>Now all this has a bearing upon the main subject of our present study. +Meteorology and astronomy are indeed noble sciences, but the proper +study of mankind is man. While, no doubt, the sources of all early +folk-lore are composite, yet it matters greatly for the student of these +things whether the beginnings of religious thought were merely in the +clouds, or whether they had their roots in the same earth whereon we +live and labour. The heroes and great people of the early days are +eternal figures, because each new generation gives them a resurrection +in its own life and experience. They have eternal human meanings, +beneath whatever pageantry of sun and stars the ancient heroes passed +from birth to death. Soon everything of them is forgotten except the +ideas about human life for which they stand. Then each of them becomes +the expression of a thought common to humanity, and therefore secure of +its immortality to the end of time; for the undying interest is the +human interest, and all ideas which concern the life of man are immortal +while man's race lasts. In the case of such legends as those we are +discussing, it is probable that beyond the mere story some such ideal of +human life was suggested from the very first. Certainly, as time went +on, the ideal became so identified with the hero, that to thoughtful men +he came to stand +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> for a particular idealism of human experience. Thus +Pater speaks of Dionysus as from first to last a type of second birth, +opening up the hope of a possible analogy between the resurrections of +nature and something else, reserved for human souls. "The beautiful, +weeping creatures, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, and +rejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out of +the hardness and stony darkness of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal +of chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering." +This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are not +only similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, those +of other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by the +common elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, when +finely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal to +the majority of the human race.</p> + +<p>Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in the +telling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the mere +narration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all stories +that were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high and +admirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical or +scientific +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience. Out of +these judgments there grew the great ideals which from first to last +have commanded the spirit of man.</p> + +<p>In this connection it is interesting to remember that in Homer the men +were regarded as the means of revealing ideas and characters, and not as +mere natural objects in themselves. The things among which they lived +are described and known by their appearances; the men are known by their +words and deeds. "There is no inventory of the features of men, or of +fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern +novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship +that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,' +and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and +emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important +element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human +lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance +of the future race. The myths, with their stories of gods and men, and +their implied or declared religious doctrines, are but the forms in +which these ideals find expression. The ideals remain, but the forms of +their expression change, advancing from cruder to finer and from more +fanciful to more exactly true, with the advance +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> of thought and culture. +Meanwhile, the ideals are above the world,—dwelling, like Plato's, in +heaven,—and there are always two alternatives for every man. He may go +back either with deliberate intellectual assent, or passion-led in +sensual moods, to the powers of nature and the actual human stories in +their crude and earthly form; or he may follow the idealisation of human +experience, and discover and adopt the ideals of which the earthly +stories and the nature processes are but shadows and hints. In the +former case he will be a pagan; in the latter, a spiritual idealist. In +what remains of this lecture, we shall consider four of the most famous +Greek legends—those of Prometheus, Medusa, Orpheus, and Apollo—in the +light of what has just been stated.</p> + +<p>Prometheus, in the early story, is a Titan, who in the heavenly war had +fought on the side of Zeus. It is, however, through the medium of the +later story that Prometheus has exercised his eternal influence upon the +thought of men. In this form of the legend he appears constantly living +and striving for man's sake as the foe of God. We hear of him making men +and women of clay and animating them with celestial fire, teaching them +the arts of agriculture, the taming of horses, and the uses of plants. +Again we hear of Zeus, wearied with the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> race of men—the new divinity +making a clean sweep, and wishing to begin with better material. Zeus is +the lover of strength and the despiser of weakness, and from the earth +with its weak and pitiful mortals he takes away the gift of fire, +leaving them to perish of cold and helplessness. Then it is that +Prometheus climbs to heaven, steals back the fire in his hollow cane, +and brings it down to earth again. For this benefaction to the despised +race Zeus has him crucified, fixed for thirty thousand years on a rock +in the Asian Caucasus, where, until Herakles comes to deliver him, the +vulture preys upon his liver.</p> + +<p>Such a story tempts the allegorist, and indeed the main drift of its +meaning is unmistakable. Cornutus, a contemporary of Christ, explained +it "of forethought, the quick inventiveness of human thought chained to +the painful necessities of human life, its liver gnawed unceasingly by +cares." In the main, and as a general description, this is quite +unquestionable. Prometheus is the prototype of a thousand other figures +of the same kind, not in mythology only, but in history, which tell the +story of the spiritual effort of man frustrated and brought to earth. It +is the story of Tennyson's youth who</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Rode a horse with wings that would have flown</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But that his heavy rider bore him down."</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + +<p>Only, in the Prometheus idea, it is not a man's senses, as in Tennyson's +poem, but the outward necessity of things, the heavy and cruel powers of +nature around him, that prove too much for his aspirations. In this +respect the story is singularly characteristic of the Greek spirit. That +spirit was always daring with truth, feeling the risks of knowledge and +gladly taking them, passionately devoted to the love of knowledge for +its own sake.</p> + +<p>The legend has, however, a deeper significance than this. One of the +most elemental questions that man can ask is, What is the relation of +the gods to human inquiry and freedom of thought? There always has been +a school of thinkers who have regarded knowledge as a thing essentially +against the gods. The search for knowledge thus becomes a phase of +Titanism; and wherever it is found, it must always be regarded in the +light of a secret treasure stolen from heaven against the will of +contemptuous or jealous divinities. On the other hand, knowledge is +obviously the friend of man. Prometheus is man's champion, and no figure +could make a stronger appeal than his. Indeed, in not a few respects he +approaches the Christian ideal, and must have brought in some measure +the same solution to those who were able to receive it. Few touches in +literature, for instance, are finer than that in which he comforts +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> the +daughters of Ocean, speaking to them from his cross.</p> + +<p>The idea of Titanism has become the commonplace of poets. It is familiar +in Milton, Byron, Shelley, and countless others, and Goethe tells us +that the fable of Prometheus lived within him. Many of the Titanic +figures, while they appeared to be blaspheming, were really fighting for +truth and justice. The conception of the gods as jealous and +contemptuous was not confined to the Greek mythology, but has appeared +within the pale of Christian faith as well as in all heathen cults. +Nature, in some of its aspects, seems to justify it. The great powers +appear to be arrayed against man's efforts, and present the appearance +of cruel and bullying strength. Evidently upon such a theory something +must go, either our faith in God or our faith in humanity; and when +faith has gone we shall be left in the position either of atheists or of +slaves. There have been those who accepted the alternative and went into +the one camp or the other according to their natures; but the Greek +legend did not necessitate this. There was found, as in Æschylus, a hint +of reconciliation, which may be taken to represent that conviction so +deep in the heart of humanity, that there is "ultimate decency in +things," if one could only find it out; although knowledge must +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> always +remain dangerous, and may at times cost a man dear.</p> + +<p>The real secret lies in the progress of thought in its conceptions of +God and life. Nature, as we know and experience it, presents indeed an +appalling spectacle against which everything that is good in us +protests. God, so long as He is but half understood, is utterly +unpardonable; and no man yet has succeeded in justifying the ways of God +to men. But "to understand all is to forgive all"—or rather, it is to +enter into a larger view of life, and to discover how much there is in +<i>us</i> that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was +told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases +through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest +commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can be +written.</p> + +<p>In two great battlegrounds of the human spirit the problem raised by +Prometheus has been fought out. On the ground of science, who does not +know the defiant and Titanic mood in which knowledge has at times been +sought? The passion for knowing flames through the gloom and depression +and savagery of the darker moods of the student. Difficulties are +continually thrust into the way of knowledge. The upper powers seem to +be jealous and outrageously thwarting, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> and the path of learning becomes +a path of tears and blood. That is all that has been reached by many a +grim and brave student spirit. But there is another possible +explanation; and there are those who have attained to a persuasion that +the gods have made knowledge difficult in order that the wise may also +be the strong.</p> + +<p>The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there has +been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and +then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness +of the human <i>débâcle</i>. The only aspect of the powers above them has +seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in +the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts +up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the +worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing +man upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what they +please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest of +Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling a +noble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, there +dawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the same hope that Prometheus +vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> understood the story of +Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is divine +love. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous cruelty +yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end of +time, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God is +love, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted.</p> + +<p>Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that of +Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for +it shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest +depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hung +between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around him +in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly felt +the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in the +universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a +running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had +heard some of the hollow notes of <i>Pan's</i> music. Would the wicked river +drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?" +It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and most +suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world." It is this +combination of beauty and terror for which the myth of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Medusa stands. +It finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is +seen in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of +nature's action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit +beauty, and fascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen in +all of the many cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be +dangerous, or at least sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is +at once one of the most characteristic and one of the most tragic things +in the world.</p> + +<p>There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyond +the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun never +shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the only +mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhood +she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and very +lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess. +Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire of +Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of +her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of the +golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that had +been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, with +its rose and milk-white tenderness, had +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> changed to a loathsome greenish +white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning +mask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. So +dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess, that her face turned +all those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone. There is a degree +of hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it came to pass that the +cave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around it, were full of men +and wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance of her,—grim fossils +immortalised in stone,—while the snakes writhed and the red eyes +rolled, waiting for another victim.</p> + +<p>This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, and +there was nothing for it but to slay her. To do this, Perseus set out +upon his long journey, equipped with the magic gifts of swiftness and +invisibility, and bearing on his arm the shield that was also a mirror. +The whole picture is infinitely dreary. As he travels across the dark +sea to the land where the pillars of Atlas are visible far off, towering +into the sky, the light decreases. In the murky and dangerous twilight +he forces the Graiai, those grey-haired sisters with their miserable +fragmentary life, to bestir their aged limbs and guide him to the +Gorgons' den. By the dark stream, where the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> yellow light brooded +everlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it then +for Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa's +hair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and the +snakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where there +is "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor storm," he held the +magic mirror over against the monster, beheld her in it without change +or injury to himself, severed the head, and bore it away to place it on +Athene's shield.</p> + +<p>It is very interesting to notice how Art has treated the legend. It was +natural that so vivid an image should become a favourite alike with +poets and with sculptors, but there was a gradual development from the +old hideous and terrible representations, back to the calm repose of a +beautiful dead face. This might indeed more worthily record the maiden's +tragedy, but it missed entirely the thing that the old myth had said. +The oldest idea was horrible beyond horror, for the darker side of +things is always the most impressive to primitive man, and sheer +ugliness is a category with which it is easy to work on simple minds. +The rudest art can achieve such grotesque hideousness long before it can +depict beauty. Later, as we have seen, Art tempered the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> face to beauty, +but in so doing forgot the meaning of the story. It was the old story +that has been often told, of the fair and frail one who had fallen among +the pitiless. For her there was no compassion either in mortals or in +immortals. It was the tragedy of sweet beauty desecrated and lost, the +petrifying horror of which has found its most unflinching modern +expression in Thomas Hardy's <i>Tess of the D'Urbervilles</i>. <i>Corruptio +optimi pessima</i>.</p> + +<p>To interpret such stories as these by any reference to the rising sun, +or the rivalry between night and dawn, is simply to stultify the science +of interpretation. It may, indeed, have been true that most of those who +told and heard the tale in ancient times accepted it in its own right, +and without either the desire or the thought of further meanings. Yet, +even told in that fashion, as it clung to memory and imagination, it +must continually have reminded men of certain features of essential +human nature, which it but too evidently recorded. Here was one of the +sad troop of soulless women who appear in the legends of all the races +of mankind. Medusa had herself been petrified before she turned others +to stone. The horror that had come upon her life had been too much to +bear, and it had killed her heart within her. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p> + +<p>So far of passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. But +this story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's head +must rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that may +petrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when the +dazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has come +the cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and, +on a wider scale, the sight of the pain and the tragedy of the world, +present to the eyes of every generation the spectacle of victims +standing petrified like those who had seen too much at the cave's mouth +in the old legend.</p> + +<p>It is peculiarly interesting to contrast the story of Medusa with its +Hebrew parallel in Lot's wife. Both are women presumably beautiful, and +both are turned to stone. But while the Greek petrifaction is the result +of too direct a gaze upon the horrible, the Hebrew is the result of too +loving and desirous a gaze upon the coveted beauty of the world. Nothing +could more exactly represent and epitomise the diverse genius of the +nations, and we understand the Greek story the better for the strong +contrast with its Hebrew parallel. To the Greek, ugliness was dangerous; +and the horror of the world, having no explanation nor redress, could +but petrify the heart of man. To the Hebrew, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> beauty of the world +was dangerous, and man must learn to turn away his eyes from beholding +vanity.</p> + +<p>The legend of Medusa is a story of despair, and there is little room in +it for idealism of any kind; and yet there may be some hint, in the +reflecting shield of Perseus, of a brighter and more heartening truth. +The horror of the world we have always with us, and for all exquisite +spirits like those of the Greeks there is the danger of their being +marred by the brutality of the universe, and made hard and cold in rigid +petrifaction by the too direct vision of evil. Yet for such spirits +there is ever some shield of faith, in whose reflection they may see the +darkest horrors and yet remain flesh and blood. Those who believe in +life and love, whose religion—or at least whose indomitable clinging to +the beauty they have once descried—has taught them sufficient courage +in dwelling upon these things, may come unscathed through any such +ordeal. But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It came +out of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are the +daughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrow +of the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound, +looking upon its tragedy, will see in it only the <i>macabre</i>, and feel +that graveyard and spectral air which breathes about the haunted pagan +sepulchre. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + +<p>Another myth in which we see the contrast between essential paganism and +idealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms and +with innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successive +parts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all the +creatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing that +lived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom it +allured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuary +that adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose sweetness +surpassed that of the Sirens, nature, dead and living both (for all +lived unto Orpheus), followed him with glad and loving movement. Nay, +not only beasts and trees, but stones themselves and even mountains, +felt in the hard heart of them the power of this sweet music. It is one +of the most perfect stories ever told—the precursor of the legends that +gathered round Francis of Assisi and many a later saint and artist. It +is the prophecy from the earliest days of that consummation of which +Isaiah was afterwards to sing and St. Paul to echo the song, when nature +herself would come to the perfect reconciliation for which she had been +groaning and travailing through all the years.</p> + +<p>The second part of the story tells of the tragedy of love. Such a man as +Orpheus, if he be fortunate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> in his love, will love wonderfully, and +Eurydice is his worthy bride. Dying, bitten by a snake in the grass as +she flees from danger, she descends to Hades. But the surpassing love of +the sweet singer dares to enter that august shadow, not to drink the +Waters of Lethe only and to forget, but also to drink the waters of +Eunoe and to remember. His music charms the dead, and those who have the +power of death. Even the hard-hearted monarch of hell is moved for +Orpheus, who</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And made hell grant what love did seek."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But the rescue has one condition. He must restrain himself, must not +look upon the face of his beloved though he bears her in his arms, until +they have passed the region of the shadow of death, and may see one +another in the sunlight of the bright earth again. The many versions of +the tragic disobedience to this condition bear eloquent testimony, not +certainly to any changing phase of the sky, but to the manifold aspects +of human life. According to some accounts, it was the rashness of +Orpheus that did the evil—love's impatience, that could not wait the +fitting time, and, snatching prematurely that which was its due, +sacrificed all. According to other accounts, it was Eurydice who tempted +Orpheus, her love and pain having grown too hungry and blind. However +that may be, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> error was fatal, and on the very eve of victory all +was lost. It was lost, not by any snatching back in which strong hands +of hell tore his beloved from the man's grasp. Within his arms the form +of Eurydice faded away, and as he clutched at her his fingers closed +upon the empty air. That, too, is a law deep in the nature of things. It +is by no arbitrary decree that self-restraint has been imposed on love. +In this, as in all other things, a man must consent to lose his life in +order to find it; and those who will not accept the conditions, will be +visited by no melodramatic or violent catastrophe. Love which has broken +law will simply fade away and vanish.</p> + +<p>The third part of the story is no less interesting and significant. +Maddened with this second loss, so irrevocable and yet due to so +avoidable a cause, Orpheus, in restless despair, wandered about the +lands. For him the nymphs had now no attractions, nor was there anything +in all the world but the thought of his half-regained Eurydice, now lost +for ever. His music indeed remained, nor did he cast away his lute; but +it was heard only in the most savage and lonely places. At length wild +Thracian women heard it, furious in the rites of Dionysus. They desired +him, but his heart was elsewhere, and, in the mad reaction of their +savage breasts, when he refused them they tore him limb +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> from limb. He +was buried near the river Hebrus, and his head was thrown into the +stream. But as the waters bore it down, the lips whose singing had +charmed the world still repeated the beloved name Eurydice to the waters +as they flowed.</p> + +<p>Here again it is as if, searching for the dead in some ancient +sepulchre, we had found a living man and friend. The symbolism of the +story, disentangled from detail which may have been true enough in a +lesser way, is clear to every reader. It tells that love is strong as +death—that old sweet assurance which the lover in Canticles also +discovered. Love is indeed set here under conditions, or rather it has +perceived the conditions which the order of things has set, and these +conditions have been violated. But still the voice of the severed head, +crying out the beloved name as the waters bore it to the sea, speaks in +its own exquisite way the final word. It gives the same assurance with +the same thrill which we feel when we read the story of Herakles +wrestling with death for the body of Alkestis, and winning the woman +back from her very tomb.</p> + +<p>But before love can be a match for death, it first must conquer life, +and the early story of the power of Orpheus over the wild beasts, +restoring, as it does, an earthly paradise in which there is nothing but +gentleness, marks the conquest of life by love. All life's wildness and +savagery, which seem to give the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> lie to love continually, are after all +conquerable and may be tamed. And the lesson of it all is the great +persuasion that in the depth of things life is good and not evil. When +we come to the second conflict, and that love which has mastered life +now pits itself against death, it goes forward to the greater adventure +with a strange confidence. Who that has looked upon the face of one +dearly beloved who is dead, has not known the leap of the spirit, not so +much in rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that it +obviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuaded +that it has it—that death is but a puppet king, and love the master of +the universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but a +faltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it.</p> + +<p>For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies +of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian +women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand +for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They +but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of the +forfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, of +selfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far as +love can be slain.</p> + +<p>In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> creation in the form of +one of the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and +ideal aspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout +the story; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning against +paganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mighty +contrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganism +enters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle was +fought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, for +all the world to see. The two things which give their character to the +centuries from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man for +immortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On the +smaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand to +the end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus.</p> + +<p>It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet +singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of +Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or +Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its +greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim +the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for +the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> The secret societies which +professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought +of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who +derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance, +reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the early +Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and +found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story +tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good +Shepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith.</p> + +<p>One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, more +perhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad and +good elements. On the one hand there are the innumerable immoralities +and savageries that are found in all the records of mythology. On the +other hand, he who flays Marsias alive and visits the earth with plagues +is also the healer of men. He is the cosmopolitan god of the brotherhood +of mankind, the spirit of wisdom whose oracle acknowledged and inspired +Socrates, and, generally, the incarnation of the "glory of the Lord."</p> + +<p>We cannot here touch upon the marvellous tales of Delos and of Delphi, +nor repeat the strains that Pindar sang, sitting in his iron chair +beside the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> shrine. This much at least we may say, that both the Apollo +of Delos and the Apollo of Delphi are foreign gods, each of whom +appropriated to his own use a sacred place where the ancient earth-bound +religion had already established its rites. The Greeks brought with them +a splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he was +identified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems to +be the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between the +revolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at least +repudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning such +stories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee; +it is a hateful cleverness that slanders gods." No one who has realised +the power and glory of the Eastern sun, can wonder at the identification +both of the good and bad symbolism with the orb of day. Sun-worship is +indeed a form of nature-worship, and there are physical reasons obvious +enough for its being able to incorporate both the clean and unclean, +both the deadly and the benign legends. Yet there is a splendour in it +which is seen in its attraction for such minds as those of Aurelian and +Julian, and which is capable of refinement in the delicate spirituality +of Mithra, that worship of the essential principle of light, the soul of +sunshine. In the worship of Apollo we have a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> combination, than which +none on record is more striking, of the finest spirituality with the +crudest paganism.</p> + +<p>Here then, in the magical arena of the early world of Greece, we see in +one of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism and +spirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular stories +of Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partly +bequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which preceded +the Olympians, partly added in decadent days when the mind of man was +turned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deeper +meaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nights +or of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which is +ever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant), +and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell in +heaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought and life, +as we move about from point to point among the literature of later days. +Yet we shall seldom find any phase of the conflict which has not been +prophesied, or at least foreshadowed, in these legends of the dawn. The +link that binds the earliest to the latest page of literature is just +that human nature which, through all changes of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> country and of time, +remains essentially the same. It is this which lends to our subject its +individual as well as its historical interest. The battle is for each of +us our own battle, and its victories and defeats are our own. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_II" id="LECTURE_II"></a>LECTURE II</h2><h2>MARIUS THE EPICUREAN</h2> + + +<p>Much has been written, before and after the day of Walter Pater, +concerning that singularly pure and yet singularly disappointing +character, Marcus Aurelius, and his times. The ethical and religious +ferment of the period has been described with great fullness and +sympathy by Professor Dill. Yet it may be said, without fear of +contradiction, that no book has ever been written, nor is likely ever to +appear, which has conveyed to those who came under its spell a more +intimate and familiar conception of that remarkable period and man than +that which has been given by Walter Pater's <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>.</p> + +<p>Opinion is divided about the value of Pater's work, and if it be true +that some of his admirers have provoked criticism by their unqualified +praise, it is no less true that many of his detractors appear never to +have come in contact with his mind at all. Born in 1839, he spent the +greater +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> part of his life in Queen's College, Oxford, where he died in +1894. As literary critic, humanist, and master of a thoroughly original +style, he made a considerable impression upon his generation from the +first; but it may be safely said that it is only now, when readers are +able to look upon his work in a more spacious and leisurely way, that he +and his contribution to English thought and letters have come to their +own.</p> + +<p>The family was of Dutch extraction, and while the sons of his +grandfather were trained in the Roman Catholic religion, the daughters +were Protestants from their childhood. His father left the Roman +Catholic communion early in life, without adopting any other form of +Christian faith. It is not surprising that out of so strongly marked and +widely mingled a heredity there should have emerged a writer prone to +symbolism and open to the sense of beauty in ritual, and yet too +cosmopolitan to accept easily the conventional religious forms. Before +his twentieth year he had come under the influence of Ruskin's writings, +but he soon parted from that wayward and contradictory master, whose +brilliant dogmatism enslaved so thoroughly, but so briefly, the taste of +young England. Ruskin, however, had awakened Pater, although to a style +of criticism very different from his own, and for this service we owe +him much. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> The environment of Oxford subjected his spirit to two widely +different sets of influences. On the one hand, he was in contact with +such men as Jowett, Nettleship, and Thomas Hill Green: on the other +hand, with Swinburne, Burne-Jones, and the pre-Raphaelites. Thus the +awakened spirit felt the dominion both of a high spiritual rationalism, +and of the beauty of flesh and the charm of the earth. A visit to Italy +in company with Shadwell, and his study of the Renaissance there, made +him an enthusiastic humanist. The immediate product of this second +awakening was the <i>Renaissance</i> Essays, a very remarkable volume of his +early work. Twelve years later, <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>, his second book, +appeared in 1885. In Dr. Gosse, Pater has found an interpreter of rare +sympathy and insight, whose appreciations of his contemporaries are, in +their own right, fine contributions to modern literature.</p> + +<p>The characteristics of his style were also those both of his thought and +of his character. Dr. Gosse has summed up the reserve and shy reticence +and the fastidious taste which always characterise his work, in saying +that he was "one of the most exquisite, most self-respecting, the most +individual prose writers of the age." Even in the matter of style he +consciously respected his own individuality, refusing to read +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> either +Stevenson or Kipling for fear that their masterful strength might lead +him out of his path. Certainly his bitterest enemies could not accuse +him of borrowing from either of them. Mr. Kipling is apt to sacrifice +everything to force, while Pater is perhaps the gentlest writer of our +time. In Stevenson there is a delicate and yet vigorous human passion, +but also a sense of fitness, a consciousness of style that is all his +own. He is preaching, and not swearing at you, as you often feel Mr. +Kipling to be doing. To preach at one may be indeed to take a great +liberty, but of course much will depend upon whether the preaching is +good preaching. Be that as it may, Pater is distinctive, and borrows +nothing from any writer whose influence can be traced in his work. He +neither swears nor preaches, but weaves about his reader a subtle film +of thought, through whose gossamer all things seem to suffer a curious +change, and to become harmonious and suggestive, as dark and +quiet-coloured things often are. The writer does not force himself upon +his readers, nor tempt even the most susceptible to imitate him; rather +he presupposes himself, and dominates without appearing. His reticence, +to which we have already referred, is one of his most characteristic +qualities. Dr. Gosse ascribes it to a somewhat low and sluggish vitality +of physical +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> spirits. For one in this condition "the first idea in the +presence of anything too vivacious is to retreat, and the most obvious +form of social retreat is what we call affectation." That Pater's style +has impressed many readers as affected there can be no question, and it +is as unquestionable that Dr. Gosse's explanation is the true one.</p> + +<p>His style has been much abused by critics who have found it easy to say +smart things about such tempting peculiarities. We may admit at once +that the writing is laboured and shows constant marks of the tool. The +same criticism applies, for that matter, to much that Stevenson has +written. But unless a man's style is absolutely offensive, which Pater's +emphatically is not, it is a wise rule to accept it rather as a +revelation of the man than as a chance for saying clever things. As one +reads the work of some of our modern critics, one cannot but perceive +and regret how much of pleasure and of profit their cleverness has cost +them. Acknowledging his laboriousness and even his affectation, we still +maintain that the style of Walter Pater is a very adequate expression of +his mind. There is a calm suggestive atmosphere, a spirit half-childish +and half-aged about his work. It is the work of a solemn and sensitive +child, who has kept the innocence of his eye for impressions, and yet +brought to his speech the experience, not of years +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> only, but of +centuries. He has many things to teach directly; but even when he is not +teaching so, the air you breathe with its delicate suggestion of faint +odours, the perfect taste in selection, the preferences and shrinkings +and shy delights, all proclaim a real and high culture. And, after all, +the most notable point in his style is just its exactness. Over-precise +it may be sometimes, and even meticulous, yet that is because it is the +exact expression of a delicate and subtle mind. In his <i>Appreciations</i> +he lays down, as a first canon for style, Flaubert's principle of the +search, the unwearied search, not for the smooth, or winsome, or +forcible word as such, but, quite simply and honestly, for the word's +adjustment to its meaning. It will be said in reply to any such defence +that the highest art is to conceal art. That is an old saying and a hard +one, and it is not possible to apply its rule in every instance. Pater's +immense sense of the value of words, and his choice of exact +expressions, resulted in language marvellously adapted to indicate the +almost inexpressible shades of thought. When a German struggles for the +utterance of some mental complexity he fashions new compounds of words; +a Frenchman helps out his meaning by gesture, as the Greek long ago did +by tone. Pater knows only one way of overcoming such situations, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span><br /> +that is by the painful search for the unique word that he ought to use.</p> + +<p>One result of this habit is that he has enriched our literature with a +large number of pregnant phrases which, it is safe to prophesy, will +take their place in the vernacular of literary speech. "Hard gem-like +flame," "Drift of flowers," "Tacitness of mind,"—such are some +memorable examples of the exact expression of elusive ideas. The house +of literature built in this fashion is a notable achievement in the +architecture of language. It reminds us of his own description of a +temple of Æsculapius: "His heart bounded as the refined and dainty +magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood of early +sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there, and with +all the singular expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanliness +and simplicity." Who would not give much to be able to say the thing he +wants to say so exactly and so beautifully as that is said? Indeed the +love of beauty is the key both to the humanistic thought and to the +simple and lingering style of Pater's writing. If it is not always +obviously simple, that is never due either to any vagueness or confusion +of thought, but rather to a struggle to express precise shades of +meaning which may be manifold, but which are perfectly clear to +himself. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> + +<p>A mind so sensitive to beauty and so fastidious in judging of it and +expressing it, must necessarily afford a fine arena for the conflict +between the tendencies of idealism and paganism. Here the great struggle +between conscience and desire, the rivalry of culture and restraint, the +choice between Athens and Jerusalem, will present a peculiarly +interesting spectacle. In Walter Pater both elements are strongly +marked. The love of ritual, and a constitutional delight in solemnities +of all kinds, was engrained in his nature. The rationalism of Green and +Jowett, with its high spirituality lighting it from within, drove off +the ritual for a time at least. The result of these various elements is +a humanism for which he abandoned the profession of Christianity with +which he had begun. Yet he could not really part from that earlier +faith, and for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not all +for Apollo, and not all for Christ." The same writer quotes as +applicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was a +disaffected cathedral," and likens him to that mysterious face of Mona +Lisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the most +brilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christian +idealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed gradually +and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it +he never surrendered the humanistic gains of the time between. He +accepted in their fullness both ideals, and so spiritualised his +humanism and humanised his idealism. Anything less rich and complete +than this could never have satisfied him. Self-denial is obviously not +an end in itself; and yet the real end, the fulfilment of nature, can +never by any possibility be attained by directly aiming at it, but must +ever involve self-denial as a means towards its attainment. It is +Pater's clear sight of the necessity of these two facts, and his +lifelong attempt to reconcile them, that give him, from the ethical and +religious point of view, his greatest importance.</p> + +<p>The story of this reconciliation is <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>. It is a +spiritual biography telling the inner history of a Roman youth of the +time of Marcus Aurelius. It begins with an appreciative interpretation +of the old Roman religion as it was then, and depicts the family +celebrations by which the devout were wont to seek "to produce an +agreement with the gods." Among the various and beautiful tableaux of +that Roman life, we see the solemn thoughtful boy reading hard and +becoming a precocious idealist, too old already for his years, but +relieving the inward tension by much pleasure in the country and the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span><br /> +open air. A time of delicate health brings him and us to a temple of +Æsculapius. The priesthood there is a kind of hospital college +brotherhood, whose teaching and way of life inculcate a mysteriously +sacramental character in all matters of health and the body.</p> + +<p>Like all other vital youths, Marius must eat of the tree of knowledge +and become a questioner of hitherto accepted views. "The tyrannous +reality of things visible," and all the eager desire and delight of +youth, make their strong appeal. Two influences favour the temptation. +First there is his friend, Flavian the Epicurean, of the school that +delights in pleasure without afterthought, and is free from the burden +and restraint of conscience; and later on, <i>The Golden Book</i> of +Apuleius, with its exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, and its search +for perfectness in the frankly material life. The moral of its main +story is that the soul must not look upon the face of its love, nor seek +to analyse too closely the elements from which it springs. Spirituality +will be left desolate if it breaks this ban, and its wiser course is to +enjoy without speculation. Thus we see the youth drawn earthwards, yet +with a clinging sense of far mystic reaches, which he refuses as yet to +explore. The death of Flavian rudely shatters this phase of his +experience, and we find him face to face with death. The section +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> begins +with the wonderful hymn of the Emperor Hadrian to his dying soul—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">Dear wanderer, gipsy soul of mine,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Sweet stranger, pleasing guest and comrade of my flesh,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Whither away? Into what new land,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Pallid one, stoney one, naked one?</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But the sheer spectacle and fact of death is too violent an experience +for such sweet consolations, and the death of Flavian comes like a final +revelation of nothing less than the soul's extinction. Not unnaturally, +the next phase is a rebound into epicureanism, spiritual indeed in the +sense that it could not stoop to low pleasures, but living wholly in the +present none the less, with a strong and imperative appreciation of the +fullness of earthly life.</p> + +<p>The next phase of the life of Marius opens with a journey to Rome, +during which he meets a second friend, the soldier Cornelius. This very +distinctly drawn character fascinates the eye from the first. In him we +meet a kind of earnestness which seems to interpret and fit in with the +austere aspects of the landscape. It is different from that disciplined +hardness which was to be seen in Roman soldiers as the result of their +military training; indeed, it seems as if this were some new kind of +knighthood, whose mingled austerity and blithe +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>ness were strangely +suggestive of hitherto unheard-of achievements in character.</p> + +<p>The impression made by Rome upon the mind of Marius was a somewhat +morbid one. He was haunted more or less by the thought of its passing +and its eventual ruin, and he found much, both in its religion and its +pleasure, to criticise. The dominant figure in the imperial city was +that of Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, so famous in his day that for two +hundred years after his death his image was cherished among the Penates +of many pious families. Amid much that was admirable in him, there was a +certain chill in his stoicism, and a sense of lights fading out into the +night. His words in praise of death, and much else of his, had of course +a great distinction. Yet in his private intercourse with Marcus +Aurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it the bleak sense that all +is vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity—of a +too easy acceptance of the world—in the imperial philosophy. For in the +companionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, and his friend was more truly an aristocrat than his Emperor. +Cornelius did not accept the world in its entirety, either sadly or +otherwise. In him there was "some inward standard ... of distinction, +selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> period and the +corrupt life across which they were moving together." And, apparently as +a consequence of this spirit of selection, "with all the severity of +Cornelius, there was a breeze of hopefulness—freshness and +hopefulness—as of new morning, about him." Already, it may be, the +quick intelligence of the reader has guessed what is coming. Jesus +Christ said of Himself on one occasion, "For distinctions I am come into +the world." Marius' criticism of the Emperor reached its climax in his +disgust at the amusements of the amphitheatre, which also Marcus +Aurelius accepted.</p> + +<p>There follows a long account of Roman life and thought, with much +speculation as to the ideal commonwealth. That dream of the philosophers +remains for ever in the air, detached from actual experiences and +institutions, but Marius felt himself passing beyond it to something in +which it would be actually realised and visibly localised, "the unseen +Rome on high." Thus in correcting and supplementing the philosophies, +and in insisting upon some actual embodiment of them on the earth, he is +groping his way point by point to Christ. The late Dean Church has said: +"No one can read the wonderful sayings of Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus +Aurelius, without being impressed, abashed perhaps, by their grandeur. +No one can read them +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> without wondering the next moment why they fell so +dead—how little response they seem to have awakened round them." It is +precisely at this point that the young Christian Church found its +opportunity. Pagan idealisms were indeed in the air. The Christian +idealism was being realised upon the earth, and it was this with which +Marius was now coming into contact.</p> + +<p>So he goes on until he is led up to two curious houses. The first of +these was the house of Apuleius, where in a subtle and brilliant system +of ideas it seemed as if a ladder had been set up from earth to heaven. +But Marius discovered that what he wanted was the thing itself and not +its mere theory, a life of realised ideals and not a dialectic. The +second house was more curious still. Much pains is spent upon the +description of it with its "quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble +taste," in which both colour and form, alike of stones and flowers, +seemed expressive of a rare and potent beauty in the personality that +inhabited them. There were inscriptions there to the dead martyrs, +inscriptions full of confidence and peace. Old pagan symbols were there +also—Herakles wrestling with death for possession of Alkestis, and +Orpheus taming the wild beasts—blended naturally with new symbols such +as the Shepherd and the sheep, and the Good Shepherd carrying the sick +lamb upon +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> his shoulder. The voice of singers was heard in the house of +an evening singing the candle hymn, "Hail, Heavenly Light." Altogether +there seemed here to be a combination of exquisite and obvious beauty +with "a transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in +which the old puzzle of life had found its solution."</p> + +<p>It was none other than the Church of the early Christian days that +Marius had stumbled on, under the guidance of his new friend; and +already in heart he had actually become a Christian without knowing it, +for these friends of comeliness seemed to him to have discovered the +secret of actualising the ideal as none others had done. At such a +moment in his spiritual career it is not surprising that he should +hesitate to look upon that which would "define the critical +turning-point," yet he looked. He saw the blend of Greek and Christian, +each at its best—the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. In +this "minor peace of the Church," so pure, so delicate, and so vital +that it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest of +bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the +generations of living trees," he seemed to see the possibility of +satisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love and +self-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than the +Greek blitheness, and a new beauty +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> which contrasted brightly with the +Roman insipidity. It was the humanism of Christianity that so satisfied +him, standing as it did for the fullness of life, in spite of all its +readiness for sacrifice. And it was effective too, for it seemed to be +doing rapidly what the best paganism was doing very slowly—attaining, +almost without thinking about it, the realisation of the noblest ideals.</p> + +<p>"And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the first +time the wonderful spectacle—wonderful, especially, in its evidential +power over himself, over his own thoughts—of those who believe. There +were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, +of personal type. The Roman <i>ingenuus</i>, with the white toga and gold +ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole +company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thus +unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence +so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as if +he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could +scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the +earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of +which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human +type there present, was the various expression of every form +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> of human +sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so +pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of +humble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on the +details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some +science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly +been no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message from +beyond 'the flaming rampart of the world'—a message of hope regarding +the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of +things—already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, +now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work +in them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look +comparatively vulgar and mean."</p> + +<p>The spectacle of the Sacrament adds its deep impression, "bread and wine +especially—pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan +vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and +animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now +in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch and see, in the +midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things."</p> + +<p>The sense of youth in it all was perhaps the dominating impression—the +youth that was yet old +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> as the world in experience and discovery of the +true meaning of life. The young Christ was rejuvenating the world, and +all things were being made new by him.</p> + +<p>This is the climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for a +moment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him has +been no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does not +leap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietly +realises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealism +had been all the time groping. The story closes amid scenes of plague +and earthquake and martyrdom in which he and Cornelius are taken +prisoners, and he dies at last a Christian. "It was the same people who, +in the grey, austere evening of that day, took up his remains, and +buried them secretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, +holding his death, according to their generous view in this matter, to +have been of the nature of a martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the Church had +always said, was a kind of Sacrament with plenary grace."</p> + +<p>Such is some very brief and inadequate conception of one of the most +remarkable books of our time, a book "written to illustrate the highest +ideal of the æsthetic life, and to prove that beauty may be made the +object of the soul in a career as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> pure, as concentrated, and as austere +as any that asceticism inspires. <i>Marius</i> is an apology for the highest +Epicureanism, and at the same time it is a texture which the author has +embroidered with exquisite flowers of imagination, learning, and +passion. Modern humanism has produced no more admirable product than +this noble dream of a pursuit through life of the spirit of heavenly +beauty." Nothing could be more true, so far as it goes, than this +admirable paragraph, yet Pater's book is more than that. The main drift +of it is the reconciliation of Hellenism with Christianity in the +experience of a man "bent on living in the full stream of refined +sensation," who finds Christianity in every point fulfilling the ideals +of Epicureanism at its best.</p> + +<p>The spiritual stages through which Marius passes on his journey towards +this goal are most delicately portrayed. In the main these are three, +which, though they recur and intertwine in his experience, yet may be +fairly stated in their natural order and sequence as normal types of +such spiritual progress.</p> + +<p>The first of these stages is a certain vague fear of evil, which seems +to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of +some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its +keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a +very subtle and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to +his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined +or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague +misgivings took shape in one definite experience. "From the steep slope +a heavy mass of stone was detached, after some whisperings among the +trees above his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell to +pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so that he +felt the touch upon his heel." That was sufficient, just then, to rouse +out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil—of one's "enemies." +Such distress was so much a matter of constitution with him, that at +times it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but be +snatched hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark besetting +influence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of +enemies, seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things. When +tempted by the earth-bound philosophy of the early period of his +development, "he hardly knew how strong that old religious sense of +responsibility, the conscience, as we call it, still was within him—a +body of inward impressions, as real as those so highly valued outward +ones—to offend against which, brought with it a strange feeling of +disloyalty, as to a person." Later on, when the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> "acceptance of things" +which he found in Marcus Aurelius had offended him, and seemed to mark +the Emperor as his inferior, we find that there is "the loyal conscience +within him, deciding, judging himself and every one else, with a +wonderful sort of authority." This development of conscience from a +vague fear of enemies to a definite court of appeal in a man's judgment +of life, goes side by side with his approach to Christianity. The pagan +idealism of the early days had never been able to cope with that sense +of enemies, nor indeed to understand it; but in the light of his growing +Christian faith, conscience disentangles itself and becomes clearly +defined.</p> + +<p>Another element in the spiritual development of Marius is that which may +be called his consciousness of an unseen companion. Marius was +constitutionally <i>personel</i>, and never could be satisfied with the dry +light of pure reason, or with any impersonal ideal whatsoever. For him +the universe was alive in a very real sense. At first, however, this was +the vaguest of sentiments, and it needed much development before it +became clear enough to act as one of the actual forces which played upon +his life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy of +Marcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, made +possible by means of the <i>Logos</i>, "the reason +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>able spark in man, common +to him with the gods." "There could be no inward conversation with +oneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware of +our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's +disposition of oneself." This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamental +necessity of experience—one of those "beliefs, without which life +itself must be almost impossible, principles which had their sufficient +ground of evidence in that very fact." So far Marcus Aurelius. But the +conviction of some august yet friendly companionship in life beyond the +veil of things seen, took form for Marius in a way far more picturesque. +The passage which describes it is one of the finest in the book, and may +be given at length.</p> + +<p>"Through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in another +life, and like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, +passing from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from various +dangers. That prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively +gratitude: it was as if he must look round for some one else to share +his joy with: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own +relief. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this +way or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one or +another long +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> span of it, the chief delight of the journey. And was it +only the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through +his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had not +been—besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude +which in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of all +things—some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side +throughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of +his peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful +recognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was +there at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for him +altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it?" One can +see in this sense of constant companionship the untranslated and indeed +the unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God is +responsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, it +will be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for that +complexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could better +summarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, +"To have apprehended the <i>Great Ideal</i>, so palpably that it defined +personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid +the shadows of the world." +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> + +<p>The third essential development of Marius' thought is that of the City +of God, which for him assumes the shape of a perfected and purified +Rome, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of life and character. This +is indeed the inevitable sequel of any such spiritual developments as +the fear of enemies and the sense of an unseen companion. Man moves +inevitably to the city, and all his ideals demand an embodiment in +social form before they reach their full power and truth. In that house +of life which he calls society, he longs to see his noblest dreams find +a local habitation and a name. This is the grand ideal passed from hand +to hand by the greatest and most outstanding of the world's seers—from +Plato to Augustine, from Augustine to Dante—the ideal of the City of +God. It is but little developed in the book which we are now +considering, for that would be beside the purpose of so intimate and +inward a history. Yet we see, as it were, the towers and palaces of this +"dear City of Zeus" shining in the clear light of the early Christian +time, like the break of day over some vast prospect, with the new City, +as it were some celestial new Rome, in the midst of it.</p> + +<p>These are but a few glimpses at this very significant and far-reaching +book, which indeed takes for its theme the very development from pagan +to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Christian idealism with which we are dealing. In it, in countless +bright and vivid glances, the beauty of the world is seen with virgin +eye. Many phases of that beauty belong to the paganism which surrounds +us as we read, yet these are purified from all elements that would make +them pagan in the lower sense, and under our eyes they free themselves +for spiritual flights which find their resting-place at last and become +at once intelligible and permanent in the faith of Jesus Christ. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_III" id="LECTURE_III"></a>LECTURE III</h2><h2> +THE TWO FAUSTS</h2> + + +<p>It may seem strange to pass immediately from the time of Marcus Aurelius +to Marlowe and Goethe, and yet the tale upon which these two poets +wrought is one whose roots are very deep in history, and which revives +in a peculiarly vital and interesting fashion the age-long story of +man's great conflict. Indeed the saga on which it is founded belongs +properly to no one period, but is the tragic drama of humanity. It +tells, through all the ages, the tale of the struggle between earth and +the spiritual world above it; and the pagan forms which are introduced +take us back into the classical mythology, and indeed into still more +ancient times.</p> + +<p>The hero of the story must be clearly distinguished from Fust the +printer, a wealthy goldsmith of Mayence, who, in the middle of the +fifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise of +printing. Robert Browning, in <i>Fust and his Friends</i>, tells us, with +great vivacity, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magic +spirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkward +pause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of the +psalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fust +had, was that so long as this or any other process was kept secret, it +was attributed to supernatural powers.</p> + +<p>Faust, although a contemporary of Fust the printer, was a very different +character. Unfortunately, our information about him comes almost +entirely from his enemies, and their accounts are by no means sparing in +abuse. Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Spanheim in the early part of +the sixteenth century, writes of him with the most virulent contempt, as +a debauched person and a criminal whose overweening vanity arrogated to +itself the most preposterous supernatural powers. It would appear that +he had been some sort of travelling charlatan, whose performing horse +and dog were taken for evil spirits, like Esmeralda's goat in Victor +Hugo's <i>Notre Dame</i>. Even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have shared the +common view of him, and at last there was published at Frankfurt the +<i>Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus</i>. +The date of this work is 1587, and a translation of it appeared in +London in 1592. It is a discursive composi +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>tion, founded upon +reminiscences of some ancient stroller who lived very much by his wits; +but it took such a hold upon the imagination of the time that, by the +latter part of the sixteenth century, Faust had become the necromancer +<i>par excellence</i>. Into the Faust-book there drifted endless necromantic +lore from the Middle Ages and earlier times. It seems to have had some +connection with Jewish legends of magicians who invoked the <i>Satanim</i>, +or lowest grade of elemental spirits not unlike the "elementals" of +modern popular spiritualism. It was the story of a Christian selling his +soul to the powers of darkness, and it had behind it one of the poems of +Hrosvitha of Gandersheim which relates a similar story of an archdeacon +of Cilicia of the sixth century, and also the popular tradition of Pope +Sylvester the Second, who was suspected of having made the same bargain. +Yet, as Lebahn says, "The Faust-legend in its complete form was the +creation of orthodox Protestantism. Faust is the foil to Luther, who +worsted the Devil with his ink-bottle when he sought to interrupt the +sacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue." This legend, +by the way, is a peculiarly happy one, for Luther not only aimed his +ink-bottle at the Devil, but most literally and effectively hit him with +it, when he wrote those books that changed the face of religious +Europe. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<p>The <i>Historie</i> had an immense and immediate popularity, and until well +into the nineteenth century it was reproduced and sold throughout +Europe. As we read it, we cannot but wonder what manner of man it really +was who attracted to himself such age-long hatred and fear, and held the +interest of the centuries. In many respects, doubtless, his story was +like that of Paracelsus, in whom the world has recognised the struggle +of much good with almost inevitable evil, and who, if he had been born +in another generation, might have figured as a commanding spiritual or +scientific authority.</p> + +<p>Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1564, two months before +Shakespeare. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was the pupil of Kett, a +fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College. This tutor was probably +accountable for much in the future Marlowe, for he was a mystic, and was +burnt for heresy in 1589. After a short and extremely violent life, the +pupil followed his master four years later to the grave, having been +killed in a brawl under very disgraceful circumstances. He only lived +twenty-nine years, and yet he, along with Kyd, changed the literature of +England. Lyly's Pastorals had been the favourite reading of the people +until these men came, keen and audacious, to lead and sing their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span><br /> +"brief, fiery, tempestuous lives." When they wrote their plays and +created their villains, they were not creating so much as remembering. +Marlowe's plays were four, and they were all influential. His <i>Edward +the Second</i> was the precursor of the historical plays of Shakespeare. +His other plays were <i>Tamburlaine the Great</i>, <i>Dr. Faustus</i>, and <i>The +Jew of Malta</i> (Barabbas). These three were all upon congenial lines, +expressing that Titanism in revolt against the universe which was the +inspiring spirit of Marlowe. But it was the character of Faust that +especially fascinated him, for he found in the ancient magician a pretty +clear image of his own desires and ambitions. He was one of those who +loved "the dangerous edge of things," and, as Charles Lamb said, +"delighted to dally with interdicted subjects." The form of the plays is +loose and broken, and yet there is a pervading larger unity, not only of +dramatic action, but of spirit. The laughter is loud and coarse, the +terror unrelieved, and the splendour dazzling. There is no question as +to the greatness of this work as permanent literature. It has long +outlived the amazing detractions of Hallam and of Byron, and will +certainly be read so long as English is a living tongue.</p> + +<p>The next stage in this curious history is a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> peculiarly interesting one. +In former days there sprang up around every great work of art a forest +of slighter literature, in the shape of chap-books, ballads, and puppet +plays. By far the most popular of the puppet plays was that founded upon +Marlowe's <i>Faust</i>. The German version continued to be played in Germany +until three hundred years later. Goethe constructed his masterpiece +largely by its help. English actors travelling abroad had brought back +the story to its native land of Germany, and in every town the bands of +strolling players sent Marlowe's great conception far and wide. In +England also the puppet play was extremely popular. The drama had moved +from the church to the market-place, and much of the Elizabethan drama +appeared in this quaint form, played by wooden figures upon diminutive +boards. To the modern mind nothing could be more incongruous than the +idea of a solemn drama forced to assume a guise so grotesque and +childish; but, according to Jusserand, much of the stage-work was +extremely ghastly, and no doubt it impressed the multitude. There is +even a story of some actors who had gone too far, and into the midst of +whose play the real devil suddenly descended with disastrous results. It +must, however, be allowed that even the serious plays were not with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>out +an abundant element of grotesqueness. The occasion for Faustus' final +speech of despair, for instance, was the lowering and raising before his +eyes of two or three gilded arm-chairs, representing the thrones in +heaven upon which he would never sit. It does not seem to have occurred +to the audience as absurd that heaven should be regarded as a kind of +drawing-room floating in the air, and indeed that idea is perhaps not +yet obsolete. However that may be, it is quite evident that such +machinery, ill-suited though it was to the solemnities of tragedy, must +have been abundantly employed in the puppet plays.</p> + +<p>The German puppet play of <i>Faust</i> has been transcribed by Dr. Hamm and +translated by Mr. Hedderwick into English. It was obtained at first with +great difficulty, for the showmen kept the libretto secret, and could +not be induced to lend it. Dr. Hamm, however, followed the play round, +listening and committing much of it to memory, and his version was +finally completed when his amanuensis obtained for a day or two the +original manuscript after plying one of the assistants with much beer +and wine. It was a battered book, thumb-marked and soaked with lamp oil, +but it has passed on to posterity one of the most remarkable pieces of +dramatic +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> work which have come down to us from those times.</p> + +<p>In all essentials the play is the same as that of Marlowe, except for +the constant interruptions of the clown Casper, who intrudes with his +absurdities even into the most sacred parts of the action, and entirely +mars the dreadful solemnity of the end by demanding his wages from Faust +while the clock is striking the diminishing intervals of the last hour.</p> + +<p>It was through this curious intermediary that Goethe went back to +Marlowe and created what has been well called "the most mystic poetic +work ever created," and "the <i>Divina Commedia</i> of the eighteenth +century." Goethe's <i>Faust</i> is elemental, like <i>Hamlet</i>. Readers of +<i>Wilhelm Meister</i> will remember how profound an impression <i>Hamlet</i> had +made upon Goethe's mind, and this double connection between Goethe and +the English drama forms one of the strongest and most interesting of all +the links that bind Germany to England. His <i>Faust</i> was the direct +utterance of Goethe's own inner life. He says: "The marionette folk of +<i>Faust</i> murmured with many voices in my soul. I, too, had wandered into +every department of knowledge, and had returned early enough, satisfied +with the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under various +aspects, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied." Thus <i>Faust</i> +lay in the depths of Goethe's life as a sort of spiritual pool, +mirroring all its incidents and thoughts. The play was begun originally +in the period of his <i>Sturm und Drang</i>, and it remained unpublished +until, in old age, the ripened mind of the great poet took it over +practically unchanged, and added the calmer and more intellectual parts. +The whole of the Marguerite story belongs to the earlier days.</p> + +<p>There is nothing in the whole of literature which could afford us a +finer and more fundamental account of the battle between paganism and +idealism in the soul of man, than the comparison between the <i>Fausts</i> of +Marlowe and of Goethe. But before we come to this, it may be interesting +to notice two or three points of special interest in the latter drama, +which show how entirely pagan are the temptations of Faust.</p> + +<p>The first passage to notice is that opening one on Easter Day, where the +devil approaches Faust in the form of a dog. Choruses of women, +disciples, and angels are everywhere in the air; and although the dog +appears first in the open, yet the whole emphasis of the passage is upon +the contrast between that brilliant Easter morning with its sunshine and +its music, and the close and darkened study into which Faust has +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> shut +himself. It is true he goes abroad, but it is not to join with the rest +in their rejoicing, but only as a spectator, with all the superiority as +well as the wistfulness of his illicit knowledge. Evidently the +impression intended is that of the wholesomeness of the crowd and the +open air. He who goes in with the rest of men in their sorrow and their +rejoicing cannot but find the meaning of Easter morning for himself. It +is a festival of earth and the spring, an earth idealised, whose spirit +is incarnate in the risen Christ. Faust longs to share in that, and on +Easter Eve tries in vain to read his Gospel and to feel its power. But +the only cure for such morbid introspectiveness as his, is to cast +oneself generously into the common life of man, and the refusal to do +this invites the pagan devil.</p> + +<p>Another point of interest is the coming of the <i>Erdgeist</i> immediately +after the <i>Weltschmerz</i>. The sorrow that has filled his heart with its +melancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and the +thousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition, +are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheer +worldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's +Progress</i> it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough of +Despond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> Precisely +the same experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is +subtler and more complex than that of Bunyan. The <i>Erdgeist</i> which comes +to the saddened scholar is a noble spirit, vivifying and creative. It is +the world in all its glorious fullness of meaning, quite as true an +idealism as that which is expressed in the finest spirit of the Greeks. +But for Faust it is too noble. His morbid gloom has enervated him, and +the call of the splendid earth is beyond him. So there comes, instead of +it, a figure as much poorer than that of Worldly Wiseman as the +<i>Erdgeist</i> is richer. Wagner represents the poor commonplace world of +the wholly unideal. It is infinitely beneath the soul of Faust, and yet +for the time it conquers him, being nearer to his mood. Thus +Mephistopheles finds his opportunity. The scholar, embittered with the +sense that knowledge is denied to him, will take to mere action; and the +action will not be great like that which the <i>Erdgeist</i> would have +prompted, but poor and unsatisfying to any nobler spirit than that of +Wagner.</p> + +<p>The third incident which we may quote is that of <i>Walpurgis-Night</i>. Some +critics would omit this part, which, they say, "has naught of interest +in bearing on the main plot of the poem." Nothing could be more mistaken +than such a judgment. In the <i>Walpurgis-Night</i> we have the play ending +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span><br /> +in that sheer paganism which is the counterpart to Easter Day at the +beginning. Walpurgis has a strange history in German folklore. It is +said that Charlemagne, conquering the German forests for the Christian +faith, drove before him a horde of recalcitrant pagans, who took a last +shelter among the trees of the Brocken. There, on the pagan May-day, in +order to celebrate their ancient rites unmolested, they dressed +themselves in all manner of fantastic and bestial masks, so as to +frighten off the Christianising invaders from the revels. The Walpurgis +of <i>Faust</i> exhibits paganism at its lowest depths. Sir Mammon is the +host who invites his boisterous guests to the riot of his festive night. +The witches arrive on broomsticks and pitchforks; singing, not without +significance, the warning of woe to all climbers—for here aspiration of +any sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact that +pious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducing +the same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which Nathaniel +Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of <i>Young Goodman +Brown</i>; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust in +disgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch with +whom he had been dancing there had sprung a small red mouse. Throughout +the whole play the sense of holy and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> splendid ideals shines at its +brightest in lurid contrast with the hopeless and sordid dark of the +pagan earth.</p> + +<p>Returning now to our main point, the comparison of Marlowe's play with +Goethe's, let us first of all contrast the temptations in the two. +Marlowe's play is purely theological. Jusserand finely describes the +underlying tragedy of it. "Faust, like Tamburlaine, and like all the +heroes of Marlowe, lives in thought, beyond the limit of the possible. +He thirsts for a knowledge of the secrets of the universe, as the other +thirsted for domination over the world." Both are Titanic figures +exactly in the pagan sense, but the form of Faustus' Titanism is the +revolt against theology. From the early days of the Christian +persecutions, there had been a tendency to divorce the sacred from the +secular, and to regard all that was secular as being of the flesh and +essentially evil. The mediæval views of celibacy, hermitage, and the +monastic life, had intensified this divorce; and while many of the monks +were interested in human secular learning, yet there was a feeling, +which in many cases became a kind of conscience, that only the divine +learning was either legitimate or safe for a man's eternal well-being. +The Faust of Marlowe is the Prometheus of his own day. The new knowledge +of the Renaissance had spread like +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> fire across Europe, and those who +saw in it a resurrection of the older gods and their secrets, +unhesitatingly condemned it. The doctrine of immortality had entirely +supplanted the old Greek ideal of a complete earthly life for man, and +all that was sensuous had come to be regarded as intrinsically sinful. +Thus we have for background a divided universe, in which there is a +great gulf fixed between this world and the next, and a hopeless +cleavage between the life of body and that of spirit.</p> + +<p>In this connection we may also consider the women of the two plays. +Charles Lamb has asked, "What has Margaret to do with Faust?" and has +asserted that she does not belong to the legend at all. Literally, this +is true, in so far as there is no Margaret in the earlier form of the +play, whose interest was, as we have seen, essentially theological. Yet +Margaret belongs to the essential story and cannot be taken out of it. +She is the "eternal feminine," in which the battle between the spirit +and the flesh, between idealism and paganism, will always make its last +stand. Even Marlowe has to introduce a woman. His Helen is, indeed, a +mere incident, for the real bride of the soul must be either theological +or secular science; and yet so essential and so poignant is the question +of woman to the great drama, that the passage in which the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> incident of +Helen is introduced far surpasses anything else in Marlowe's play, and +indeed is one of the grandest and most beautiful in all literature.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And burned the topless towers of Ilium?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">O, thou art fairer than the evening air,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Still, Marlowe's <i>motif</i> is not sex but theology. The former heretics +whom we named had been saved—Theophilus by the intervention of the +Blessed Virgin Mary, and Pope Sylvester snatched from the very jaws of +hell—by a return to orthodoxy. That was in the Roman Catholic days, but +the savage antithesis between earth and heaven had been taken over by +the conscience of Protestantism, making a duality which rendered life +always intellectually anxious and almost impossible. It is this +condition in which Marlowe finds himself. The good and the evil angels +stand to right and left of his Faustus, pleading with him for and +against secular science on the one side and theological knowledge on the +other. For that is the implication behind the contest between magic and +Christianity. "The Faust of the earlier Faust-books and ballads, dramas, +puppet shows, which grew out of them, is damned because he prefers the +human +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>to the divine knowledge. He laid the Holy Scriptures behind the +door and under the bench, refused to be called Doctor of Theology, but +preferred to be called Doctor of Medicine." Obviously here we find +ourselves in a very lamentable <i>cul-de-sac</i>. Idealism has floated apart +from the earth and all its life, and everything else than theology is +condemned as paganism.</p> + +<p>Goethe changes all that. In the earlier <i>Weltschmerz</i> passages some +traces of it still linger, where Faust renounces theology; but even +there it is not theology alone that he renounces, but philosophy, +medicine, and jurisprudence as well, so that his renunciation is +entirely different from that of Marlowe's Faustus. In Goethe it is no +longer one doctrine or one point of view against another doctrine or +another point of view. It is life, vitality in all its forms, against +all mere doctrine whatsoever.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Grey, dearest friend, is every theory,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But golden-green is the tree of life."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Thus the times had passed into a sense of the limits of theology such as +has been well expressed in Rossetti's lines—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Let lore of all theology</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Be to thee all it can be,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But know,—the power that fashions man</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Measured not out thy little span</span><br /> +<span class="i1">For thee to take the meting-rod</span><br /> +<span class="i1">In turn and so approve on God."</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> + +<p>So in Goethe we have the unsatisfied human spirit with its infinite +cravings and longings for something more than earth can give—something, +however, which is not separated from the earth, and which is entirely +different from theological dogma or anything of that sort. In this, +Goethe is expressing a constant yearning of his own, which illuminated +all his writings like a gentle hidden fire within them, hardly seen in +many passages and yet always somehow felt. It is <i>through</i> the flesh +that he will find the spirit, <i>through</i> this world that he will find the +next. The quest is ultimately the same as that of Marlowe, but the form +of it is absolutely opposed to his. Goethe is as far from Marlowe's +theological position as <i>Peer Gynt</i> is, and indeed there is a +considerable similarity between Ibsen's great play and Goethe's. As the +drama develops, it is true that the love of Faust becomes sensual and +his curiosity morbid; but the tragedy lies no longer in the belief that +sense and curiosity are in themselves wrong, but in the fact that Faust +fails to distinguish their high phases from their low. We have already +seen that the <i>Erdgeist</i> which first appeals to Faust is too great for +him, and it is there that the tragedy really lies. The earth is not an +accursed place, and the <i>Erdgeist</i> may well find its home among the +ideals; but Wagner is +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> neither big enough nor clean enough to be man's +guide.</p> + +<p>The contrast between the high and low ideals comes to its finest and +most tragic in the story of Margaret. Spiritual and sensual love +alternate through the play. Its tragedy and horror concentrate round the +fact that love has followed the lower way. Margaret has little to give +to Faust of fellowship along intellectual or spiritual lines. She is a +village maiden, and he takes from her merely the obvious and lower kind +of love. It is a way which leads ultimately to the dance of the witches +and the cellar of Auerbach, yet Faust can never be satisfied with these, +and from the witch's mouth comes forth the red mouse—the climax of +disgust. In Auerbach's cellar he sees himself as the pagan man in him +would like to be. In Martha one sees the pagan counterpart to the pure +and simple Margaret, just as Mephistopheles is the pagan counterpart to +Faust. The lower forms of life are the only ones in which Martha and +Mephistopheles are at home. For Faust and Margaret the lapse into the +lower forms brings tragedy. Yet it must be remembered also that Faust +and Mephistopheles are really one, for the devil who tempts every man is +but himself after all, the animal side of him, the dog.</p> + +<p>The women thus stand for the most poignant aspect of man's great +temptation. It is not, as we +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> have already said, any longer a conflict +between the secular and the sacred that we are watching, nor even the +conflict between the flesh and the spirit. It is between a higher and a +lower way of treating life, flesh and spirit both. Margaret stands for +all the great questions that are addressed to mankind. There are for +every man two ways of doing work, of reading a book, of loving a woman. +He who keeps his spiritual life pure and high finds that in all these +things there is a noble path. He who yields to his lower self will +prostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to the +mad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel in +literature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result of +choosing the pagan and refusing the ideal. The Blocksberg is the pagan +heaven.</p> + +<p>A still more striking contrast between the plays meets us when we +consider the respective characters of Mephistopheles. When we compare +the two devils we are reminded of that most interesting passage in +Professor Masson's great essay, which describes the secularisation of +Satan between <i>Paradise Lost</i> and the <i>Faust</i> of Goethe:—</p> + +<p>"We shall be on the right track if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what +Satan has become after six thousand years.... Goethe's Mephistopheles +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span><br /> +is this same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand +years in his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million +times sharper and cleverer.... For six thousand years he has been +pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying his +self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and +abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as +he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has +become small, virulent, and shrunken. He, the scheming, enthusiastic +Archangel, has been soured and civilised into the clever, cold-hearted +Mephistopheles."</p> + +<p>Marlowe's devil is of the solemn earlier kind, not yet degraded into the +worldling whom Goethe has immortalised. Marlowe's Mephistophilis is +essentially the idealist, and it is his Faust who is determined for the +world. One feels about Mephistophilis that he is a kind of religious +character, although under a cloud. The things he does are done to organ +music, and he might be a figure in some stained-glass window of old. Not +only is he "a melancholy devil, with a soul above the customary hell," +but he actually retains a kind of despairing idealism which somehow +ranks him on the side rather of good than of evil. The puppet play +curiously emphasises this. "Tell me," says Faust, "what would you do if +you could attain to ever +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>lasting salvation?" "Hear and despair! Were I +to attain to everlasting salvation, I would mount to heaven on a ladder, +though every rung were a razor edge." The words are exactly in the +spirit of the earlier play. So sad is the devil, so oppressed with a +sense of the horror of it all, that, as we read, it almost seems as if +Faust were tempting the unwilling Mephistophilis to ruin him.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Am not tormented with ten thousand hells</span><br /> +<span class="i1">In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To which Faust replies—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate</span><br /> +<span class="i1">For being deprived of the joys of heaven?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Goethe's Mephistopheles near the end of the play taunts Faust in the +words, "Why dost thou seek our fellowship if thou canst not go through +with it?... Do we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?" And one has +the feeling that, like most other things the fiend says, it is an +apparent truth which is really a lie; but it would have been entirely +true if Marlowe's devil had said it. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Mephistopheles of Goethe is seldom solemnised at all. Once indeed on +the Harz Mountains he says—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Naught of this genial influence do I know!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Within me all is wintry.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">How sadly, yonder, with belated glow,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Yet there it is merely by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideous +sorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is like +Satan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuries +instead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jaunty +air that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the passage as +irreverent. He is the spirit that <i>denies</i>—sceptical and cynical, the +anti-Christian that is in us all. His business is to depreciate +spiritual values, and to persuade mortals that there is no real +distinction between good and bad, or between high and low. We have seen +in the character of Cornelius in <i>Marius the Epicurean</i> "some inward +standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various +elements of the period." Here is the extreme opposite. There is no +divine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would never +have said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> edges. +There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is a +spirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future. +Before the throne of God he swaggers with the same easy insolence as in +Martha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism.</p> + +<p>So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan and +Mephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, making +paganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the nobler side of the +man. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that which +had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and +thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the +worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, +never quite lose."</p> + +<p>One more contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, the +fate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably damned. On +the old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and the +sacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect of +man was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for the +rebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific passage at the +close, when, with the chiming of the bell, terror grows to madness in + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span><br /> +the victim's soul, and at last he envies the beasts that perish—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i9">"For, when they die,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer</span><br /> +<span class="i1">That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not have +accepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out that +the final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; but +Goethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even if +Lessing had not asserted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play, +by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly damnable" as Martha +is. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaks +forth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery of +this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art +grinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words follow +immediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth by +Mephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first." Such a Faust as +this, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can the +Mephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for his +destruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> only +really damnable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles of +Goethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing the +sin against the Holy Ghost.</p> + +<p>The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning of +the play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines of +human life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere that +surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy +issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only +on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and +cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment," only</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"If ever to the passing hour I say,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the +first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to +bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such +bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit +such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor +lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought.</p> + +<p>It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. It +is true that "man errs so + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> long as he is striving," but the great word +of the play is just this, that no such errors can ever be final. The +deadly error is that of those who have ceased to strive, and who have +complacently settled down in the acceptance of the lower life with its +gratifications and delights.</p> + +<p>But such striving is, as Robert Browning tells us in <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i> +and <i>The Statue and the Bust</i>, the critical and all-important point in +human character and destiny. It is this which distinguishes pagan from +idealist in the end. Faust's errors fall off from him like a discarded +robe; the essential man has never ceased to strive. He has gone indeed +to hell, but he has never made his bed there. He is saved by want of +satisfaction. + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_IV" id="LECTURE_IV"></a>LECTURE IV</h2><h2> +CELTIC REVIVALS OF PAGANISM</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Omar Kayyám and Fiona Macleod</span></h3> + + +<p>It is extremely difficult to judge justly and without prejudice the +literature of one's own time. So many different elements are pouring +into it that it assumes a composite character, far beyond the power of +definition or even of epigram to describe as a whole. But, while this is +true, it is nevertheless possible to select from this vast amalgam +certain particular elements, and to examine them and judge them fairly.</p> + +<p>The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included under +the head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the most +modern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, +although they have come into our literature but recently, yet represent +very ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern about +them. They describe bed-rock human passions and longings, sorrowings +and + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, +but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism.</p> + + +<h3>OMAR KAYYÁM</h3> + +<p>In the twelfth century, at Khorassán in Persia Omar Kayyám the poet was +born. He lived and died at Naishápúr, following the trade of a +tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with +astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the <i>Rubáiyát</i>, was +first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the +sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the +Omar Kayyám Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since +come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations."</p> + +<p>In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Súfis, or +religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which +professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be +suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It +was against the poetry of such Súfis that Omar Kayyám rose in revolt. +Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the +exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed.</p> + +<p>A fair specimen of the finest Súfi poetry is <i>The +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Rose Garden of +Sa'di</i>, which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy +accessibility in English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century +poet, although of a later time than Omar. He was a student of the +College in Baghdad, and he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, +singing of love and war. His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and +beauty going hand in hand through a dim twilight land. Dominating all +his thought is the primary conviction that the soul is essentially part +of God, and will return to God again, and meanwhile is always revealing, +in mysterious hints and half-conscious visions, its divine source and +destiny. Here and there you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as +in the lines—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The guardian of the store-house of the wind</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"To God's beloved even the dark hour</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Shines as the morning glory after rain.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyám revolted. He had not +any proof of such spiritual assurances, and he did not want that of + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>which he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, +both in its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any +other world. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, and +protested against the vague spirituality of the Súfis by an assertion of +what may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much as +they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit +an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who +"failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of +what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of +any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the +inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb—"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not +worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with +such inscriptions on them—"The future is utterly useless, make the most +of to-day,"—and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and the +inscription.</p> + +<p>The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. In +his view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means God; when he +speaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, no +man has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left his +meaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine and +love—earthly things, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> which may or may not have their spiritual +counterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. The +same persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, and +wine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life for +Omar as he knows it.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">The Bird of Time has but a little way</span><br /> +<span class="i1">To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.</span><br /> + +</p><p class="poem"> + +<span class="i1">A Book of verses underneath the Bough,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Beside me singing in the Wilderness—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!</span><br /> + +</p><p class="poem"> + +<span class="i1">We are no other than a moving row</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held</span><br /> +<span class="i1">In Midnight by the Master of the Show."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too +seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of +Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in +as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained. +When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li +Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him. +That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which +neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it +would have been a different +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> matter, and even Mayfair might have found +the fashions of China somewhat <i>risqué</i>. One remembers that introductory +note to Browning's <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>—"You, Sir, I entertain you for +one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you +will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The only safe +way of dealing with Omar Kayyám is to insist that his garments be <i>not</i> +changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The +East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most +materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to +quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and +fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide.</p> + +<p>Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the +literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent +materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is +subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is +capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it +becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and +drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites +may become pagans by devoting themselves +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> to a rarer banquet, the feast +of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take +the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr. +Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on +a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart +of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a +picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the +signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons." +That is the root of the matter after all—the soul and horizons. He who +says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high +intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip +of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent +has certainly not lessened.</p> + +<p>The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is +only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple +life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have +a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves +for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of +degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious +self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present +world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> There are +moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel +the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange +scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always +will be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we +have already found to be the keynote of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>. Kingsley, in +one of the most remarkable passages of <i>Westward Ho!</i> describes two of +Amyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly +delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the +march. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil. +But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and +fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O Lord +Jesus," said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!"</p> + +<p>It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce the +element of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his <i>Conspiracy of +Pontiac</i>, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the Ojibwa +Indians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out +his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; ... or he +lifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles +on the grass-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span><br /> +away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.... But when winter +descends upon the North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can +fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and +stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the +snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat +strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs."</p> + +<p>Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the time +trying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked up +again, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, that +impossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Those +who choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that the +song of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt at +singing and fall into an earth-bound silence.</p> + +<p>Thus Omar Kayyám has brought us a rich treasure from the East, of +splendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness of +poetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and a +decoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are taken +more seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as other +Eastern things have sometimes done. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + + +<h3>FIONA MACLEOD</h3> + +<p>To turn suddenly from this curious Persian life and thought to the still +more curious life and thought of ancient Scotland is indeed a violent +change. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the two types of paganism +out of which they spring; and if Fiona Macleod's work may have its +dangers for the precarious faith of modern days, they are certainly +dangers which attack the soul in a different fashion from those of Omar.</p> + +<p>The revelation of Fiona Macleod's identity with William Sharp came upon +the English-reading world as a complete surprise. Few deaths have been +more lamented in the literary world than his, and that for many reasons. +His biography is one of the most fascinating that could be imagined. His +personality was a singularly attractive one,—so vital, so +indefatigable,—with interests so many-sided, and a heart so sound in +all of them. It is characteristic of him that in his young days he ran +away for a time with gipsies, for he tells us, "I suppose I was a gipsy +once, and before that a wild man of the woods." The two great influences +of his life were Shelley and D.G. Rossetti. The story of his literary +struggles is brimful of courage and romance, and the impression of the +book is mainly that of ubiquity. His insatiable curiosity seems +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> to have +led him to know everybody, and every place, and everything.</p> + +<p>At length Fiona Macleod was born. She arose out of nowhere, so far as +the reading public could discover. Really there was a hidden shy self in +Sharp, which must find expression impossible except in some secret way. +We knew him as the brilliant critic, the man of affairs, and the wide +and experienced traveller. We did not know him, until we discovered that +he was Fiona, in that second life of his in the borderland where flesh +and spirit meet.</p> + +<p>First there came <i>Pharais</i> in 1893, and that was the beginning of much. +Then came <i>The Children of To-morrow</i>, the forerunner of Fiona Macleod. +It was his first prose expression of the subjective side of his nature, +together with the element of revolt against conventionalities, which was +always strongly characteristic of him. It introduced England to the +hidden places of the Green Life.</p> + +<p>The secret of his double personality was confided only to a few friends, +and was remarkably well kept. When pressed by adventurous questioners, +some of these allies gave answers which might have served for models in +the art of diplomacy. So Sharp wrote on, openly as William Sharp, and +secretly as Fiona Macleod. Letters had to reach Fiona somehow, and so it +was given +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> out that she was his cousin, and that letters sent to him +would be safely passed on to her. If, however, it was difficult to keep +the secret from the public, it was still more difficult for one man to +maintain two distinct personalities. William Sharp of course had to +live, while Fiona might die any day. Her life entailed upon him another +burden, not of personification only, but of subject and research, and he +was driven to sore passes to keep both himself and her alive. For each +was truly alive and individual—two distinct people, one of whom thought +of the other as if she were "asleep in another room." Even the double +correspondence was a severe burden and strain, for Fiona Macleod had her +own large post-bag which had to be answered, just as William Sharp had +his. But far beyond any such outward expressions of themselves as these, +the difficulty of the double personality lay in deep springs of +character and of taste. Sharp's mind was keenly intellectual, observant, +and reasoning; while Fiona Macleod was the intuitional and spiritual +dreamer. She was indeed the expression of the womanly element in Sharp. +This element certainly dominated him, or rather perhaps he was one of +those who have successfully invaded the realm of alien sex. In his +earlier work, such as <i>The Lady of the Sea</i>,—"the woman +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>who is in the +heart of woman,"—we have proof of this; for in that especially he so +"identified himself with woman's life, seeing it through her own eyes +that he seems to forget sometimes that he is not she." So much was this +the case that Fiona Macleod actually received at least one proposal of +marriage. It was answered quite kindly, Fiona replying that she had +other things to do, and could not think of it; but the little incident +shows how true the saying about Sharp was, that "he was always in love +with something or another." This loving and love-inspiring element in +him has been strongly challenged, and some of the women who have judged +him, have strenuously disowned him as an exponent of their sex. Yet the +fact is unquestionable that he was able to identify himself in a quite +extraordinary degree with what he took to be the feminine soul.</p> + +<p>It seems to have something to do with the Celtic genius. One can always +understand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one or +a Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case to +remember Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the +present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and +that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it +were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high +soprano, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> Mr. Yeats in deep and most heart-searching contralto.</p> + +<p>The Fiona Macleod side of Sharp never throve well in London. Hers was +the fate of those who in this busy world have retained the faculty and +the need for dreaming. So Sharp had to get away from London—driven of +the spirit into the wilderness—that his other self might live and +breathe. One feels the power of this second self especially in certain +words that recur over and over again, until the reader is almost +hypnotised by their lilting, and finds himself in a kind of sleep. That +dreaming personality, with eyes half closed and poppy-decorated hair, +could never live in the bondage of the city cage. The spirit must get +free, and the longing for such freedom has been well called "a barbaric +passion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea."</p> + +<p>There are two ways of loving and understanding nature. Meredith speaks +of those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun. +The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of +the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must +always be doing something with nature—either hunting, or camping out, +or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. But +there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span><br /> +characteristic of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a +true poet. The test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a +burn "and no' think lang." Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed +nothing to interest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and +its waters. It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the +grassy turf and then scatter it to the east and west and north and +south; or lie down at night upon the ground that he might see the +intricate patterns of the moonlight, filtering through the branches of +the trees.</p> + +<p>In all this, it is needless to say, Mr. Yeats offers a close parallel. +He understands so perfectly the wild life, that one knows at once that +it is in him, like a fire in his blood. Take this for instance—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"They found a man running there;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He had knees that stuck out of his hose;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He had puddle water in his shoes;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He had half a cloak to keep him dry,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Although he had a squirrel's eye."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Such perfect observation is possible only to the detached spirit, which +is indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work. +In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and the +heart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the squirrel's +eye for nature. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>Fiona's favourite part of nature is the sea. That great and many-sided +wonder, whether with its glare of phosphorescence or the stillness of +its dead calm, fascinates the poems of Sharp and lends them its spell. +But of the prose of Fiona it may be truly said that everything</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"... doth suffer a sea-change,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Into something rich and strange."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These marvellous lines were never more perfectly illustrated than here. +As we read we behold the sea, now crouching like a gigantic tiger, now +moaning with some Celtic consciousness of the grim and loathsome +treasures in its depths, ever haunted and ever haunting. It is probable +that Sharp never wrote anything that had not for his ear an undertone of +the ocean. Sitting in London in his room, he heard, on one occasion, the +sound of waves so loud that he could not hear his wife knocking at the +door. Similarly in Fiona Macleod's writing seas are always rocking and +swinging. Gulfs are opening to disclose the green dim mysteries of the +deeper depths. The wind is running riot with the surface overhead, and +the sea is lord in all its mad glory and wonder and fear.</p> + +<p>Mr. Yeats has the same characteristic, but again it is possible to draw +a fantastic distinction like that between the soprano and the alto. It +is lake +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> water rather than the ocean that sounds the undertone of Mr. +Yeats' poetry—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"I will arise and go now, for always night and day</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">I hear it in the deep heart's core."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The oldest sounds in the world, Mr. Yeats tells us are wind and water +and the curlew: and of the curlew he says—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"O curlew, cry no more in the air,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Or only to the waters of the West;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Because your crying brings to my mind</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair</span><br /> +<span class="i1">That was shaken out over my breast:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">There is enough evil in the crying of wind."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In all this you hear the crying of the wind and the swiftly borne scream +of the curlew on it, and you know that lake water will not be far away. +This magic power of bringing busy city people out of all their +surroundings into the green heart of the forest and the moorland, and +letting them hear the sound of water there, is common to them both.</p> + +<p>Fiona Macleod is a lover and worshipper of beauty. Long before her, the +Greeks had taught the world their secret, and the sweet spell had +penetrated many hearts beyond the pale of Greece. It was Augustine who +said, "Late I have loved thee, oh beauty, so old and yet so new, late I +have loved thee." And Marius the Epicurean, in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> Pater's fine phrase, +"was one who was made perfect by love of visible beauty." It is a direct +instinct, this bracing and yet intoxicating love of beauty for its own +sake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one of +the deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easily +distinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness I +ask, not lovely things," says Fiona; and it is but a step from this to +that abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the very +soul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours, +and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The pale +green of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still more +the remote and liquid colours of the sky, and the sad-toned or the gay +garments of the earth—these are more by far to those who know their +value than pigments, however delicate. They are either a sensuous +intoxication or else a mystic garment of the spirit. Seumas, the old +islander, looking seaward at sunrise, says, "Every morning like this I +take my hat off to the beauty of the world." And as we read we think of +Mr. Neil Munro's lord of Doom Castle walking uncovered in the night +before retiring to his rest, and with tears welling in his eyes +exclaiming that the mountains are his evening prayer. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Such mystics as +these are in touch with far-off things. Sharp, indeed, was led +definitely to follow such leading into regions of spiritualism where not +many of his readers will be able or willing to follow him, but Fiona +Macleod left the mystery vague. It might easily have defined itself in +some sort of pantheistic theory of the universe, but it never did so. +"The green fire" is more than the sap which flows through the roots of +the trees. It is as Alfred de Musset has called it, the blood that +courses through the veins of God. As we realise the full force of that +imaginative phrase, the dark roots of trees instinct with life, and the +royal liquor rising to its foam of leaves, we have something very like +Fiona's mystic sense of nature. Any extreme moment of human experience +will give an interpretation of such symbolism—love or death or the mere +springtide of the year.</p> + +<p>It is not without significance that Sharp and Mr. Yeats and Mr. Symons +all dreamed on the same night the curious dream of a beautiful woman +shooting arrows among the stars. All the three had indeed the beautiful +woman in the heart of them, and in far-darting thoughts and imaginations +she was ever sending arrows among the stars. But Mr. Yeats is calmer and +less passionate than Fiona, as though he were crooning a low song all +the time, while the silent arrows flash from +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> his bow. Sometimes, +indeed, he will blaze forth flaming with passion in showers of light of +the green fire. Yet from first to last, there is less of the green fire +and more of the poppies in Mr. Yeats and it is Fiona who shoots most +constantly and farthest among the stars.</p> + +<p><i>Haunted</i>, that is the word for this world into which we have entered. +The house without its guests would be uninhabitable for such poets as +these. The atmosphere is everywhere that of a haunted earth where +strange terrors and beauties flit to and fro—phantoms of spectral lives +which seem to be looking on while we play out our bustling parts upon +the stage. They are separate from the body, these shadows, and belong to +some former life. They are an ancestral procession walking ever behind +us, and often they are changing the course of our visible adventures by +the power of sins and follies that were committed in the dim and +remotest past. Certainly the author is, as he says, "Aware of things and +living presences hidden from the rest." "The shadows are here." The +spirits of the dead and the never born are out and at large. These or +others like them were the folk that Abt Vogler encountered as he played +upon his instrument—"presences plain in the place."</p> + +<p>One of the most striking chapters in that very +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> remarkable book of Mr. +Fielding Hall's, <i>The Soul of a People</i>, is that in which he describes +the nats, the little dainty spirits that haunt the trees of Burmah. But +it is not only the Eastern trees that are haunted, and Sharp is always +seeing tree-spirits, and nature-spirits of every kind, and talking with +them. Now and again he will give you a natural explanation of them, but +that always jars and sounds prosaic. In fact, we do not want it; we +prefer the "delicate throbbing things" themselves, to any facts you can +give us instead of them, for to those who have heard and seen beyond the +veil, they are far more real than any of your mere facts. Here we think +of Mr. Yeats again with his cry, "Come into the world again wild bees, +wild bees." But he hardly needed to cry upon them, for the wild bees +were buzzing in every page he wrote.</p> + +<p>A world haunted in this fashion has its sinister side, allied with the +decaying corpses deep in the earth. When passion has gone into the world +beyond that which eye hath seen and ear heard, it takes, in presence of +the thought of death, a double form. It is in love with death and yet it +hates death. So we come back to that singular sentence of Robert Louis +Stevenson's, "The beauty and the terror of the world," which so +adequately describes the double fascination of nature for man. Her spell +is both sweet and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> terrible, and we would not have it otherwise The +menace in summer's beauty, the frightful contrast between the laughing +earth and the waiting death, are all felt in the prolonged and deep +sense of gloom that broods over much of Fiona's work, and in the +second-sight which very weirdly breaks through from time to time, +forcing our entrance into the land from which we shrink.</p> + +<p>Mr. Yeats is not without the same sinister and moving undergloom, +although, on the whole, he is aware of kindlier powers and of a timid +affection between men and spirits. He actually addresses a remonstrance +to Scotsmen for having soured the disposition of their ghosts and +fairies, and his reconstructions of the ancient fairyland are certainly +full of lightsome and pleasing passages. Along either lane you may +arrive at peace, which is the monopoly neither of the Eastern nor of the +Western Celt, but it is a peace never free from a great wistfulness.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"How many loved your moments of glad grace,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And loved your beauty with love false or true;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And loved the sorrows of your changing face."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That there is much paganism in all this must be obvious to any one who +has given any attention to the subject. The tale of <i>The Annir-Choille</i> +confesses it frankly enough, where the young +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Christian prince is +brought back by the forest maiden from his new faith to the ancient +pagan world. Old gods are strewn everywhere upon the waysides down which +Fiona leads us, and there are many times when we cannot disentangle the +spiritual from the material, nor indeed the good from the evil +influences. Dr. John Brown used to tell the story of a shepherd boy near +Biggar, who one day was caught out on the hill in a thunder-storm. The +boy could not remember whether thunder-storms were sent by God or Satan, +and so to be quite safe, he kept alternately repeating the ejaculations, +"Eh, guid God," and "Eh, bonny deil." One often thinks of Fiona in +connection with that story. You are seldom quite sure whether it is a +Christian or a pagan deity whom you are invoking, but there is no +question as to the paganism of the atmosphere which you often breathe.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, William Sharp began in frank and avowed paganism, +and passed from that through various phases into a high spirituality. +His early utterances in regard to Art, in which he deprecated any +connection between Art and a message, and insisted upon its being mere +expression, were of course sheer paganism. In 1892, before Fiona was +born, he published one of those delightful magazines which run through a +short and daring career and then vanish as suddenly as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> they arose. In +fact his magazine, <i>The Pagan Review</i>, from first to last had only one +number. It was edited by Mr. Brooks and William Sharp, and its articles +were contributed by seven other people. But these seven, and Mr. Brooks +as well, turned out eventually all to be William Sharp himself. It was +"frankly pagan; pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan in +outlook.... The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us +personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign +power in the realm." He finished up with the interesting phrase, "Sic +transit gloria Grundi," and he quotes Gautier: "'Frankly I am in earnest +this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, +a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd. I shall have +a lamb washed to complete the pastoral....' This is the lamb."</p> + +<p>The magazine was an extraordinarily clever production, and the fact that +he was its author is significant. For to the end of her days Fiona was a +pagan still, albeit sometimes a more or less converted pagan. In <i>The +Annir-Choille</i>, <i>The Sin-Eater</i>, <i>The Washer of the Ford</i>, and the +others, you never get away from the ancient rites, and there is one +story which may be taken as typical of all the rest, <i>The Walker in the +Night</i>:—</p> + +<p>"Often he had heard of her. When any man +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> met this woman his fate +depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she +saw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange song, and he would +go to her; and when he was before her, two flames would come out of her +eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder, +and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she +would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and a +day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is let go a +furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadow +from glade to glade, or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a +wayside Calvary: but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almost +be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a +valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now and +again unhappy nightfarers—unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal +remain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken—would be +startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some such +terrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night had +taken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the last +day of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawk +scatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry." +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> + +<p>We have said that nature may be either an intoxication or a sacrament, +and paganism might be defined as the view of nature in the former of +these two lights. But where you have a growing spirituality like that of +William Sharp, you are constantly made aware of the hieratic or +sacramental quality in nature also. It is this which gives its peculiar +charm and spell to Celtic folklore in general. The Saxon song of Beowulf +is a rare song, and its story is the swinging tale of a "pagan gentleman +very much in the rough," but for the most part it is quite destitute of +spiritual significance. It may be doubted if this could be said truly of +any Celtic tale that was ever told. Fiona Macleod describes <i>The Three +Marvels</i> as "studies in old religious Celtic sentiment, so far as that +can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and +simplicity in the early Christian faith"; and there is a constant sense +that however wild and even wicked the tale may be, yet it has its +Christian counterpart, and is in some true sense a strayed idealism.</p> + +<p>At this point we become aware of one clear distinction between William +Sharp and Fiona Macleod. To him, literature was a craft, laboured at +most honestly and enriched with an immense wealth both of knowledge and +of cleverness; but to her, literature was a revelation, with divine +inspirations +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> behind it—inspirations authentically divine, no matter by +what name the God might be called. So it came to pass that <i>The Pagan +Review</i> had only one number. That marked the transition moment, when +Fiona Macleod began to predominate over William Sharp, until finally she +controlled and radically changed him into her own likeness. He passes on +to the volume entitled <i>The Divine Adventure</i>, which interprets the +spirit of Columba. Nature and the spiritual meet in the psychic phase +into which Sharp passed, not only in the poetic and native sense, but in +a more literal sense than that. For the Green Life continually leads +those who are akin to it into opportunities of psychical research among +obscure and mysterious forces which are yet very potent. With a nature +like his it was inevitable that he should be eventually lured +irresistibly into the enchanted forest, where spirit is more and more +the one certainty of existence.</p> + +<p>For most of us there is another guide into the spirit land. In the +region of the spectral and occult many of us are puzzled and ill at +ease, but we all, in some degree, understand the meaning of ordinary +human love. Even the most commonplace nature has its magical hours now +and then, or at least has had them and has not forgotten; and it is love +that "leads us with a gentle hand into the silent land." This may form a +bond of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> union between Fiona Macleod and many who are mystified rather +than enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of the +phrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality which +has been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp who +chose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than we +conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." Fiona's work, +too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she has +perceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom and +brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full +that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which +is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and +yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in +all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us +all in His "Mighty Moulding Hand."</p> + +<p>The relation in which all this stands to Christianity is a very curious +question. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evident +enough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definite +Christian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossible +that one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such an +open-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> otherwise +than to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted against +Christianity and every other form and convention of civilised life, and +claimed a freedom far beyond any which he ever used. We read that in his +sixth year, when already he found the God of the pulpit remote and +forbidding, he was nevertheless conscious of a benign and beautiful +presence. On the shore of Loch Long he built a little altar of rough +stones beneath a swaying pine, and laid an offering of white flowers +upon it. In the college days he turned still more definitely against +orthodox Presbyterianism; but he retained all along, not only belief in +the central truths that underlie all religions, but great reverence and +affection for them.</p> + +<p>It is probable that towards the close he was approaching nearer to +formal Christianity than he knew. We are told that he "does not +reverence the Bible or Christian Theology in themselves, but for the +beautiful spirituality which faintly breathes through them like a vague +wind blowing through intricate forests." His quarrel with Christianity +was that it had never done justice to beauty, that it had a gloom upon +it, and an unlovely austerity. This indeed is a strange accusation from +so perfect an interpreter of the Celtic gloom as he was, and the retort +<i>tu quoque</i> is obvious enough. There have indeed been phases +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> of +Christianity which seemed to love and honour the ugly for its own sake, +yet there is a rarer beauty in the Man of Sorrows than in all the +smiling faces of the world. This is that hidden beauty of which the +saints and mystics tell us. They have seen it in the face more marred +than any man's, and their record is that he who would find a lasting +beauty that will satisfy his soul, must find it through pain conquered +and ugliness transformed and sorrow assuaged. The Christ Beautiful can +never be seen when you have stripped him of the Crown of Thorns, nor is +there any loveliness that has not been made perfect by tears. Thus +though there is truth in Sharp's complaint that Christianity has often +done sore injustice to beauty as such, yet it must be repeated that this +exponent of the Celtic heart somehow missed the element in Christianity +which was not only like, but actually identical with, his own deepest +truth.</p> + +<p>Sharp often reminds one of Heine, with his intensely human love of life, +both in its brightness and in its darkness. Where that love is so +intense as it was in these hearts, it is almost inevitable that it +should sometimes eclipse the sense of the divine. Thus Sharp tells us +that "Celtic paganism lies profound still beneath the fugitive drift of +Christianity and civilisation, as the deep sea beneath the coming and +going of the tides." He +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> was indeed so aware of this underlying +paganism, that we find it blending with Christian ideas in practically +the whole of his work. Nothing could be quoted as a more distinctive +note of his genius than that blend. It is seen perhaps most clearly in +such stories as <i>The Last Supper</i> and <i>The Fisher of Men</i>. In these +tales of unsurpassable power and beauty, Fiona Macleod has created the +Gaelic Christ. The Christ is the same as He of Galilee and of the Upper +Room in Jerusalem, and His work the same. But he talks the sweet Celtic +language, and not only talks it but <i>thinks</i> in it also. He walks among +the rowan trees of the Shadowy Glen, while the quiet light flames upon +the grass, and the fierce people that lurk in shadow have eyes for the +helplessness of the little lad who sees too far. Such tales are full of +a strange light that seems to be, at one and the same time, the Celtic +glamour and the Light of the World.</p> + +<p>All the lovers of Mr. Yeats must have remembered many instances of the +same kind in his work. "And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, +purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this +dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no +expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, +and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies +of men, or to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us +go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longs +for, and have no fear."</p> + +<p>Mr. Yeats is continually identifying these apparently unrelated things; +and youth and peace, faith and beauty, are ever meeting in converging +lines in his work. No song of his has a livelier lilt than the <i>Fiddler +of Dooney</i>.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"I passed my brother and cousin:</span><br /> +<span class="i2">They read in their books of prayer;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I read in my book of songs</span><br /> +<span class="i2">I bought at Sligo fair.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">When we come at the end of time,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">To Peter sitting in state,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He will smile on the three old spirits,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">But call me first through the gate.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">And when the folk there spy me,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">They will all come up to me,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">With, 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!'</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And dance like a wave of the sea."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In a few final words we may try to estimate what all this amounts to in +the long battle between paganism and idealism. There is no question that +Fiona Macleod may be reasonably claimed by either side. Certainly it is +true of her work, that it is pure to the pure and dangerous to those who +take it wrongly. Meredith's great line was never truer than it is here, +"Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare." The effect upon the mind, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span><br /> +and the tendency in the life, will depend upon what one brings to the +reading of it.</p> + +<p>All this bringing back of the discarded gods has its glamour and its +risk. Such gods are excellent as curiosities, and may provide the +quaintest of studies in human nature. They give us priceless fragments +of partial and broken truth, and they exhibit cross-sections of the +evolution of thought in some of its most charming moments. Besides all +this, they are exceedingly valuable as providing us with that general +sense of religion, vague and illusive, which is deeper than all dogma.</p> + +<p>But, for the unwary, there is the double danger in all this region that +they shall, on the one hand, be tempted to worship the old gods; or +that, on the other hand, even in loving them without definite worship, +the old black magic may spring out upon them. As to the former +alternative, light minds will always prefer the wonderfully coloured but +more or less formless figure in a dream, to anything more definite and +commanding. They will cry, "Here is the great god"; and, intoxicated by +the mystery, will fall down to worship. But that which does not command +can never save, and for a guiding faith we need something more sure than +this.</p> + +<p>Moreover, there is the second alternative of the old black magic. A +discarded god is always +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> an uncanny thing to take liberties with. While +the earth-spirit in all its grandeur may appeal to the jaded and +perplexed minds of to-day as a satisfying object of faith, the result +will probably be but a modern form of the ancient Baal-worship. It will +in some respects be a superior cult to its ancient prototype. Its +devotees will not cut themselves with knives. They will cut themselves +with sweet and bitter poignancies of laughter and tears, when the sun +shines upon wet forests in the green earth. This, too, is Baal-worship, +hardly distinguishable in essence from that cruder devotion to the +fructifying and terrifying powers of nature against which the prophets +of Israel made their war. In much that Fiona Macleod has written we feel +the spirit struggling like Samson against its bonds of green withes, +though by no means always able to break them as he did; or lying down in +an earth-bound stupor, content with the world that nature produces and +sustains. Here, among the elemental roots of things, when the heart is +satisfying itself with the passionate life of nature, the red flower +grows in the green life, and the imperative of passion becomes the final +law.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, a child of nature may remember that he is also a +child of the spirit; and, even in the Vale Perilous, the spirit may be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span><br /> +an instinctive and faithful guide. Because we love the woods we need not +worship the sacred mistletoe. Because we listen to the sea we need not +reject greater and more intelligible voices of the Word of Life. And the +mention of the sea, and the memory of all that it has meant in Fiona +Macleod's writing, reminds us strangely of that old text, "Born of water +and of the Spirit." While man lives upon the sea-girt earth, the voices +of the ocean, that seem to come from the depths of its green heart, will +always call to him, reminding him of the mysterious powers and the +terrible beauties among which his life is cradled. Yet there are deeper +secrets which the spirit of man may learn—secrets that will still be +told when the day of earth is over, when the sea has ceased from her +swinging, and the earth-spirit has fled for ever. It is well that a man +should remember this, and remain a spiritual man in spite of every form +of seductive paganism.</p> + +<p>Sharp has said in his <i>Green Fire</i>:—</p> + +<p>"There are three races of man. There is the myriad race which loses all, +through (not bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane) +perverted animalism; and there is the myriad race which denounces +humanity, and pins all its faith and joy to a life the very conditions +of whose existence are incompatible with the law to which we are +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span><br /> +subject; the sole law, the law of nature. Then there is that small +untoward class which knows the divine call of the spirit through the +brain, and the secret whisper of the soul in the heart, and for ever +perceives the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our human +horizons: which hears and sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to the +life of the green earth, of which we are part, to the common kindred of +living things, with which we are at one—is content, in a word, to live, +because of the dream that makes living so mysteriously sweet and +poignant; and to dream, because of the commanding immediacy of life."</p> + +<p>There are indeed the three races. There is the pagan, which knows only +the fleshly aspect of life, and seeks nothing beyond it. There is the +spiritual, which ignores and seeks to flee from that to which its body +chains it. There is also that wise race who know that all things are +theirs, flesh and spirit both, and who have learned how to reap the +harvests both of time and of eternity. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_V" id="LECTURE_V"></a>LECTURE V</h2><h2> +JOHN BUNYAN</h2> + + +<p>We have seen the eternal battle in its earlier phases surging to and fro +between gods of the earth that are as old as Time, and daring thoughts +of men that rose beyond them and claimed a higher inheritance. Between +that phase of the warfare and the same battle as it is fought to-day, we +shall look at two contemporary men in the latter part of the seventeenth +century who may justly be taken as examples of the opposing types. John +Bunyan and Samuel Pepys, however, will lead us no dance among the +elemental forces of the world. They will rather show us, with very +fascinating <i>naïveté</i>, true pictures of their own aspirations, nourished +in the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in the +other, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete and +systematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy to +exaggerate their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how John +Bunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which he +lived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with that +world. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon the +spiritual region, but he seems to have closed them all, and become +increasingly a simple devotee of things seen and temporal.</p> + +<p>Bunyan comes upon us full grown and mature in the work by which he is +best known and remembered. His originality is one of the standing +wonders of history. The <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> was written at a time when +every man had to take sides in a savage and atrocious ecclesiastical +controversy. The absolute judgments passed on either side by the other, +the cruelties practised and the dangers run, were such as to lead the +reader to expect extreme bitterness and sectarian violence in every +religious writing of the time. Bunyan was known to his contemporaries as +a religious writer, pure and simple, and a man whose convictions had +caused him much suffering at the hands of his enemies. Most of the first +readers of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> had no thought of any connection +between that book and worldly literature; and the pious people who shook +their heads over his allegory as being rather too interesting +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> for a +treatise on such high themes as those which it handled, might perhaps +have shaken their heads still more solemnly had they known how much of +what they called the world was actually behind it. Bunyan was a +voluminous writer of theological works, and the complete edition of them +fills three enormous volumes, closely printed in double column. But it +is the little allegory embedded in one of these volumes which has made +his fame eternal, and for the most part the rest are remembered now only +in so far as they throw light upon that story. One exception must be +made in favour of <i>Grace Abounding</i>. This is Bunyan's autobiography, in +which he describes, without allegory, the course of his spiritual +experience. For an understanding of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> it is +absolutely necessary to know that companion volume.</p> + +<p>It is very curious to watch the course of criticism as it was directed +to him and to his story. The eighteenth century had lost the keenness of +former controversies, and from its classic balcony it looked down upon +what seemed to it the somewhat sordid arena of the past. <i>The Examiner</i> +complains that he never yet knew an author that had not his admirers. +Bunyan and Quarles have passed through several editions and pleased as +many readers as Dryden and Tillotson. Even +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> Cowper, timidly appreciative +and patronising, wrote of the "ingenious dreamer"—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"I name thee not, lest so despised a name</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—lines which have a pathetic irony in them, as we contrast the anxious +Cowper, with the occasional revivals of interest and the age-long tone +of patronage which have been meted out to him, with the robust and +sturdy immortality of the man he shrank from naming. Swift discovered +Bunyan's literary power, and later Johnson and Southey did him justice. +In the nineteenth century his place was secured for ever, and Macaulay's +essay on him will probably retain its interest longer than anything else +that Macaulay wrote.</p> + +<p>We are apt to think of him as a mere dreamer, spinning his cobwebs of +imagination wholly out of his own substance—a pure idealist, whose +writing dwells among his ideals in a region ignorant of the earth. In +one of his own apologies he tells us, apparently in answer to +accusations that had been made against him, that he did not take his +work from anybody, but that it came from himself alone. Doubtless that +is true so far as the real originality of his work is concerned, its +general conception, and the working out of its details point by point. +Yet, to imagine that if there had been no other +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> English literature the +<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> would have been exactly what it is, is simply to +ignore the facts of the case. John Bunyan is far more interesting just +because his work is part of English literature, because it did feel the +influences of his own time and of the past, than it could ever have been +as the mere monstrosity of detachment which it has been supposed to be. +The idealist who merely dreams and takes no part in the battle, refusing +to know or utilise the writing of any other man, can be no fair judge of +the life which he criticises, and no reliable guide among its facts.</p> + +<p>Bunyan might very easily indeed have been a pagan of the most worldly +type. It was extremely difficult for him to be a Puritan, not only on +account of outward troubles, but also of inward ones belonging to his +own disposition and experience. Accepting Puritanism, the easiest course +for him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that course +he would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far more +difficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to the +beauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what men +were writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard in +early days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding in +his ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span><br /> +say, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecution +were raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writing +shows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of the +soul of man and the life of God, but the way in which he tells these +things shows innumerable signs of the bright world of English books.</p> + +<p>It is worth while to consider this large and human Bunyan, who has been +very erroneously supposed to be a mere literary freak, detached from all +such influences as go to the making of other writers. He tells us, +indeed, that "when I pulled it came," and that is delightfully true. +Yet, it came not out of nowhere, and it is our part in this essay to +inquire as to the places from which it did come. As we have said, it +came out of two worlds, and the web is most wonderfully woven and +coloured, but our present concern is rather with the earthly part of it +than the heavenly.</p> + +<p>No one can read John Bunyan without thinking of George Herbert. Few of +the short biographies in our language are more interesting reading than +Isaac Walton's life of Herbert. That master of simplicity is always +fascinating, and in this biography he gives us one of the most beautiful +sketches of contemporary narrative that has ever been penned. Herbert +was the quaintest of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> saints. He lived in the days of Charles the +First and James the First, a High Churchman who had Laud for his friend. +Shy, sensitive, high-bred, shrinking from the world, he was at the same +time a man of business, skilful in the management of affairs, and yet a +man of morbid delicacy of imagination. The picture of his life at Little +Gidding, where he and Mr. Farrer instituted a kind of hermitage, or +private chapel of devotion, in which the whole of the Psalms were read +through once in every twenty-four hours, grows peculiarly pathetic when +we remember that the house and chapel were sacked by the parliamentary +army, in which for a time John Bunyan served. No two points of view, it +would seem, could be more widely contrasted than those of Bunyan and +Herbert, and yet the points of agreement are far more important than the +differences between them, and <i>The Temple</i> has so much in common with +the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> that one is astonished to find that the +likenesses seem to be entirely unconscious. Matthew Henry is perpetually +quoting <i>The Temple</i> in his Commentary. Writing only a few years +earlier, Bunyan reproduces in his own fashion many of its thoughts, but +does not mention its existence.</p> + +<p>In order to know Bunyan's early life, and indeed to understand the +<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> at all adequately, one must read <i>Grace +Abounding</i>. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> It is a short book, written in the years when he was +already growing old, for those whom he had brought into the fold of +religion. From this autobiography it has usually been supposed that he +had led a life of the wildest debauchery before his Christian days; but +the more one examines the book, and indeed all his books, the less is +one inclined to believe in any such desperate estimate of the sins of +his youth. The measure of sin is the sensitiveness of a man's +conscience; and where, as in Bunyan's case, the conscience is abnormally +delicate and subject to violent reactions, a life which in another man +would be a pattern of innocence and respectability may be regarded as an +altogether blackguardly and vicious one. It was, however evidently a +life of strong and intense worldly interest stepping over the line here +and there into positive wrong-doing, but for the most part blameworthy +mainly on account of its absorption in the passing shows of the hour.</p> + +<p>What then was that world which interested Bunyan so intensely, and cost +him so many pangs of conscience? No doubt it was just the life of the +road as he travelled about his business; for though by no means a tinker +in the modern sense of the word, he was an itinerant brazier, whose +business took him constantly to and fro among the many villages of the +district of Bedford. He +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> must have heard in inns and from wayside +companions many a catch of plays and songs, and listened to many a +lively story, or read it in the chap-books which were hawked about the +country then. It must also be remembered that these were the days of +puppet shows. The English drama, as we have already mentioned in +connection with <i>Faust</i>, was by no means confined to the boards of +actual theatres where living actors played the parts. Little mimic +stages travelled about the country in all directions reproducing the +plays, very much after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even the +solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There +is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at +these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature +at second hand.</p> + +<p>As to how much of it he had actually read, that is a different question. +One is tempted to believe that he must have read George Herbert, but of +this there is no positive proof. We are quite certain about five books, +for which we have his own express statements. His wife brought him as +her dowry the very modest furniture of two small volumes, Baily's +<i>Practice of Piety</i> and Dent's <i>The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven</i>. The +first is a very complicated and elaborate statement of Christian dogma, +which Bunyan passes by with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> the scant praise, "Wherein I also found +some things that were somewhat pleasing to me." The other is a much more +vital production. Even to this day it is an immensely interesting piece +of reading. It consists of conversations between various men who stand +for types of worldling, ignoramus, theologian, etc., and there are very +clear traces of it in the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, especially in the talks +between Bunyan's pilgrims and the man Ignorance.</p> + +<p>Another book which played a large part in Bunyan's life was the short +biography of Francis Spira, an Italian, who had died shortly before +Bunyan's time. Spira had been a Protestant lawyer in Italy, but had +found it expedient to abate the open profession of Protestantism with +which he began, and eventually to transfer his allegiance to the Roman +Church. The biography is for the most part an account of his death-bed +conversation, which lasted a long time, since his illness was even more +of the mind than of the body. It is an extremely ghastly account of a +morbid and insane melancholia. It was the fashion of the time to take +such matters spiritually rather than physically, and we read that many +persons went to his death-bed and listened to his miserable cries and +groanings in the hope of gaining edification for their souls. How the +book +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> came into Bunyan's hands no one can tell, but evidently he had +found it in English translation, and many of the darkest parts of <i>Grace +Abounding</i> are directly due to it, while the Man in the Iron Cage quotes +the very words of Spira.</p> + +<p>Another book which Bunyan had read was Luther's <i>Commentary on the +Galatians</i>. The present writer possesses a copy of that volume dated +1786, at the close of which there are fourteen pages, on which long +lists of names are printed. The names are those of weavers, +shoe-makers, and all sorts of tradesmen in the western Scottish towns +of Kilmarnock, Paisley, and others of that neighbourhood, who had +subscribed for a translation of the commentary that they might read it +in their own tongue. This curious fact reminds us that the book had +among the pious people of our country an audience almost as enthusiastic +as Bunyan himself was. Another of his books, and the only one quoted by +name in the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> or <i>Grace Abounding</i>, with the +exception of Luther on Galatians, is Foxe's <i>Book of Martyrs</i>, traces of +which are unmistakable in such incidents as the trial and death of +Faithful and in other parts.</p> + +<p>In these few volumes may be summed up the entire literary knowledge +which Bunyan is known to have possessed. He stands apart from mere +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span><br /> +book-learning, and deals with life rather through his eyes and ears +directly than through the medium of books. But then those eyes and ears +of his were no ordinary organs; and his imagination, whose servants they +were, was quick to enlist every vital and suggestive image and idea for +its own uses. Thus the rich store of observation which he had already +laid up through the medium of puppet plays, fragments of song and +popular story, was all at his disposal when he came to need it. Further, +even in his regenerate days, there was no dimming of the imaginative +faculty nor of the observant. The whole neighbourhood in which he lived +was an open book, in which he read the wonderful story of life in many +tragic and comic tales of actual fact; and in the prison where he spent +twelve years, he must often have heard from his fellow-prisoners such +fragments as they knew and remembered, with which doubtless they would +beguile the tedium of their confinement. That would be for the most part +in the first and second imprisonments, extending from the years 1660 to +1672. The third imprisonment was a short affair of only some nine +months, spent in the little prison upon the bridge of Bedford, where +there would be room for very few companions. The modern bridge crosses +the river at almost exactly the same +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> spot; and if you look over the +parapet you may see, when the river is low, traces of what seem to be +the foundations of the old prison bridge.</p> + +<p>When we would try to estimate the processes by which the great allegory +was built up, the first fact that strikes us is its extreme aloofness +from current events which must have been very familiar to him. In others +of his works he tells many stories of actual life, but these are of a +private and more or less gossiping nature, many of them fantastic and +grotesque, such as those appalling tales of swearers, drunkards, and +other specially notorious sinners being snatched away by the +devil—narratives which bear the marks of crude popular imagination in +details like the actual smell of sulphur left behind. In the whole +<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> there is no reference whatever to the Civil War, in +which we know that Bunyan had fought, although there are certain parts +of it which were probably suggested by events of that campaign. The +allegory is equally silent concerning the Great Fire and the Great +Plague of London, which were both fresh in the memory of every living +man. The only phrase which might have been suggested by the Fire, is +that in which the Pilgrim says, "I hear that our little city is to be +destroyed by fire"—a phrase which obviously has much more direct +connection with the destruc +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>tion of Sodom than with that of London. The +only suggestions of those disastrous latter years of the reign of +Charles the Second, are some doubtful allusions to the rise and fall of +persecution, few of which can be clearly identified with any particular +events.</p> + +<p>There are several interesting indications that Bunyan made use of recent +and contemporary secular literature. The demonology of the <i>Pilgrim's +Progress</i> is quite different from that of the <i>Holy War</i>. It used to be +suggested that Bunyan had altered his views in consequence of the +publication of Milton's <i>Paradise Regained</i>, which appeared in 1671. +That was when it was generally supposed that he had written the +<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> in his earlier imprisonment. If, as is now +conceded, it was in the later imprisonment that he wrote the book, this +theory loses much of its plausibility, for Milton published his +<i>Paradise Regained</i> before the first edition of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> +was penned. It is, of course, always possible that between the +<i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> and the <i>Holy War</i> Bunyan may have seen Milton's +work, or may have been told about it, for he certainly changed his +demonology and made it more like Milton's. Again, there are certain +passages in Spenser's <i>Faerie Queene</i> which bear so close a resemblance +to Bunyan's description of the Celestial City, that it is difficult not +to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> suppose that either directly or indirectly that poem had influenced +Bunyan's creation; while in at least one of his songs he approaches so +near both the language and the rhythm of a song of Shakespeare's as to +make it very probable that he had heard it sung.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>These suppositions are not meant in any way to detract from the +originality of the great allegory, but rather to link the writer in with +that English literature of which he is so conspicuous an ornament. They +are no more significant and no less, than the fact that so much of the +geography of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> seems not to have been created by +his imagination, but to have been built up from well-remembered +landscapes. From his prison window he could not but see the ruins of old +Bedford Castle, which stood demolished upon its hill even in his time. +This, together with Cainhoe Castle, only a few miles away, may well have +suggested the Castle of Despair in Bypath Meadow near the River of God. +Again, memories of Elstow play a notable part in the story. A cross +stood there, at the foot of which, when he was play +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>ing the game of cat +upon a certain Sunday, the voice came to his soul with its tremendous +question, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins +and go to hell?" There stood the Moot Hall as it stands to-day, in +which, during his worldly days, he had danced with the rest of the +villagers and gained his personal knowledge of Vanity Fair. There, as he +tells us expressly, is the wicket gate, the rough old oak and iron gate +of Elstow parish church. Close beside it, just as you read in the story, +stands that great tower which suggested a devil's castle beside the +wicket gate, whence Satan showered his arrows on those who knocked +below. Not only so, but there was a special reason why for Bunyan that +ancient church tower may well have been symbolic of the stronghold of +the devil; for it had bells in it, and he was so fond of bell-ringing +that it got upon his conscience and became his darling sin. It is easy +to make light of his heart-searchings about so innocent an employment, +but doubtless there were other things that went along with it. We have +all seen those large drinking-vessels, known as bell-ringers' jugs; and +these perhaps may suggest an explanation of the sense of sin which +burdened his conscience so heavily. Anyhow, there the tower stands, and +in the Gothic doorway of it there are one or two deeply cut grooves, +obviously made +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> by the ropes of the bell-ringers when, instead of +standing below their ropes, they preferred the open air, and drew the +ropes through the archway of the door, so as to cut into its moulding. +The little fact gains much significance in the light of Bunyan's own +confession that he was so afraid that the bell would fall upon him and +kill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the door +to ring it. Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, long +before Bunyan's time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as +"the ladies of Elstow." Very aristocratic and very human ladies they +seem to have been, given to the entertainment of their friends in the +intervals of their tasteful devotion, and occasionally needing a rebuke +from headquarters. Yet it seems not improbable that there is some +glorified memory of those ladies in the inhabitants of the House +Beautiful, which house itself appears to have been modelled upon +Houghton House on the Ampthill heights, built by Sir Philip Sidney's +sister but a century before. The silver mine of Demas might seem to have +come from some far-off source in chap-book or romance, until we remember +that at the village of Pulloxhill, which had been the original home of +the Bunyan family, and near which Bunyan was arrested and brought for +examination to the house of Justice Wingate, there +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> are the actual +remains of an ancient gold mine whose tradition still lingers among the +villagers.</p> + +<p>All these things seem to indicate that the great allegory is by no means +so remote from the earth as has sometimes been imagined; and perhaps the +most touching commentary upon this statement is the curious and very +unlovely burying-ground in Bunhill fields, cut through by a straight +path that leads from one busy thoroughfare to another. A few yards to +the left of that path is the tomb and monument of John Bunyan, while at +an equal distance to the right lies Daniel Defoe. The <i>Pilgrim's +Progress</i> and <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> are perhaps the two best-known stories +in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they +seem.</p> + +<p>Nor was it only in the outward material with which he worked that John +Bunyan had much in common with the romance and poetry of England. He +could indeed write verses which, for sheer doggerel, it would be +difficult to match, but in spite of that there was the authentic note of +poetry in him. Some of his work is not only vigorous, inspiring, and +full of the brisk sense of action, but has an unconscious strength and +worthiness of style, whose compression and terseness have fulfilled at +least one of the canons of high literature. Take, for example, the lines +on Faithful's death +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Now Faithful, play the man, speak for thy God:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Fear not the wicked's malice, nor their rod:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Speak boldly, man, the truth is on thy side;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Die for it, and to life in triumph ride."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or take this as a second example, from his <i>Prison Meditations</i>—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Here come the angels, here come saints,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Here comes the Spirit of God,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">To comfort us in our restraints</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Under the wicked's rod.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">This gaol to us is as a hill,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">From whence we plainly see</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Beyond this world, and take our fill</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Of things that lasting be.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">We change our drossy dust for gold,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">From death to life we fly:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">We let go shadows, and take hold</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Of immortality."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This whole poem has in it not merely the bright march of a very vigorous +mind, but also a great many of the elements which long before had built +up the ancient romances. In it, and in much else that he wrote, he finds +a congenial escape from the mere middle-class respectability of his +time, and ranges himself with the splendid chivalry both of the past and +of the present. There is an elfin element in him as there was in +Chaucer, which now and again twinkles forth in a quaint touch of humour, +or escapes from the merely spiritual into an extremely interesting human +region.</p> + +<p>In <i>Grace Abounding</i> he very pleasantly tells us +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> that he could have +written in a much higher style if he had chosen to do so, but that for +our sakes he has refrained. He does, however, sometimes "step into" his +finer style. There is some exquisite pre-Raphaelite work that comes +unexpectedly upon the reader, in which he is not only a poet, but a +writer capable of seeing and of describing the most highly coloured and +minute detail: "Besides, on the banks of this river on either side were +green trees, that bore all manner of fruit...." "On either side of the +river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it was +green the year long." At other times he affrights us with a sudden +outburst of the most terrifying imagination, as in the close of the poem +of <i>The Fly at the Candle</i>—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"At last the Gospel doth become their snare,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Doth them with burning hands in pieces tear."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>His imagination was sometimes as quaint and sweet as at other times it +could be lurid and powerful. <i>Upon a Snail</i> is not a very promising +subject for a poem, but its first lines justify the experiment—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"She goes but softly, but she goeth sure;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He can adopt the methods of the stately poets of nature, and break into +splendid descriptions of natural phenomena +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Look, look, brave Sol doth peep up from beneath,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Shews us his golden face, doth on us breathe;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Yea, he doth compass us around with glories,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Whilst he ascends up to his highest stories,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Where he his banner over us displays,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And gives us light to see our works and ways."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Again in the art of childlike interest and simplicity he can write such +lines as these—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">OF THE CHILD WITH THE BIRD ON THE BUSH</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"My little bird, how canst thou sit</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And sing amidst so many thorns?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Let me but hold upon thee get,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">My love with honour thee adorns.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">'Tis true it is sunshine to-day,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">To-morrow birds will have a storm;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">My pretty one, come thou away,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">My bosom then shall keep thee warm.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">My father's palace shall be thine,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Yea, in it thou shalt sit and sing;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">My little bird, if thou'lt be mine,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">The whole year round shall be thy spring.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">I'll keep thee safe from cat and cur,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">No manner o' harm shall come to thee:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Yea, I will be thy succourer,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">My bosom shall thy cabin be."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The last line might have been written by Ben Jonson, and the description +of sunrise in the former poem might almost have been from Chaucer's pen.</p> + +<p>Yet the finest poetry of all is the prose allegory of the <i>Pilgrim's +Progress</i>. English prose had taken many centuries to form, in the +moulding hands of Chaucer, Malory, and Bacon. It had +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> come at last to +Bunyan with all its flexibility and force ready to his hand. He wrote +with virgin purity, utterly free from mannerisms and affectations; and, +without knowing himself for a writer of fine English, produced it.</p> + +<p>The material of the allegory also is supplied from ancient sources. One +curious paragraph in Bunyan's treatise entitled <i>Sighs from Hell</i>, gives +us a broad hint of this. "The Scriptures, thought I then, what are they? +A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings price. +Alack! what is Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, <i>George on +Horseback</i> or <i>Bevis of Southampton</i>. Give me some book that teaches +curious Arts, that tells old Fables." In <i>The Plain Man's Pathway to +Heaven</i> there is a longer list of such romances as these, including +<i>Ellen of Rummin</i>, and many others. As has been already stated, these +tales of ancient folklore would come into his hands either by recitation +or in the form of chap-books. The chap-book literature of Old England +was most voluminous and interesting. It consisted of romances and songs, +sold at country fairs and elsewhere, and the passing reference which we +have quoted proves conclusively, what we might have known without any +proof, that Bunyan knew them.</p> + +<p><i>George on Horseback</i> has been identified by Professor Firth with the +<i>Seven Champions of England</i>, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> an extremely artificial romance, which +may be taken as typical of hundreds more of its kind. The 1610 edition +of it is a very lively book with a good deal of playing to the gallery, +such as this: "As for the name of Queen, I account it a vain title; for +I had rather be an English lady than the greatest empress in the world." +There is not very much in this romance which Bunyan has appropriated, +although there are several interesting correspondences. It is very +courtly and conventional. The narrative is broken here and there by +lyrics, quite in Bunyan's manner, but it is difficult to imagine Bunyan, +with his direct and simple taste, spending much time in reading such +sentences as the following: "By the time the purple-spotted morning had +parted with her grey, and the sun's bright countenance appeared on the +mountain-tops, St. George had rode twenty miles from the Persian Court." +On the other hand, when Great-Heart allows Giant Despair to rise after +his fall, showing his chivalry in refusing to take advantage of the +fallen giant, we remember the incident of Sir Guy and Colebrand in the +<i>Seven Champions</i>.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Good sir, an' it be thy will,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Give me leave to drink my fill,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">For sweet St. Charity,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And I will do thee the same deed</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Another time if thou have need,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">I tell thee certainly."</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> + +<p>St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, +traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears "dismal croakings of night +ravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring of +monsters."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, the +Vale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as the +pilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan's story traverse the Enchanted +Ground. And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land, +tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David was +tempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when his +eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned +in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself +from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament."</p> + +<p><i>Bevis of Southampton</i> has many points in common with St. George in the +<i>Seven Champions</i>. The description of the giant, the escape of Bevis +from his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much was +common stock for the writers of these earlier romances. There is the +same rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing and +stride of vigorous rhyming metre. Of the humour, one quotation will be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span><br /> +enough for an example. It is when they are proposing to baptize the +monstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and then +engaged as his body-servant. At the christening of Josian, wife of +Bevis, the Bishop sees the giant.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"'What is,' sayde he, 'this bad vysage?'</span><br /> +<span class="i1">'Sir,' sayde Bevys, 'he is my page—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I pray you crysten hym also,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!'</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The Bysshop crystened Josian,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">That was as white as any swan;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">For Ascaparde was made a tonne,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And whan he shulde therein be done,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He lept out upon the brenche</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And sayde: 'Churle, wylt thou me drenche?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The devyl of hel mot fetche the</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I am to moche crystened to be!'</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The folke had gode game and laughe,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to the +account of the fight with Apollyon in the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, and +which was doubtless in Bunyan's mind when he wrote that admirable battle +sketch—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Beves is swerde anon upswapte,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He and the geaunt togedre rapte;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And delde strokes mani and fale,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The nombre can i nought telle in tale.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The geaunt up is clubbe haf,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And smot to Beves with is staf,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But his scheld flegh from him thore,</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span><span class="i1">Three acres brede and somedel more,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Tho was Beves in strong erur</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And karf ato the grete levour,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And on the geauntes brest a-wonde</span><br /> +<span class="i1">That negh a-felde him to the grounde.</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The geaunt thoughte this bataile hard,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Anon he drough to him a dart,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Throgh Beves scholder he hit schet,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The blold ran doun to Beves' fet,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The Beves segh is owene blod</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Out of his wit he wex negh wod,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Unto the geaunt ful swithe he ran,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And kedde that he was doughti man,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And smot ato his nekke bon;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The geant fel to grounde anon."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is part of his general sympathy with the spirit of the romances that +Bunyan's giants were always real giants to him, and he evidently enjoyed +them for their own sake as literary and imaginative creations, as well +as for the sake of any truths which they might be made to enforce. +Despair and Slay-Good are distinct to his imagination. His interest +remains always twofold. On the one hand there is allegory, and on the +other hand there is live tale. Sometimes the allegory breaks through and +confuses the tale a little, as when Mercy begs for the great mirror that +hangs in the dining-room of the shepherds, and carries it with her +through the remainder of her journey. Sometimes the allegory has to stop +in order that a sermon may be preached on some particular point of +theology, and such sermons are by no means short. Still the story is so +true to life that its irresistible sim +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>plicity and naturalness carry it +on and make it immortal. When we read such a conversation as that +between old Honest and Mr. Standfast about Madam Bubble, we feel that +the tale has ceased to be an allegory altogether and has become a novel. +This is perhaps more noticeable in the Second Part than in the First. +The First Part is indeed almost a perfect allegory; although even there, +from time to time, the earnestness and rush of the writer's spirit +oversteps the bounds of consistency and happily forgets the moral +because the story is so interesting, or forgets for a moment the story +because the moral is so important. In the Second Part the two characters +fall apart more definitely. Now you have delightful pieces of crude +human nature, naïve and sparkling. Then you have long and intricate +theological treatises. Neither the allegorical nor the narrative unity +is preserved to anything like the same extent as on the whole is the +case in Part I. The shrewd and humorous touches of human nature are +especially interesting. Bunyan was by no means the gentle saint who +shrank from strong language. When the gate of Doubting Castle is +opening, and at last the pilgrims have all but gone free, we read that +"the lock went damnable hard." When Great-Heart is delighted with Mr. +Honest, he calls +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>him "a cock of the right kind." The poem <i>On Christian +Behaviour</i>, which we have quoted, contains the lines—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"When all men's cards are fully played,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Whose will abide the light?"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These are quaint instances of the way in which even the questionable +parts of the unregenerate life of the dreamer came in the end to serve +the uses of his religion.</p> + +<p>There are many gems in the Second Part of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> which +are full of mother-wit and sly fun. Mr. Honest confesses, "I came from +the town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of +Destruction." Then there is Mr. Fearing, that morbidly self-conscious +creature, who is so much at home in the Valley of Humiliation that he +kneels down and kisses the flowers in its grass. He is a man who can +never get rid of himself for a moment, and who bores all the company +with his illimitable and anxious introspection. Yet, in Vanity Fair, +when practical facts have to be faced instead of morbid fancies and +inflamed conscience, he is the most valiant of men, whom they can hardly +keep from getting himself killed, and for that matter all the rest of +them. Here, again, is an inimitable flash of insight, where Simple, +Sloth, and Presumption have prevailed with "one Short-Wind, one +Sleepy-Head, and with a young +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> woman, her name was Dull, to turn out of +the way and become as they."</p> + +<p>Every now and then these natural touches of portraiture rise to a true +sublimity, as all writing that is absolutely true to the facts of human +nature tends to do. Great-Heart says to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, "Let me +see thy sword," and when he has taken it in his hand and looked at it +for awhile, he adds, "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade." That sword +lingers in Bunyan's imagination, for, at the close of Valiant's life, +part of his dying speech is this "My sword I give to him that shall +succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can +get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that +I have fought His battles."</p> + +<p>Bunyan is so evidently an idealist and a prince of spiritual men, that +no one needs to point out this characteristic of the great dreamer, nor +to advertise so obvious a thing as his spiritual idealism. We have +accordingly taken that for granted and left it to the reader to +recognise in every page for himself. We have sought in this to show what +has sometimes been overlooked, how very human the man and his work are. +Yet his humanism is ever at the service of the spirit, enlivening his +book and inspiring it with a perpetual and delicious interest, but never +for a moment entangling him again in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> the old yoke of bondage, from +which at his conversion he had been set free. For the human as opposed +to the divine, the fleshly as the rival of the spiritual, he has an open +and profound contempt, which he expresses in no measured terms in such +passages as that concerning Adam the First and Madam Wanton. These are +for him sheer pagans. At the cave, indeed, which his pilgrim visits at +the farther end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we read that Pope +and Pagan dwelt there in old time, but that Pagan has been dead many a +day. Yet the pagan spirit lives on in many forms, and finds an abiding +place and home in Vanity Fair. As Professor Firth has pointed out, Ben +Jonson, in his play <i>Bartholomew Fair</i>, had already told the adventures +of two Puritans who strayed into the Fair, and who regarded the whole +affair as the shop of Satan. There were many other Fairs, such as that +of Sturbridge, and the Elstow Fair itself, which was instituted by the +nuns on the ground close to their convent, and which is held yearly to +the present day. Such Fairs as these have been a source of much +temptation and danger to the neighbourhood, and represent in its popular +form the whole spirit of paganism at its worst.</p> + +<p>All the various elements of Bunyan's world live on in the England of +to-day. Thackeray, with a stroke of characteristic genius, has expanded +and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> applied the earlier conception of paganism in his great novel whose +title <i>Vanity Fair</i> is borrowed from Bunyan. But the main impression of +the allegory is the victory of the spiritual at its weakest over the +temporal at its mightiest. His descriptions of the supper and bed +chamber in the House Beautiful, and of the death of Christiana at the +end of the Second Part, are immortal writings, in the most literal +sense, amid the shows of time. They have indeed laid hold of immortality +not for themselves only, but for the souls of men. Nothing could sum up +the whole story of Bunyan better than the legend of his flute told by +Mr. S.S. M'Currey in his book of poems entitled <i>In Keswick Vale</i>. The +story is that in his prison Bunyan took out a bar from one of the chairs +in his cell, scooped it hollow, and converted it into a flute, upon +which he played sweet music in the dark and solitary hours of the prison +evening. The jailers never could find out the source of that music, for +when they came to search his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, +and there was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when the +jailers departed the music would mysteriously recommence. It is very +unlikely that this legend is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyan +was a musician at all (although we do have from his pen one touching and +beautiful reference to the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> finest music in the world being founded upon +the bass), but, like his own greater work, the little legend is an +allegory. The world for centuries has heard sweet music from Bunyan, and +has not known whence it came. It has seemed to most men a miracle, and +indeed they were right in counting it so. Yet there was a flute from +which that music issued, and the flute was part of the rough furniture +of his imprisoned world. He was no scholar, nor delicate man of <i>belles +lettres</i>, like so many of his contemporaries. He took what came to his +hand; and in this lecture we have tried to show how much did come thus +to his hand that was rare and serviceable for the purposes of his +spirit, and for the expression of high spiritual truth. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_VI" id="LECTURE_VI"></a>LECTURE VI</h2><h2> +PEPYS' DIARY</h2> + + +<p>It is doubtful whether any of Bunyan's contemporaries had so strong a +human interest attaching to his person and his work as Samuel Pepys. +There is indeed something in common to the two men,—little or nothing +of character, but a certain <i>naïveté</i> and sincerity of writing, which +makes them remind one of each other many times. All the more because of +this does the contrast between the spirit of the two force itself upon +every reader; and if we should desire to find a typical pagan to match +Bunyan's spirituality and idealism, it would be difficult to go past +Samuel Pepys.</p> + +<p>There were, as everybody knows, two famous diarists of the Restoration +period, Pepys and Evelyn. It is interesting to look at the portraits of +the two men side by side. Evelyn's face is anxious and austere, +suggesting the sort of stuff of which soldiers or saints are made. Pepys +is a voluptuous figure, in the style of Charles the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> Second, with +regular and handsome features below his splendid wig, and eyes that are +both keen and heavy, penetrating and luxurious. These two men (who, in +the course of their work, had to compare notes on several occasions, and +between whom we have the record of more than one meeting) were among the +most famous gossips of the world. But Evelyn's gossip is a succession of +solemnities compared with the racy scandal, the infantile and insatiable +curiosity, and the incredible frankness of the pagan diarist.</p> + +<p>Look at his face again, and you will find it impossible not to feel a +certain amount of surprise. Of all the unlikely faces with which history +has astonished the readers of books, there are none more surprising than +those of three contemporaries in the later seventeenth century. +Claverhouse, with his powerful character and indomitable will, with his +Titanic daring and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularly +beautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was only +equalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his +picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose +large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and +very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a +miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> apparently +unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of mean +and vulgar predicament.</p> + +<p>Since the deciphering and publication of his Diary, a great deal has +been written concerning it. The best accounts of it are Henry B. +Wheatley's <i>Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in</i>, and Robert Louis +Stevenson's little essay in his <i>Short Studies of Men and Books</i>. The +object of the present lecture is not to give any general account of the +time and its public events, upon which the Diary touches at a thousand +points, but rather to set the spirit of this man in contrast with that +of John Bunyan, which we have just considered. The men are very typical, +and any adequate conception of the spirit of either will give a true +cross-section of the age in which he lived. Pepys, it must be confessed, +is much more at home in his times than Bunyan ever could be. One might +even say that the times seem to have been designed as a background for +the diarist. There is as little of the spirit of a stranger and pilgrim +in Pepys, even in his most pathetic hours, as there is in John Bunyan +the spirit of a man at home, even in his securest. It was a very pagan +time, and Pepys is the pagan <i>par excellence</i> of that time, the bright +and shining example of the pagan spirit of England. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p> + +<p>His lot was cast in high places, to which he rose by dint of great +ability and indomitable perseverance in his office. He talks with the +King, the Duke of York, the Archbishop, and all the other great folks of +the day; and no volume has thrown more light on the character of Charles +the Second than his. We see the King at the beginning kissing the Bible, +and proclaiming it to be the thing which he loves above all other +things. He rises early in the morning, and practises others of the less +important virtues. We see him touching all sorts of people for the +King's evil, a process in which Pepys is greatly interested at first, +but which palls when it has lost its novelty. Similarly, the diarist is +greatly excited on the first occasion when he actually hears the King +speak, but soon begins to criticise him, finding that he talks very much +like other people. He describes the starvation of the fleet, the country +sinking to the verge of ruin, and the maudlin scenes of drunkenness at +Court, with a minuteness which makes one ashamed even after so long an +interval. However revolting or shameful the institution may be, the fact +that it is an institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. +He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would +mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and +his readers with the most droll accounts of His +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Majesty's frivolities. +"How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the +country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the +bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "that +every one about the Court is mad."</p> + +<p>In politics he had been a republican in his early days, and when Charles +the First's head fell at Whitehall, he had confided to a friend the +dangerous remark that if he were to preach a sermon on that event he +would choose as his text the words, "The memory of the wicked shall +rot." The later turn of events gave him abundant opportunities for +repenting of that indiscretion, and he repents at intervals all through +his Diary. For now he is a royalist in his politics, having in him not a +little of the spirit of the Vicar of Bray, and of Bunyan's Mr. By-ends.</p> + +<p>The political references lead him beyond England, and we hear with +consternation now and again about the dangerous doings of the +Covenanters in Scotland. We hear much also of France and Holland, and +still more of Spain. Outside the familiar European lands there is a +fringe of curious places like Tangier, which is of great account at that +time, and is destined in Pepys' belief to play an immense part in the +history of England, and of the more distant +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> Bombain in India, which he +considers to be a place of little account. Here and there the terror of +a new Popish plot appears. The kingdom is divided against itself, and +the King and the Commons are at drawn battle with the Lords, while every +one shapes his views of things according as his party is in or out of +power.</p> + +<p>Three great historic events are recorded with singular minuteness and +interest in the Diary, namely, the Plague, the Dutch War, and the Fire +of London.</p> + +<p>As to the Plague, we have all the vivid horror of detail with which +Defoe has immortalised it, with the additional interest that here no +consecutive history is attempted, but simply a record of daily +impressions of the streets and houses. On his first sight of the red +cross upon a door, the diarist cries out, "Lord, have mercy upon us," in +genuine terror and pity. The coachman sickens on his box and cannot +drive his horses home. The gallant draws the curtains of a sedan chair +to salute some fair lady within, and finds himself face to face with the +death-dealing eyes and breath of a plague-stricken patient. Few people +move along the streets, and at night the passenger sees and shuns the +distant lights of the link-boys guiding the dead to their burial. A +cowardly parson flies upon some flimsy excuse from his dangerous post, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span><br /> +and makes a weak apology on his first reappearance in the pulpit. +Altogether it is a picture unmatched in its broken vivid flashes, in +which the cruelty and wildness of desperation mingle with the despairing +cry of pity.</p> + +<p>The Dutch War was raging then, not on the High Seas only, but at the +very gates of England; and Pepys, whose important and responsible +position as Clerk of the Acts of the Navy gave him much first-hand +information, tells many great stories in his casual way. We hear the +guns distinctly and loud, booming at the mouth of the Thames. The +press-gang sweeps the streets, and starving women, whose husbands have +been taken from them, weep loudly in our ears. Sailors whose wages have +not been paid desert their ships, in some cases actually joining the +Dutch and fighting against their comrades. One of the finest passages +gives a heartrending and yet bracing picture of the times. "About a +dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach-side with tears in their +eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest began, and said to Sir W. +Coventry, 'We are here a dozen of us, that have long known and loved, +and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done +the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any +other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span><br /> +lives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a +fire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us, out of all which, choose +you one to be commander; and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve +him; and, if possible, do that which shall show our memory of our dead +commander, and our revenge.' Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved, as +well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping, and took their names, +and so parted."</p> + +<p>Perhaps, however, the finest work of all is found in the descriptions of +the Fire of London. From that night when he is awakened by the red glare +of the fire in his bedroom window, on through the days and weeks of +terror, when no man knew how long he would have a home, we follow by the +light of blazing houses the story of much that is best and much that is +worst in human nature. The fire, indeed, cleanses the city from the last +dregs of the plague which are still lingering there, but it also stirs +up the city until its inhabitants present the appearance of ants upon a +disturbed ant-hill. And not the least busy among them, continually +fussing about in all directions, is the diarist himself, eagerly +planning for the preservation of his money, dragging it hither and +thither from hiding-place to hiding-place in the city, and finally +burying it in bags at dead of night in a garden. Nothing is too small +for him to notice. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> The scrap of burnt paper blown by the wind to a +lady's hand, on which the words are written, "Time is, it is done," is +but one of a thousand equally curious details.</p> + +<p>His own character, as reflected in the narrative of these events, is +often little to his credit, and the frank and unblushing selfishness of +his outlook upon things in general is as amusing as it is shameful. And +yet, on the other hand, when most men deserted London, Pepys remained in +it through the whole dangerous time of the plague, taking his life in +his hand and dying daily in his imagination in spite of the quaint +precautions against infection which he takes care on every occasion to +describe. Through the whole dismal year, with plague and fire raging +around him, he sticks to his post and does his work as thoroughly as the +disorganised circumstances of his life allow. If we could get back to +the point of view of those who thought about Pepys and formed a judgment +of him before his Diary had been made public, we should be confronted +with the figure of a man as different from the diarist as it is possible +for two men to be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, a +man who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror of +all the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no means +unimportant, even in a time +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> so full of dangers and so critical for the +destinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him in +his day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, so +carefully written in such an unintelligible cipher, locked nightly with +its little key, and hidden in some secure place. When at last the +writing was deciphered, there came forth upon us, from the august and +honourable state in which the Navy Commissioner had lain so long, this +flood of small talk, the greatest curiosity known to English literature. +Other men than Pepys have suffered in reputation from the yapping of +dogs and the barn-door cackle that attacked their memories. England +blushed as she heard the noise when the name of Carlyle became the +centre of such commotion. But if Samuel Pepys has suffered in the same +way he has no one to thank for it but himself; for, if his own +hand-writing had not revealed it, no one could possibly have guessed +it from the facts of his public career. Yet what a rare show it is, that +multitude of queer little human interests that intermingle with the talk +about great things! It may have been quite wrong to translate it, and +undoubtedly much of it was disreputable enough for any man to write, yet +it will never cease to be read; nor will England cease to be glad that +it was translated, so long as the charm of history is doubled by +touches +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> of strange imagination and confessions of human frailty.</p> + +<p>Pepys' connection with literature is that rather of a virtuoso than of a +student in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History of +the Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashion +from that of the immortality which the Diary has achieved. But his life +was crowded with business and its intervals with pleasures. The weakness +of his eyes also militated against any serious contribution to +literature, and instead of the History, for which he had gathered much +material and many manuscripts, he gave us only the little volume +entitled <i>Memoirs of the Navy</i>, which, however, shows a remarkable grasp +of his subject, and of all corresponding affairs, such as could only +have been possessed by a man of unusually thorough knowledge of his +business. He collected what was for his time a splendid library, +consisting of some three thousand volumes, now preserved in his College +(Magdalene College, Cambridge), very carefully arranged and catalogued. +We read much of this library while it is accumulating—much more about +the mahogany cases in which the books were to stand than about the books +themselves, or his own reading of them. The details of their arrangement +were very dear to his curious mind. He tells us that where the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> books +would not fit exactly to the shelves, but were smaller than the space, +he had little gilded stilts made, adjusted to the size of each book, and +placed under the volumes, which they lifted to the proper height. Little +time can have been left over for the study of at least the stiffer works +in that library, although there are many notes which show that he was in +some sense a reader, and that books served the same purpose as events +and personalities in leading him up and down the byways of what he +always found to be a curious and interesting world.</p> + +<p>But the immortal part of Pepys is undoubtedly his Diary. Among others of +the innumerable curious interests which this man cultivated was that of +studying the secret ciphers which had been invented and used by literary +people in the past. From his knowledge of these he was enabled to invent +a cipher of his own, or rather to adopt one which he altered somewhat to +serve his uses. Having found this sufficiently secret code, he was now +able to gratify his immense interest in himself and his inordinate +personal vanity by writing an intimate narrative of his own life. The +Diary covers nine and a half years in all, from January 1660 to May +1669. For nearly a century and a half it lay dead and silent, until Rev. +J. Smith, with infinite diligence and pains, discovered the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> key to it, +and wrote his translation. A later translation has been made by Rev. +Mynors Bright, which includes some passages by the judgment of the +former translator considered unnecessary or inadvisable.</p> + +<p>Opinions differ as to the wisdom, and indeed the morality, of forcing +upon the public ear the accidentally discovered secrets which a dead man +had guarded so carefully. There is, of course, the possibility that, as +some think, Pepys desired that posterity should have the complete record +in all its frankness and candour. If this be so, one can only say that +the wish is evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind. It seems much more +probable that he wrote the Diary for the luxury of reading it to +himself, always intending to destroy it before his death. But a piece of +work so intimate as this is, in a sense, a living part of the man who +creates it, and one can well imagine him putting off the day of its +destruction, and grudging that it should perish with all its power of +awakening old chords of memory and revitalising buried years. For his +own part he was no squeamish moralist and if it were only for his own +eyes he would enjoy passages which the more fastidious public might +judge differently.</p> + +<p>So it comes to pass that this amazing <i>omnium gatherum</i> of a book is +among the most living of all the gifts of the past to the present, +telling +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> everything and telling it irresistibly. His hat falls through a +hole, and he writes down all about the incident as faithfully as he +describes the palace of the King of France, and the English war with +Holland. His nature is amazingly complicated, and yet our judgment of it +is simplified by his passion for telling everything, no matter how +discreditable or how ignoble the detail may be. He is a great man and a +great statesman, and he is the liveliest of our English crickets on the +hearth. One set of excerpts would present him as the basest, another set +as the pleasantest and kindliest of men; and always without any +exception he is refreshing by his intense and genial interest in the +facts of the world. Of the many summaries of himself which he has given +us, none is more characteristic than the following, with which he closes +the month of April of the year 1666: "Thus ends this month; my wife in +the country, myself full of pleasure and expence; in some trouble for my +friends, and my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, +which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost +anything." He is essentially a virtuoso who has been forced by +circumstances into the necessity of being also a public man, and has +developed on his own account an extraordinary passion for the +observation of small and wayside +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> things. At the high table of those +times, where Milton and Bunyan sit at the mighty feast of English +literature, he is present also: but he is under the table, a mischievous +and yet observant child, loosening the neckerchiefs of those who are too +drunk, and picking up scraps of conversation which he will retail +outside. There is something peculiarly pathetic in the whole picture. +One remembers Defoe, who for so many years lived in the reputation of +honourable politics and in the odour of such sanctity as Robinson Crusoe +could give, until the discovery of certain yellow papers revealed the +base political treachery for which the great island story had been a +kind of anodyne to conscience. So Samuel Pepys would have passed for a +great naval authority and an anxious friend of England when her foes +were those of her own household, had he only been able to make up his +mind to destroy these little manuscript volumes.</p> + +<p>Why did he write them, one still asks? Readers of Robert Browning's +poems, <i>House</i> and <i>Shop</i>, will remember the scorn which that poet pours +upon any one who unlocks his heart to the general public. And these +narrations of Pepys' are certainly of such a kind that if he intended +them to be read by any public in any generation of England, he must be +set down as unique among +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> sane men. Stevenson indeed considers that +there was in the Diary a side glance at publication, but the proof which +he adduces from the text does not seem sufficient to sustain so +remarkable a freak of human nature, nor does the fact that on one +occasion Pepys set about destroying all his papers except the Diary, +appear to prove very much one way or another. Stevenson calls it +inconsistent and unreasonable in a man to write such a book and to +preserve it unless he wanted it to be read. But perhaps no writing of +diaries is quite reasonable; and as for his desire to have it read by +others than himself, we find that his Diary was so close a secret that +he expresses regret for having mentioned it to Sir William Coventry. No +other man ever heard of it in Pepys' lifetime, "it not being necessary, +nor maybe convenient, to have it known."</p> + +<p>Why, then, did he write it? Why does anybody write a diary? Probably the +answer nearest to the truth will be that every one finds himself +interesting, and some people have so keen an interest in themselves that +it becomes a passion, clamorous to be gratified. Now as Bacon tells us, +"Writing maketh an exact man," and the writing of diaries reduces to the +keenest vividness our own impressions of experience and thoughts about +things. Pepys was, above all other men, interested in himself. He was +intensely in love with himself. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> The beautiful, jealous, troublesome, +and yet inevitable Mrs. Pepys was but second in her husband's affections +after all. He was his own wife. One remembers fashionable novels of the +time of <i>Evelina</i> or the <i>Mysteries of Udolpho</i>, and recollects how the +ladies there speak lover-like of their diaries, and, when writing them, +feel themselves always in the best possible company. For Pepys, his +Diary does not seem to have been so much a refuge from daily cares and +worries, nor a preparation for the luxury of reading it in his old age, +as an indulgence of intense and poignant pleasure in the hour of +writing.</p> + +<p>His interest in himself was quite extraordinary. When his library was +collected and his books bound and gilded they were doubtless a treasured +possession of which he was hugely proud. But this was not so much a +possession as it was a kind of <i>alter ego</i>, a fragment of his living +self, hidden away from all eyes but his own. No trifle in his life is +too small for record. He cannot change his seat in the office from one +side of the fireplace to another without recording it. The gnats trouble +him at an inn in the country. His wig takes fire and crackles, and he is +mighty merry about it until he discovers that it is his own wig that is +burning and not somebody else's. He visits the ships, and, remembering +former days, notes down without a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> blush the sentence, "Poor ship, that +I have been twice merry in." Any one could have written the Diary, so +far as intellectual or even literary power is concerned, though perhaps +few would have chosen precisely Pepys' grammar in which to express +themselves. But nobody else that ever lived could have written it with +such sheer abandonment and frankness. He has a positive talent, nay, a +genius for self-revelation, for there must be a touch of genius in any +man who is able to be absolutely true. Other men have struggled hard to +gain sincerity, and when it is gained the struggle has made it too +conscious to be perfectly sincere. Pepys, with utter unconsciousness, is +sincere even in his insincerities. Some of us do not know ourselves and +our real motives well enough to attempt any formal statement of them. +Others of us may suspect ourselves, but would die before we would +confess our real motives even to ourselves, and would fiercely deny them +if any other person accused us of them. But this man's barriers are all +down. There is no reserve, but frankness everywhere and to an unlimited +extent. There is no pose in the book either of good or bad, and it is +one of the very few books of which such a statement could be made. He +has been accused of many things, but never of affectation. The bad +actions are qualified by regrets, and the disarmed critic +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> feels that +they have lost any element of tragedy which they might otherwise have +had. The good actions are usually spoiled by some selfish <i>addendum</i> +which explains and at the same time debases them. Surely the man who +could do all this constantly through so many hundreds of pages, must be +in his way a unique kind of genius, to have so clear an eye and so +little self-deception.</p> + +<p>The Diary is full of details, for he is the most curious man in the +world. One might apply to him the word catholicity if it were not far +too big and dignified an epithet. The catholicity of his mind is that of +the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>. The interest of the book is inexhaustible, +because to him the whole world was just such a book. His world was +indeed</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">So full of a number of things</span><br /> +<span class="i1">He was sure we should all be as happy as kings.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Like Chaucer's Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly." Now he lights upon +a dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet again +upon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. He +will drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like a +bird, and he will tell you a tale of a boy who was disinherited because +he crowed like a cock. He will walk across half the country to see +anything new. His heart is full of a great love of processions, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span><br /> +raree-shows of every kind, and, above all, novelty. His confession that +the sight of the King touching for the evil gave him no pleasure because +he had seen it before, applies to most things in his life. For such a +man, this world must indeed have been an interesting place.</p> + +<p>We join him in well-nigh every meal he sits down to, from the first days +when they lived so plainly, on to the greater times of the end, when he +gives a dinner to his friends, which was "a better dinner than they +understood or deserved." He delights in all the detail of the table. The +cook-maid, whose wages were £4 per annum, had no easy task to satisfy +her fastidious master, and Mrs. Pepys must now and then rise at four in +the morning to make mince-pies. Any new kind of meat or drink especially +delights him. He finds ortolans to be composed of nothing but fat, and +he often seems, in his thoughts on other nations, to have for his first +point of view the sight of foreigners at dinner. But this is only part +of the insatiable and omnivorous interest in odds and ends which is +everywhere apparent. The ribbons he has seen at a wedding, the starving +seamen who are becoming a danger to the nation, the drinking of wine +with a toad in the glass, a lightning flash that melted fetters from the +limbs of slaves, Harry's chair (the latest curiosity of the +drawing-rooms, whose arms +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> rise and clasp you into it when you sit +down), the new Messiah, who comes with a brazier of hot coals and +proclaims the doom of England—these, and a thousand other details, make +up the furniture of this most miscellaneous mind.</p> + +<p>Everything in the world amuses him, and from first to last there is an +immense amount of travelling, both physical and mental. With him we +wander among companies of ladies and gentlemen walking in gardens, or +are rowed up and down the Thames in boats, and it is always exciting and +delightful. That is a kind of allegory of the man's view of life. But +nothing is quite so congenial to him, after all, as plays at the +theatre. One feels that he would never have been out of theatres had it +been possible, and in order to keep himself to his business he has to +make frequent vows (which are generally more or less broken) that he +will not go to see a play again until such and such a time. When the vow +is broken and the play is past he lamentably regrets the waste of +resolution, and stays away for a time until the next outburst comes. The +plays were then held in the middle of the day, and must have cut in +considerably upon the working-time of business men; although, to be +sure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon +things were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and +the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient +physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste in +the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patience +with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of <i>Twelfth Night</i>, +<i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, and <i>Othello</i>; while he constantly informs us +that he "never saw anything so good in his life" as the now +long-forgotten productions of little playwrights of his time. He would, +we suspect, prefer at all times a puppet show to a play; partly, no +doubt, because that was the fashion, and partly because that type of +drama was nearer his size. Throughout the volumes of the Diary there are +few things of which he speaks with franker and more enthusiastic delight +than the enjoyment which he derives from punchinello.</p> + +<p>Next to the delight which he derived from the theatre must be mentioned +that which he continually found in music. He seems to have made an +expert and scientific study of it, and the reader hears continually the +sound of lutes, harpsichords, violas, theorbos, virginals, and +flageolets. He takes great numbers of music lessons, but quarrels with +his teacher from time to time. He praises extravagantly such music as he +hears, or criticises it unsparingly, passing on one occasion the +desperate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> censure "that Mrs. Turner sings worse than my wife."</p> + +<p>His interest in science is as curious and miscellaneous as his interest +in everything else. He was indeed President of the Royal Society of his +time, and he is immensely delighted with Boyle and his new discoveries +concerning colours and hydro-statics. Yet so rare a dilettante is he, +in this as in other things, that we find this President of the Royal +Society bringing in a man to teach him the multiplication table. He has +no great head for figures, and we find him listening to long lectures +upon abstruse financial questions, not unlike the bimetallism +discussions of our own day, which he finds so clear, while he is +listening, that nothing could be clearer, but half an hour afterwards he +does not know anything whatever about the subject.</p> + +<p>Under the category of his amusements, physic must be included; for, like +other egoists, he was immensely interested in his real or imaginary +ailments, and in the means which were taken to cure them. On some days +he will sit all day long taking physic. He derives an immense amount of +amusement from the process of doctoring himself, and still more from +writing down in all their detail both his symptoms and their treatment. +His pharmacopoeia is by no means scientific, for he includes within it +charms which will cure one +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> of anything, and he always keeps a hare's +foot by him, and will sometimes tell of troubles which came to him +because he had forgotten it.</p> + +<p>He is constantly passing the shrewdest of judgments upon men and things, +or retailing them from the lips of others. "Sir Ellis Layton is, for a +speech of forty words, the wittiest man that ever I knew in my life, but +longer he is nothing." "Mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy +do abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a +fool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much +in the wrong." "How little merit do prevail in the world, but only +favour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in; and +that diligence only keeps me so, and will, living as I do among so many +lazy people that the diligent man becomes necessary, that they cannot do +anything without him." "To the Cocke-pitt where I hear the Duke of +Albemarle's chaplain make a simple sermon: among other things, +reproaching the imperfection of humane learning, he cried, 'All our +physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not +able to number the days of a man'—which, God knows, is not the fault of +arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The +blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and +every man must know it, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> heaviest man in the world, but stout and +honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as +short as I can, and obscure." "But he do tell me that the House is in +such a condition that nobody can tell what to make of them, and, he +thinks, they were never in before; that everybody leads and nobody +follows." "My Lord Middleton did come to-day, and seems to me but a +dull, heavy man; but he is a great soldier, and stout, and a needy +Lord." A man who goes about the world making remarks of that kind, would +need a cipher in which to write them down. His world is everything to +him, and he certainly makes the most of it so far as observation and +remark are concerned.</p> + +<p>If Pepys' curiosity and infinitely varied shrewdness and observation may +be justly regarded as phenomenal, the complexity of his moral character +is no less amazing. He is full of industry and ambition, reading for his +favourite book Bacon's <i>Faber Fortunæ</i>, "which I can never read too +often." He is "joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see, +that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and has sent me masters that +do observe that I take pains." Again he is "busy till night blessing +myself mightily to see what a deal of business goes off a man's hands +when he stays at it." Colonel Birch tells him "that he knows him to be a +man of the old way of taking pains." +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> + +<p>This is interesting in itself, and it is a very marked trait in his +character, but it gains a wonderful pathos when we remember that this +infinite taking of pains was done in a losing battle with blindness. +There is a constantly increasing succession of references in the Diary +to his failing eyesight and his fears of blindness in the future. The +references are made in a matter-of-fact tone, and are as free from +self-pity as if he were merely recording the weather or the date. All +the more on that account, the days when he is weary and almost blind +with writing and reading, and the long nights when he is unable to read, +show him to be a very brave and patient man. He consults Boyle as to +spectacles, but fears that he will have to leave off his Diary, since +the cipher begins to hurt his eyes. The lights of the theatre become +intolerable, and even reading is a very trying ordeal, notwithstanding +the paper tubes through which he looks at the print, and which afford +him much interest and amusement. So the Diary goes on to its pathetic +close:—"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with +my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any +longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time +that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I +must +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> forbear; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have +it kept by my people in long-hand, and must be contented to set down +no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be +anything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, +here and there, a note in shorthand with my own hand.</p> + +<p>"And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to +see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that +will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!—S.P."</p> + +<p>It is comforting to know that, in spite of these fears, he did not grow +blind, but preserved a certain measure of sight to the end of his +career.</p> + +<p>In regard to money and accounts, his character and conduct present the +same extraordinary mixture as is seen in everything else that concerns +him. Money flows profusely upon valentines, gloves, books, and every +sort of thing conceivable; yet he grudges the price of his wife's dress +although it is a sum much smaller than the cost of his own. He allows +her £30 for all expenses of the household, and she is immensely pleased, +for the sum is much larger than she had expected. The gift to her of a +necklace worth £60 overtops all other generosity, and impresses +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> himself +so much that we hear of it till we are tired. A man in such a position +as his, is bound to make large contributions to public objects, both in +the forms of donations and of loans; but caution tempers his public +spirit. A characteristic incident is that in which he records his +genuine shame that the Navy Board had not lent any money towards the +expenses caused by the Fire and the Dutch War. But when the loan is +resolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naïveté, how he rushes in to +begin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a larger +sum, which he would have to equal if he came after them. He hates +gambling,—it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him,—and he +records, conscientiously and very frequently, the gradual growth of his +estate from nothing at all to thousands of pounds, with constant thanks +to God, and many very quaint little confessions and remarks.</p> + +<p>He was on the one hand confessedly a coward, and on the other hand a man +of the most hasty and violent temper. Yet none of his readers can +despise him very bitterly for either of these vices. For he disarms all +criticism by the incredibly ingenious frankness of his confessions; and +the instances of these somewhat contemptible vices alternate with bits +of real gallantry and fineness, told in the same perfectly natural and +unconscious way. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> + +<p>His relations with his wife and other ladies would fill a volume in +themselves. It would not be a particularly edifying volume, but it +certainly would be without parallel in the literature of this or any +other country for sheer extremity of frankness. Mrs. Pepys appears to +have been a very beautiful and an extremely difficult lady, disagreeable +enough to tempt him into many indiscretions, and yet so virtuous as to +fill his heart with remorse for all his failings, and still more with +vexation for her discoveries of them. But below all this surface play of +pretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and +genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about +her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with +abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her +capricious and imperious little humours.</p> + +<p>These curious mixtures of character, however, are but byplay compared +with the phenomenal and central vanity, which alternately amazes and +delights us. After all the centuries there is a positive charm about +this grown man who, after all, never seems to have grown up into +manhood. He is as delighted with himself as if he were new, and as +interested in himself as if he had been born yesterday. He prefers +always to talk with persons of quality if he can find them. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> "Mighty +glad I was of the good fortune to visit him (Sir W. Coventry), for it +keeps in my acquaintance with him, and the world sees it, and reckons my +interest accordingly." His public life was distinguished by one great +speech made in answer to the accusations of some who had attacked him +and the Navy Board in the House of Commons. That speech seems certainly +to have been distinguished and extraordinarily able, but it certainly +would have cost him his soul if he had not already lost that in other +ways. Every sentence of flattery, even to the point of being told that +he is another Cicero, he not only takes seriously, but duly records.</p> + +<p>There is an immense amount of snobbery, blatant and unashamed. A certain +Captain Cooke turns out to be a man who had been very great in former +days. Pepys had carried clothes to him when he was a little +insignificant boy serving in his father's workshop. Now Captain Cooke's +fortunes are reversed, and Pepys tells us of his many and careful +attempts to avoid him, and laments his failure in such attempts. He +hates being seen on the shady side of any street of life, and is +particularly sensitive to such company as might seem ridiculous or +beneath his dignity. His brother faints one day while walking with him +in the street, on which his remark is, "turned my head, and he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> was +fallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into a +great fright; and, to see my brotherly love! I did presently lift him up +from the ground." This last sentence is so delightful that, were it not +for the rest of the Diary, it would be quite incredible in any human +being past the age of short frocks. All this side of his character +culminates in the immense amount of information which we have concerning +his coach. He has great searching of heart as to whether it would be +good policy or bad to purchase it. All that is within him longs to have +a coach of his own, but, on the other hand, he fears the jealousy of his +rivals and the increased demands upon his generosity which such a luxury +may be expected to bring. At last he can resist no longer, and the coach +is purchased. No sooner does he get inside it than he assumes the air of +a gentleman whose ancestors have ridden in coaches since the beginning +of time. "The Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and +now and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, there +were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's."</p> + +<p>A somewhat amazing fact in this strange and contradictory character is +the constant element of subtlety which blends with so much frankness. He +wants to do wrong in many different ways +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> but he wants still more to do +it with propriety, and to have some sort of plausible excuse which will +explain it in a respectable light. Nor is it only other people whom he +is bent on deceiving. Were that all, we should have a very simple type +of hypocritical scoundrel, which would be as different as possible from +the extraordinary Pepys. There is a sense of propriety in him, and a +conscience of obeying the letter of the law and keeping up appearances +even in his own eyes. If he can persuade himself that he has done that, +all things are open to him. He will receive a bribe, but it must be +given in such a way that he can satisfy his conscience with ingenious +words. The envelope has coins in it, but then he opens it behind his +back and the coins fall out upon the floor. He has only picked them up +when he found them there, and can defy the world to accuse him of having +received any coins in the envelope. That was the sort of conscience +which he had, and whose verdicts he never seems seriously to have +questioned. He vows he will drink no wine till Christmas, but is +delighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is not +necessarily included in his vow. He vows he will not go to the play +until Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goes +with the borrowed money; or goes to a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> new playhouse which was not open +when the vow was made. He buys books which no decent man would own to +having bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has only +read them and has not put them in his library. Thus, along the whole +course of his life, he cheats himself continually. He prefers the way of +honour if it be consistent with a sufficient number of other +preferences, and yet practises a multitude of curiously ingenious +methods of being excusably dishonourable. On the whole, in regard to +public business and matters of which society takes note, he keeps his +conduct surprisingly correct, but all the time he is remembering, not +without gusto, what he might be doing if he were a knave. It is a +curious question what idea of God can be entertained by a man who plays +tricks with himself in this fashion. Of Pepys certainly it cannot be +said that God "is not in all his thoughts," for the name and the +remembrance are constantly recurring. Yet God seems to occupy a quite +hermetically sealed compartment of the universe; for His servant in +London shamelessly goes on with the game he is playing, and appears to +take a pride in the very conscience he systematically hoodwinks.</p> + +<p>It is peculiarly interesting to remember that Samuel Pepys and John +Bunyan were contemporaries. There is, as we said, much in common +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span><br /> +between them, and still more in violent contrast. He had never heard of +the Tinker or his Allegory so far as his Diary tells us, nor is it +likely that he would greatly have appreciated the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i> +if it had come into his hands. Even <i>Hudibras</i> he bought because it was +the proper thing to do, and because he had met its author, Butler; but +he never could see what it was that made that book so popular. Bunyan +and Pepys were two absolutely sincere men. They were sincere in opposite +ways and in diametrically opposite camps, but it was their sincerity, +the frank and natural statement of what they had to say, that gave its +chief value to the work of each of them. It is interesting to remember +that Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in the +year 1678. The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, and +his imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record: while Bunyan's +charge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promise +not to repeat the offence. Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probably +have approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who were +living for conscience' sake, like Dr. Johnson's friend, Dr. Campbell, of +whom it was said he never entered a church, but always took off his hat +when he passed one. On the whole Pepys' references to the Fanatiques, as +he calls them, are not only fair +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> but favourable. He is greatly +interested in their zeal, and impatient with the stupidity and brutality +of their persecutors.</p> + +<p>In regard to outward details there are many interesting little points of +contact between the Diary and the <i>Pilgrims Progress</i>. We hear of Pepys +purchasing Foxe's <i>Book of Martyrs</i>; Bartholomew and Sturbridge Fairs +come in for their own share of notice; nor is there wanting a +description of such a cage as Christian and Faithful were condemned to +in Vanity Fair. Justice Keelynge, the judge who condemned Bunyan, is +mentioned on several occasions by Pepys, very considerably to his +disadvantage. But by far the most interesting point that the two have in +common is found in that passage which is certainly the gem of the whole +Diary. Bunyan, in the second part of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, +introduces a shepherd boy who sings very sweetly upon the Delectable +Mountains. It is the most beautiful and idyllic passage in the whole +allegory, and has become classical in English literature. Yet Pepys' +passage will match it for simple beauty. He rises with his wife a little +before four in the morning to make ready for a journey into the country +in the neighbourhood of Epsom. There, as they walk upon the Downs, they +come "where a flock of sheep was; and the most pleasant and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> innocent +sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd and his little boy +reading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him; so I +made the boy read to me, which he did.... He did content himself +mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the +most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it +brought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two or +three days after."</p> + +<p>Such is some slight conception, gathered from a few of many thousands of +quaint and sparkling revelations of this strange character. Over against +the "ingenious dreamer," Bunyan, here is a man who never dreams. He is +the realist, pure and unsophisticated; and the stray touches of pathos, +on which here and there one chances in his Diary, are written without +the slightest attempt at sentiment, or any other thought than that they +are plain matters of fact. He might have stood for this prototype of +many of Bunyan's characters. Now he is Mr. Worldly Wiseman, now Mr. +By-ends, and Mr. Hold-the-World; and taken altogether, with all his +good and bad qualities, he is a fairly typical citizen of Vanity Fair.</p> + +<p>There are indeed in his character exits towards idealism and +possibilities of it, but their promise is never fulfilled. There is, for +instance, his kindly +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> good-nature. That quality was the one and +all-atoning virtue of the times of Charles the Second, and it was +supposed to cover a multitude of sins. Yet Charles the Second's was a +reign of constant persecution, and of unspeakable selfishness in high +places. Pepys persecutes nobody, and yet some touch of unblushing +selfishness mars every kindly thing he does. If he sends a haunch of +venison to his mother, he lets you know that it was far too bad for his +own table. He loves his father with what is obviously a quite genuine +affection, but in his references to him there is generally a significant +remembrance of himself. He tells us that his father is a man "who, +besides that he is my father, and a man that loves me, and hath ever +done so, is also, at this day, one of the most careful and innocent men +of the world." He advises his father "to good husbandry and to be living +within the bounds of £50 a year, and all in such kind words, as not only +made both them but myself to weep." He hopes that his father may recover +from his illness, "for I would fain do all I can, that I may have him +live, and take pleasure in my doing well in the world." Similarly, when +his uncle is dying, we have a note "that he is very ill, and so God's +Will be done." When the uncle is dead, Pepys' remark is, "sorry in one +respect, glad in my expectations in another +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> respect." When his +predecessor dies, he writes, "Mr. Barlow is dead; for which God knows my +heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, +by whose death he gets £100 per annum."</p> + +<p>Another exit towards idealism of the Christian and spiritual sort might +be supposed to be found in his abundant and indeed perpetual references +to churches and sermons. He is an indomitable sermon taster and critic. +But his criticisms, although they are among the most amusing of all his +notes, soon lead us to surrender any expectation of escape from paganism +along this line. "We got places, and staid to hear a sermon; but it, +being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of it +we went away, and I home, and dined; and then my wife and I by water to +the Opera." This is not, perhaps, surprising, and may in some measure +explain his satisfaction with Dr. Creeton's "most admirable, good, +learned, and most severe sermon, yet comicall," in which the preacher +"railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the +Presbyterians," and ripped up Hugh Peters' preaching, calling him "the +execrable skellum." One man preaches "well and neatly"; another "in a +devout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, +and that he would +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> preach holily"; while Mr. Mills makes "an unnecessary +sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people." +On the whole, his opinion of the Church is not particularly high, and he +seems to share the view of the Confessor of the Marquis de Caranen, +"that the three great trades of the world are, the lawyers, who govern +the world; the Churchmen who enjoy the world; and a sort of fellows whom +they call soldiers, who make it their work to defend the world."</p> + +<p>It must be confessed that, when there were pretty ladies present and +when his wife was absent, the sermons had but little chance. "To +Westminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with my +perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great +pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what +with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done." +Sometimes he goes further, as at St. Dunstan's, where "I heard an able +sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, +whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got +further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take +pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again—which, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span><br /> +seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design."</p> + +<p>He visits cathedrals, and tries to be impressed by them, but more +interesting things are again at hand. At Rochester, "had no mind to stay +there, but rather to our inne, the White Hart, where we drank." At +Canterbury he views the Minster and the remains of Beckett's tomb, but +adds, "A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a +great while." There is something ludicrously incongruous about the idea +of Samuel Pepys in a cathedral, just as there is about his presence in +the Great Plague and Fire. Among any of these grand phenomena he is +altogether out of scale. He is a fly in a thunderstorm.</p> + +<p>His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can +lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God +continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, +with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his +last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking +of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as +of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On +a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind +of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> and +home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter +merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when +in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will +recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, +he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse +hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman +can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an +audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, +but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is +this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing +the knave and dissimulation."</p> + +<p>Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly +governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion +was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience +enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within +the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man—a +conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are +constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems +as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> which +he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which +there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are +all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are?</p> + +<p>Pepys was a pagan man in a pagan time, if ever there was such a man. The +deepest secret of him is his intense vitality. Here, on the earth, he is +thoroughly alive, and puts his whole heart into most of his actions. He +is always in the superlative mood, finding things either the best or the +worst that "he ever saw in all his life." His great concern is to be +merry, and he never outgrows the crudest phases of this desire, but +carries the monkey tricks of a boy into mature age. He will draw his +merriment from any source. He finds it "very pleasant to hear how the +old cavaliers talk and swear." At the Blue Ball, "we to dancing, and +then to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then +to dance and sing; and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve +at night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I +love to do, enjoy myself." "This day my wife made it appear to me that +my late entertainment of this week cost me above £12, an expence which I +am almost ashamed of, though it is but once in a great while, and is the +end for which, in the most part, we live, to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> have such a merry day once +or twice in a man's life."</p> + +<p>The only darkening element in his merriment is his habit of examining it +too anxiously. So greedy is he of delight that he cannot let himself go, +but must needs be measuring the extent to which he has achieved his +desire. Sometimes he finds himself "merry," but at other times only +"pretty merry." And there is one significant confession in connection +with some performance of a favourite play, "and indeed it is good, +though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are." +This is one of the very few touches of anything approaching to cynicism +which are to be found in his writings. His greed of merriment overleaps +itself, and the confession of that is the deepest note in all his music.</p> + +<p>Thus all the avenues leading beyond the earth were blocked. Other men +escape along the lines of kindliness, love of friends, art, poetry, or +religion. In all these avenues he walks or dances, but they lead him +nowhere. At the bars he stands, an absolute worldling and pagan, full of +an insatiable curiosity and an endless hunger and thirst. There is no +touch of eternity upon his soul: his universe is Vanity Fair. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_VII" id="LECTURE_VII"></a>LECTURE VII</h2><h2> +SARTOR RESARTUS</h2> + + +<p>We now begin the study of the last of the three stages in the battle +between paganism and idealism. Having seen something of its primitive +and classical forms, we took a cross section of it in the seventeenth +century, and now we shall review one or two of its phases in our own +time. The leap from the seventeenth century to the twentieth necessarily +omits much that is vital and interesting. The eighteenth century, in its +stately and complacent fashion, produced some of the most deliberate and +finished types of paganism which the world has seen, and these were +opposed by memorable antagonists. We cannot linger there, however, but +must pass on to that great book which sounded the loudest bugle-note +which the nineteenth century heard calling men to arms in this warfare.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more violent than the sudden transition from Samuel +Pepys, that inveterate +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> tumbler in the masque of life, whose absurdities +and antics we have been looking at but now, to this solemn and +tremendous book. Great in its own right, it is still greater when we +remember that it stands at the beginning of the modern conflict between +the material and spiritual development of England. Every student of the +fourteenth century is familiar with two great figures, typical of the +two contrasted features of its life. On the one hand stands Chaucer, +with his infinite human interest, his good-humour, and his inexhaustible +delight in man's life upon the earth. On the other hand, dark in shadows +as Chaucer is bright with sunshine, stands Langland, colossal in his +sadness, perplexed as he faces the facts of public life which are still +our problems, earnest as death. There is no one figure which corresponds +to Chaucer in the modern age, but Carlyle is certainly the counterpart +of Langland. Standing in the shadow, he sends forth his great voice to +his times, now breaking into sobs of pity, and anon into shrieks of +hoarse laughter, terrible to hear. He, too, is bewildered, and he comes +among his fellows "determined to pluck out the heart of the +mystery"—the mystery alike of his own times and of general human life +and destiny.</p> + +<p>The book is in a great measure autobiographical, and is drawn from deep +wells of experience, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> thought, and feeling. Inasmuch as its writer was a +very typical Scotsman, it also was in a sense a manifesto of the +national convictions which had made much of the noblest part of Scottish +history, and which have served to stiffen the new races with which +Scottish emigrants have blended, and to put iron into their blood. It is +a book of incalculable importance, and if it be the case that it finds +fewer readers in the rising generation than it did among their fathers, +it is time that we returned to it. It is for want of such strong meat as +this that the spirit of an age tends to grow feeble.</p> + +<p>The object of the present lecture is neither to explain <i>Sartor +Resartus</i> nor to summarise it. It certainly requires explanation, and it +is no wonder that it puzzled the publishers. Before it was finally +accepted by Fraser, its author had "carried it about for some two years +from one terrified owl to another." When it appeared, the criticisms +passed on it were amusing enough. Among those mentioned by Professor +Nichol are, "A heap of clotted nonsense," and "When is that stupid +series of articles by the crazy tailor going to end?" A book which could +call forth such abuse, even from the dullest of minds, is certainly in +need of elucidation. Yet here, more perhaps than in any other volume one +could name, the interpretation must come from within. The truth which it +has to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> declare will appeal to each reader in the light of his own +experience of life. And the endeavour of the present lecture will simply +be to give a clue to its main purpose. Every reader, following up that +clue for himself, may find the growing interest and the irresistible +fascination which the Victorians found in it. And when we add that +without some knowledge of <i>Sartor</i> it is impossible to understand any +serious book that has been written since it appeared, we do not +exaggerate so much as might be supposed on the first hearing of so +extraordinary a statement.</p> + +<p>The first and chief difficulty with most readers is a very obvious and +elementary one. What is it all about? As you read, you can entertain no +doubt about the eloquence, the violent and unrestrained earnestness of +purpose, the unmistakable reserves of power behind the detonating words +and unforgettable phrases. But, after all, what is it that the man is +trying to say? This is certainly an unpromising beginning. Other great +prophets have prophesied in the vernacular; but "he that speaketh in an +unknown tongue speaketh not unto men but unto God; for no man +understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries." Yet +there are some things which cannot convey their full meaning in the +vernacular, thoughts which must coin a language for themselves; and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span><br /> +although at first there may be much bewilderment and even irritation, +yet in the end we shall confess that the prophecy has found its proper +language.</p> + +<p>Let us go back to the time in which the book was written. In the late +twenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century a quite +exceptional group of men and women were writing books. It was one of +those galaxies that now and then over-crowd the literary heavens with +stars. To mention only a few of the famous names, there were Byron, +Scott, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and the Brownings. It fills one +with envy to think of days when any morning might bring a new volume +from any one of these. Emerson was very much alive then, and was already +corresponding with Carlyle. Goethe died in 1832, but not before he had +found in Carlyle one who "is almost more, at home in our literature than +ourselves," and who had penetrated to the innermost core of the German +writings of his day.</p> + +<p>At that time, too, momentous changes were coming upon the industrial and +political life of England. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway +was opened, and in 1832 the Reform Bill was passed. Men were standing in +the backwash of the French Revolution. The shouts of acclamation with +which the promise of that dawn was hailed, had been silenced long ago by +the bloody +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> spectacle of Paris and the career of Napoleon Buonaparte. +The day of Byronism was over, and polite England was already settling +down to the conventionalities of the Early Victorian period. The +romantic school was passing away, and the new generation was turning +from it to seek reality in physical science. But deep below the +conventionality and the utilitarianism alike there remained from the +Revolution its legacy of lawlessness, and many were more intent on +adventure than on obedience.</p> + +<p>It was in the midst of this confused <i>mêlée</i> of opinions and impulses +that Thomas Carlyle strode into the lists with his strange book. On the +one hand it is a Titanic defence of the universe against the stage +Titanism of Byron's <i>Cain</i>. On the other hand it is a revolt of reality +against the empire of proprieties and appearances and shams. In a +generation divided between the red cap of France and the coal-scuttle +bonnet of England Carlyle stands bareheaded under the stars. Along with +him stand Benjamin Disraeli, combining a genuine sympathy for the poor +with a most grotesque delight in the aristocracy; and John Henry Newman, +fierce against the Liberals, and yet the author of "Lead, kindly Light."</p> + +<p>The book was handicapped more heavily by its own style than perhaps any +book that ever fought +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> its way from neglect and vituperation to +idolatrous popularity. There is in it an immense amount of gag and +patter, much of which is brilliant, but so wayward and fantastic as to +give a sense of restlessness and perpetual noise. The very title is +provoking, and not less so is the explanation of it—the pretended +discovery of a German volume upon "Clothes, their origin and influence," +published by Stillschweigen and Co., of Weissnichtwo, and written by +Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. The puffs from the local newspaper, and the +correspondence with Hofrath "Grasshopper," in no wise lessen the odds +against such a work being taken seriously.</p> + +<p>Again, as might be expected of a Professor of "Things in General," the +book is discursive to the point of bewilderment. The whole progeny of +"aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils" breaks loose upon us just as +we are about to begin such a list of human apparel as never yet was +published save in the catalogue of a museum collected by a madman. A dog +with a tin kettle at his tail rushes mad and jingling across the street, +leaving behind him a new view of the wild tyranny of Ambition. A great +personage loses much sawdust through a rent in his unfortunate nether +garments. Sirius and the Pleiades look down from above. The book is +everywhere, and everywhere at once. The <i>asides</i> seem to occupy more +space than the main thesis, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> whatever that may be. Just when you think +you have found the meaning of the author at last, another display of +these fireworks distracts your attention. It is not dark enough to see +their full splendour, yet they confuse such daylight as you have.</p> + +<p>Yet the main thesis cannot long remain in doubt. Through whatever +amazement and distraction, it becomes clear enough at last. Clothes, +which at once reveal and hide the man who wears them, are an allegory of +the infinitely varied aspects and appearances of the world, beneath +which lurk ultimate realities. But essential man is a naked animal, not +a clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drastic +stripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor will +not linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown's +button, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to the +essential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than an +interesting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that. +Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. This +philosophy of clothes, then, is religion and not <i>belles lettres</i>. The +reason for our sojourn on earth, and the only ground of any hope for a +further sojourn elsewhere, is that in God's name we do battle with the +devil.</p> + +<p>The quest of reality must obviously be wide as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> the universe, but if we +are to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it +<i>somewhere</i>. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal of +things—a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion of +theories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring the +search down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on its +remaining there. For this end the device of biography is adopted, and we +see the meaning of all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and +of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book +I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and +experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to +reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical and immortal biography.</p> + +<p>To the childless old people, Andreas and Gretchen Futteral, leading +their sweet orchard life, there comes, in the dusk of evening, a +stranger of reverend aspect—comes, and leaves with them the "invaluable +Loan" of the baby Teufelsdröckh. Thenceforward, beside the little +Kuhbach stream, we watch the opening out of a human life, from infancy +to boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood. The story has been told a +million times, but never quite in this fashion before. For rough +delicacy, for exquisitely tender sternness, the biography is unique.</p> + +<p>From the sleep of mere infancy the child is +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> awakened to the +consciousness of creatorship by the gift of tools with which to make +things. Tales open up for him the long vistas of history; and the +stage-coach with its slow rolling blaze of lights teaches him geography, +and the far-flung imaginative suggestiveness of the road; while the +annual cattle-fair actually gathers the ends of the earth about his +wondering eyes, and gives him his first impression of the variety of +human life.</p> + +<p>Childhood brings with it much that is sweet and gentle, flowing on like +the little Kuhbach; and yet suggests far thoughts of Time and Eternity, +concerning which we are evidently to hear more before the end. The +formal education he receives—that "wood and leather education"—calls +forth only protest. But the development of his spirit proceeds in spite +of it. So far as the passive side of character goes, he does +excellently. On the active side things go not so well. Already he begins +to chafe at the restraints of obedience, and the youthful spirit is +beating against its bars. The stupidities of an education which only +appeals to the one faculty of memory, and to that mainly by means of +birch-rods, increase the rebellion, and the sense of restraint is +brought to a climax when at last old Andreas dies. Then "the dark +bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale +kingdoms of Death, with all their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> innumerable silent nations and +generations, stood before him; the inexorable word <span class="smcap">never</span>! now +first showed its meaning."</p> + +<p>The youth is now ready to enter, as such a one inevitably must, upon the +long and losing battle of faith and doubt. He is at the theorising stage +as yet, not having learned to make anything, but only to discuss things. +And yet the time is not wasted if the mind have been taught to think. +For "truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can +have."</p> + +<p>The immediate consequence and employment of this unripe time of +half-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is much +reminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, and +tutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdröckh's desultory period. The +climax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, to +which the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed—well +for all concerned if it did not end in his feeding on the chickens +instead! It is an unwholesome time with the lad—a time of sullen +contempt alternating with loud rebellion, of mingled vanity and +self-indulgence, and of much sheer devilishness of temper.</p> + +<p>Upon this exaggerated and most disagreeable period, lit by "red streaks +of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness," there +comes +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> suddenly the master passion of romantic love. Had this adventure +proved successful, we should have simply had the old story, which ends +in "so they lived happily ever after." What the net result of all the +former strivings after truth and freedom would have been, we need not +inquire. For this is another story, equally old and to the end of time +ever newly repeated. There is much of Werther in it, and still more of +Jean Paul Richter. Its finest English counterpart is Longfellow's +<i>Hyperion</i>—the most beautiful piece of our literature, surely, that has +ever been forgotten—in which Richter's story lives again. But never has +the tale been more exquisitely told than in <i>Sartor Resartus</i>. For one +sweet hour of life the youth has been taken out of himself and pale +doubt flees far away. Life, that has been but a blasted heath, blooms +suddenly with unheard-of blossoms of hope and of delight. Then comes the +end. "Their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dewdrops, rushed +into one,—for the first time, and for the last! Thus was Teufelsdröckh +made immortal by a Kiss. And then? Why, then—thick curtains of Night +rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and +through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, +towards the Abyss."</p> + +<p>The sorrows of Teufelsdröckh are but too well +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> known. Flung back upon +his former dishevelment of mind from so great and calm a height, the +crash must necessarily be terrible. Yet he will not take up his life +where he left it to follow Blumine. Such an hour inevitably changes a +man, for better or for worse. There is at least a dignity about him now, +even while the "nameless Unrest" urges him forward through his darkened +world. The scenes of his childhood in the little Entepfuhl bring no +consolation. Nature, even in his wanderings among her mountains, is +equally futile, for the wanderer can never escape from his own shadow +among her solitudes. Yet is his nature not dissolved, but only +"compressed closer," as it were, and we watch the next stage of this +development with a sense that some mysteriously great and splendid +experience is on the eve of being born.</p> + +<p>Thus we come to those three central chapters—chapters so fundamental +and so true to human life, that it is safe to prophesy that they will be +familiar so long as books are read upon the earth—"The Everlasting No," +"Centre of Indifference" and "The Everlasting Yea."</p> + +<p>In "The Everlasting No" we watch the work of negation upon the soul of +man. His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and the +unbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened into +Unbelief; shade after shade goes +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> grimly over your soul, till you have +the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." "Is there no God, then; but at +best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the +outside of his Universe, and <i>seeing</i> it go? Has the word Duty no +meaning?"</p> + +<p>"Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, +shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and +receive no Answer but an Echo." Faith, indeed, lies dormant but alive +beneath the doubt. But in the meantime the man's own weakness paralyses +action; and, while this paralysis lasts, all faith appears to have +departed. He has ceased to believe in himself, and to believe in his +friends. "The very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as +believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, +of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable +Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind men limb +from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death!"</p> + +<p>He is saved from suicide simply by the after-shine of Christianity. +The religion of his fathers lingers, no longer as a creed, but as a +powerful set of associations and emotions. It is a small thing to cling +to amid the wrack of a man's universe; yet it holds until the appearance +of a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> new phase in which he is to find escape from the prison-house. He +has begun to realise that fear—a nameless fear of he knows not +what—has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, +pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous." Fear affects men in widely +different ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies" +obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleared +itself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. But +Teufelsdröckh is prouder and more violent of spirit than the sedate and +patrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. +"What <i>art</i> thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever +pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What +is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: +and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, +will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou not +suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, +trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it +come, then; I will meet it and defy it!"</p> + +<p>This is no permanent or stable resting-place, but it is the beginning of +much. It is the assertion of self in indignation and wild defiance, +instead of the former misery of a man merely +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> haunted by himself. This +is that "Baphometic Fire-baptism" or new-birth of spiritual awakening, +which is the beginning of true manhood. The Everlasting No had said: +"Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the +Devil's); to which my whole Me now made answer: I am not thine, but +Free, and forever hate thee!"</p> + +<p>The immediate result of this awakening is told in "Centre of +Indifference"—<i>i.e.</i>, indifference to oneself, one's own feelings, and +even to fate. It is the transition from subjective to objective +interests, from eating one's own heart out to a sense of the wide and +living world by which one is surrounded. It is the same process which, +just about this time, Robert Browning was describing in <i>Paracelsus</i> and +<i>Sordello</i>. Once more Teufelsdröckh travels, but this time how +differently! Instead of being absorbed by the haunting shadow of +himself, he sees the world full of vital interests—cities of men, +tilled fields, books, battlefields. The great questions of the +world—the true meanings alike of peace and war—claim his interest. The +great men, whether Goethe or Napoleon, do their work before his +astonished eyes. "Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, +look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and +pertinently enough note what is pass +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>ing there." He has +reached—strangely enough through self-assertion—the centre of +indifference to self, and of interest in other people and things. And +the supreme lesson of it all is the value of <i>efficiency</i>. Napoleon "was +a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the +cannon's throat, that great doctrine, <i>La carrière ouverte aux talens</i> +(the tools to him that can handle them)."</p> + +<p>This bracing doctrine carries us at once into The Everlasting Yea. It is +not enough that a man pass from the morbid and self-centered mood to an +interest in the outward world that surrounds him. That might transform +him simply into a curious but heartless dilettante, a mere tourist of +the spirit, whose sole desire is to see and to take notes. But that +could never satisfy Carlyle; for that is but self-indulgence in its more +refined form of the lust of the eyes. It was not for this that the +Everlasting No had set Teufelsdröckh wailing, nor for this that he had +risen up in wrath and bidden defiance to fear. From his temptation in +the wilderness the Son of Man must come forth, not to wander +open-mouthed about the plain, but to work his way "into the higher +sunlit slopes of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is +in Heaven only."</p> + +<p>In other words, a great compassion for his +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> fellow-men has come upon +him. "With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow-man: with an +infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou +not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou +bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, +so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my +Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears +from thy eyes!" The words remind us of the famous passage, occurring +early in the book, which describes the Professor's Watchtower. It was +suggested by the close-packed streets of Edinburgh's poorer quarter, as +seen from the slopes of the hills which stand close on her eastern side. +Probably no passage ever written has so vividly and suggestively massed +together the various and contradictory aspects of the human tragedy.</p> + +<p>One more question, however, has yet to be answered before we have solved +our problem. What about happiness? We all cry aloud for it, and make its +presence or absence the criterion for judging the worth of days. +Teufelsdröckh goes to the heart of the matter with his usual directness. +It is this search for happiness which is the explanation of all the +unwholesomeness that culminated in the Everlasting No. "Because the +<span class="smcap">thou</span> (sweet +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, +nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act +of Legislature was there that <i>thou</i> shouldst be Happy? A little while +ago thou hadst no right to <i>be</i> at all. What if thou wert born and +predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other +than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after +somewhat to <i>eat</i>; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not +given thee? Close thy <i>Byron</i>; open thy <i>Goethe</i>." In effect, happiness +is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the +amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be +hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: +fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a +luxury to die in hemp."</p> + +<p>Such teaching is neither sympathetic enough nor positive enough to be of +much use to poor mortals wrestling with their deepest problems. Yet in +the very negation of happiness he discovers a positive religion—the +religion of the Cross, the Worship of Sorrow. Expressed crudely, this +seems to endorse the ascetic fallacy of the value of self-denial for its +own sake. But from that it is saved by the divine element in sorrow +which Christ has brought—"Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the +<span class="smcap">Everlasting Yea</span>, wherein all contradiction +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> is solved: wherein +whoso walks and works, it is well with him."</p> + +<p>This still leaves us perilously near to morbidness. The Worship of +Sorrow might well be but a natural and not less morbid reaction from the +former morbidness, the worship of self and happiness. From that, +however, it is saved by the word "works," which is spoken with emphasis +in this connection. So we pass to the last phase of the Everlasting Yea, +in which we return to the thesis upon which we began, viz., that "Doubt +of any sort cannot be removed except by action." "Do the Duty which +<i>lies nearest thee</i>, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty +will already have become clearer.... Yes here, in this poor, miserable, +hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or +nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, +be free.... Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal +fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou +hast in thee; out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to +do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the +Night cometh, wherein no man can work."</p> + +<p>Thus the goal of human destiny is not any theory, however true; not any +happiness, however alluring. It is for practical purposes that the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span><br /> +universe is built, and he who would be "in tune with the universe" must +first and last be practical. In various forms this doctrine has +reappeared and shown itself potent. Ritschl based his system on +practical values in religion, and Professor William James has proclaimed +the same doctrine in a still wider application in his Pragmatism. The +essential element in both systems is that they lay the direct stress of +life, not upon abstract theory but upon experience and vital energy. +This transference from theorising and emotionalism to the prompt and +vigorous exercise of will upon the immediate circumstance, is Carlyle's +understanding of the word Conversion.</p> + +<p>When it comes to the particular question of what work the Professor is +to do, the answer is that he has within him the Word Omnipotent, waiting +for a man to speak it forth. And here in this volume upon Clothes, this +<i>Sartor Resartus</i>, is his deliberate response to the great demand. At +first he seems here to relapse from the high seriousness of the chapters +we have just been reading, and to come with too great suddenness to +earth again. Yet that is not the case; for, as we shall see, the rest of +the volume is the attempt to reconstruct the universe on the principles +he has discovered within his own experience. The story to which we have +been listening is Teufels +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>dröckh's way of discovering reality; now we +are to have the statement of it on the wider planes of social and other +philosophy. This we shall briefly review, but the gist of the book is in +what we have already found. To most readers the quotations must have +been old and well-remembered friends. Yet they will pardon the +reappearance of them here, for they have been amongst the most powerful +of all wingéd words spoken in England for centuries. The reason for the +popularity of the book is that these biographical chapters are the +record of normal and typical human experience. This, or something like +this, will repeat itself so long as human nature lasts; and men, grown +discouraged with the mystery and bewilderment of life, will find heart +from these chapters to start "once more on their adventure, brave and +new."</p> + +<p>This, then, is Teufelsdröckh's reconstruction of the world; and the +world of each one of us requires some such reconstruction. For life is +full of deceptive outward appearances, from which it is the task of +every man to come back in his own way to the realities within. The +shining example of such reconstruction is that of George Fox, who sewed +himself a suit of leather and went out to the woods with it—"Every +stitch of his needle pricking into the heart of slavery, and + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>world-worship, and the Mammon god." The leather suit is an allegory of +the whole. The appearances of men and things are but the fantastic +clothes with which they cover their nakedness. They take these clothes +of theirs to be themselves, and the first duty and only hope of a man is +to divest himself of all such coverings, and discover what manner of man +he really is.</p> + +<p>This process of divesting, however, may yield either of two results. A +man may take, for the reality of himself, either the low view of human +nature, in which man is but "a forked straddling animal with bandy +legs," or the high view, in which he is a spirit, and unutterable +Mystery of Mysteries. It is the latter view which Thomas Carlyle +champions, through this and many other volumes, against the +materialistic thought of his time.</p> + +<p>The chapter on Dandies is a most extraordinary attack on the keeping up +of appearances. The Dandy is he who not only keeps up appearances but +actually worships them. He is their advocate and special pleader. His +very office and function is to wear clothes. Here we have the illusion +stripped from much that we have taken for reality. Sectarianism is a +prominent example of it, the reading of fashionable novels is another. +In the former two are seen the robes of eternity flung over one very +vulgar form of self-worship, and in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> latter the robe of fashionable +society is flung over another. The reality of man's intercourse with +Eternity and with his fellow-men has died within these vestures, but the +eyes of the public are satisfied, and never guess the corpse within. +Sectarianism and Vanity Fair are but common forms of self-worship, in +which every one is keeping up appearances, and is so intent upon that +exercise that all thought of reality has vanished.</p> + +<p>A shallower philosopher would have been content with exposing these and +other shams; and consequently his philosophy would have led nowhere. +Carlyle is a greater thinker, and one who takes a wider view. He is no +enemy of clothes, although fools have put them to wrong uses and made +them the instruments of deception. His choice is not between worshipping +and abandoning the world and its appearances. He will frankly confess +the value of it and of its vesture, and so we have the chapter on +Adamitism, in defence of clothes, which acknowledges in great and +ingenious detail the many uses of the existing order of institutions. +But still, through all such acknowledgment, we are reminded constantly +of the main truth. All appearance is for the sake of reality, and all +tools for expressing the worker. When the appearance becomes a +substitute for the reality, and the tools absorb the attention that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span><br /> +should be devoted to the work for whose accomplishment they exist, then +we have relapsed into the fundamental human error. The object of the +book is to plunge back from appearance to reality, from clothes to him +who wears them. "Who am I? What is this <span class="smcap">me</span>?... some embodied, +visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind."</p> + +<p>This swift retreat upon reality occurs at intervals throughout the whole +book, and in connection with every conceivable department of human life +and interest. In many parts there is little attempt at sequence or +order. The author has made voluminous notes on men and things, and the +whole fantastic structure of <i>Sartor Resartus</i> is a device for +introducing these disjointedly. In the remainder of this lecture we +shall select and displace freely, in order to present the main teachings +of the book in manageable groups.</p> + +<p>1. <i>Language and Thought.</i>—Language is the natural garment of thoughts, +and while sometimes it performs its function of revealing them, it often +conceals them. Many people's whole intellectual life is spent in dealing +with words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all. Still more +commonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have come +to be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought. +Thus the <i>Name</i> is the first garment wrapped around the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> essential +<span class="smcap">me</span>; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, is +simply an attempt at right naming. The names by which we call things are +apt to become labelled pigeon-holes in which we bury them. Having +catalogued and indexed our facts, we lose sight of them thenceforward, +and think and speak in terms of the catalogue. If you are a Liberal, it +is possible that all you may know or care to know about Conservatism is +the name. Nay, having catalogued yourself a Liberal, you may seldom even +find it necessary to inquire what the significance of Liberalism really +is. If you happen to be a Conservative, the corresponding risks will +certainly not be less.</p> + +<p>The dangers of these word-garments, and the habit of losing all contact +with reality in our constant habit of living among mere words, naturally +suggest to Carlyle his favourite theme—a plea for silence. We all talk +too much, and the first lesson we have to learn on our way to reality is +to be oftener silent. This duty of silence, as has been wittily +remarked, Carlyle preaches in thirty-seven volumes of eloquent English +speech. "<span class="smcap">Silence</span> and <span class="smcap">secrecy</span>! Altars might still be +raised to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship. +Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves +together; that at +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, +into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.... Nay, +in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but <i>hold thy tongue for +one day</i>: on the morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties." +Andreas, in his old camp-sentinel days, once challenged the emperor +himself with the demand for the password. "Schweig, Hund!" replied +Frederich; and Andreas, telling the tale in after years would add, +"There is what I call a King."</p> + +<p>Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require +something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their +silences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently +expounded. Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousand +thoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol. In itself it +may be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all—a clouted +shoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing. +Yet such a thing may so work upon men's silences as to fill them with +the glimmer of a divine idea.</p> + +<p>Other symbols there are which <i>have</i> intrinsic value—works of art, +lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternity +working through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passing +shows. Religious symbols are the highest +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> of all, and highest among +these stands Jesus of Nazareth. "Higher has the human Thought not yet +reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite +perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be +anew enquired into, and anew made manifest." In other words, Jesus +stands for all that is permanently noble and permanently real in human +life.</p> + +<p>Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time at +length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but +meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can +never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding +generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them +from the Babel of meaningless words.</p> + +<p>2. <i>Body and Spirit.</i>—Souls are "rendered visible in bodies that took +shape and will lose it, melting into air." Thus bodies, and not spirits, +are the true apparitions, the souls being the realities which they both +reveal and hide. In fact, body is literally a garment of flesh—a +garment which the soul has for a time put on, but which it will lay +aside again. One of the greatest of all the idolatries of appearance is +our constant habit of judging one another by the attractiveness of the +bodily vesture. Many of the judgments which we pass upon our fellows +would be reversed if we trained ourselves to look +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> through the vestures +of flesh to the men themselves—the souls that are hidden within.</p> + +<p>The natural expansion of this is in the general doctrine of matter and +spirit. Purely material science—science which has lost the faculty of +wonder and of spiritual perception—is no true science at all. It is but +a pair of spectacles without an eye. For all material things are but +emblems of spiritual things—shadows or images of things in the +heavens—and apart from these they have no reality at all.</p> + +<p>3. <i>Society and Social Problems.</i>—It follows naturally that a change +must come upon our ways of regarding the relations of man to man. If +every man is indeed a temple of the divine, and therefore to be revered, +then much of our accepted estimates and standards of social judgment +will have to be abandoned. Society, as it exists, is founded on class +distinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness and +wealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me is +the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning +virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable +too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude +intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living man like." How far away +we are from all this with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> our mammon-worship and our fantastic social +unrealities, every student of our times must know, or at least must have +often heard. He would not have heard it so often, however, had not +Thomas Carlyle cried it out with that harsh voice of his, in this and +many others of his books. It was his gunpowder, more than any other +explosive of the nineteenth century, that broke up the immense +complacency into which half England always tends to relapse.</p> + +<p>He is not hopeless of the future of society. Society is the true +Phoenix, ever repeating the miracle of its resurrection from the ashes +of the former fire. There are indestructible elements in the race of +man—"organic filaments" he calls them—which bind society together, and +which ensure a future for the race after any past, however lamentable. +Those "organic filaments" are Carlyle's idea of Social Reality—the real +things which survive all revolution. There are four such realities which +ensure the future for society even when it seems extinct.</p> + +<p>First, there is the fact of man's brotherhood to man—a fact quite +independent of man's willingness to acknowledge that brotherhood. +Second, there is the common bond of tradition, and all our debt to the +past, which is a fact equally independent of our willingness to +acknowledge it. Third, there +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> is the natural and inevitable fact of +man's necessity for reverencing some one above him. Obedience and +reverence are forthcoming, whenever man is in the presence of what he +<i>ought</i> to reverence, and so hero-worship is secure.</p> + +<p>These three bonds of social reality are inseparable from one another. +The first, the brotherhood of man, has often been used as the watchword +of a false independence. It is only possible on the condition of +reverence and obedience for that which is higher than oneself, either in +the past or the present. "Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for +Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your +Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them +were even your only possible freedom." These three, then, are the social +realities, and all other social distinctions and conventionalities are +but clothes, to be replaced or thrown away at need.</p> + +<p>But there is a fourth bond of social reality—the greatest and most +powerful of all. That reality is Religion. Here, too, we must +distinguish clothes from that which they cover—forms of religion from +religion itself. Church-clothes, indeed, are as necessary as any other +clothes, and they will harm no one who remembers that they are but +clothes, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>and distinguishes between faith and form. The old forms are +already being discarded, yet Religion is so vital that it will always +find new forms for itself, suited to the new age. For religion, in one +form or in another, is absolutely essential to society; and, being a +grand reality, will continue to keep society from collapse.</p> + +<p>4. From this we pass naturally to the great and final doctrine in which +the philosophy of clothes is expounded. That doctrine, condensed into a +single sentence, is that "the whole Universe is the Garment of God." +This brings us back to the song of the <i>Erdgeist</i> in Goethe's <i>Faust</i>:—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"In Being's floods, in Action's storm,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I walk and work, above, beneath,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Work and weave in endless motion!</span><br /> +<span class="i5">Birth and Death,</span><br /> +<span class="i5">An infinite ocean;</span><br /> +<span class="i5">A seizing and giving</span><br /> +<span class="i5">The fire of Living:</span><br /> +<span class="i1">'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This is, of course, no novelty invented by Goethe. We find it in Marius +the Epicurean, and he found it in ancient wells of Greek philosophy. +Carlyle's use of it has often been taken for Pantheism. In so mystic a +region it is impossible to expect precise theological definition, and +yet it is right to remember that Carlyle does not identify the garment +with its Wearer. The whole argument of the book is to distinguish +appearance from reality +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> in every instance, and this is no exception. +"What is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the +'living garment of God'? O Heavens, is it in very deed He, then, that +ever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives and +loves in me?... The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house +with spectres: but godlike and my Father's." "This fair Universe, were +it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City +of God; through every star, through every grass-blade, and most +through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But +Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, +hides Him from the foolish."</p> + +<p>Such is some very broken sketch of this great book. It will at least +serve to recall to the memory of some readers thoughts and words which +long ago stirred their blood in youth. No volume could so fitly be +chosen as a background against which to view the modern surge of the +age-long battle. But the charm of <i>Sartor Resartus</i> is, after all, +personal. We go back to the life-story of Teufelsdröckh, out of which +such varied and such lofty teachings sprang, and we read it over and +over again because we find in it so much that is our own story too. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_VIII" id="LECTURE_VIII"></a>LECTURE VIII</h2><h2> +PAGAN REACTIONS</h2> + + +<p>In the last lecture we began the study of the modern aspects of our +subject with Carlyle's <i>Sartor Resartus</i>. Now, in a rapid sketch, we +shall look at some of the writings which followed that great book; and, +with it as background, we shall see them in stronger relief. It is +impossible to over-estimate the importance of the influence which was +wielded by Carlyle, and especially by his <i>Sartor Resartus</i>. His was a +gigantic power, both in literature and in morals. At first, as we have +already noted, he met with neglect and ridicule in abundance, but +afterwards these passed into sheer wonder, and then into a wide and +devoted worship. Everybody felt his power, and all earnest thinkers were +seized in the strong grip of reality with which he laid hold upon his +time.</p> + +<p>The religious thought and faith both of England and of Scotland felt +him, but his mark was deepest upon Scotland, because of two interesting +facts. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> First of all, Carlyle represented that old Calvinism which had +always fitted so exactly the national character and spirit; and second, +there were in Scotland many people who, while retaining the Calvinistic +spirit, had lost touch with the old definite creed. Nothing could be +more characteristic of Carlyle than this Calvinism of the spirit which +had passed beyond the letter of the old faith. He stands like an old +Covenanter in the mist; and yet a Covenanter grasping his father's iron +sword. It is because of these two facts <i>Sartor Resartus</i> has taken so +prominent a place in our literature. It stands for a kind of conscience +behind the manifold modern life of our day. Beneath the shrieks and the +laughter of the time we hear in it the boom of great breakers. Never +again can we forget, amidst the gaieties of any island paradise, the +solemn ocean that surrounds it. Carlyle's teaching sounds and recurs +again and again like the Pilgrims' March in <i>Tannhäuser</i> breaking +through the overture, and rivalling until it vanquishes the music of the +Venusberg.</p> + +<p>Yet it was quite inevitable that there should be strong reaction from +any such work as this. To the warm blood and the poignant sense of the +beauty of the world it brought a sense of chill, a forbidding sombreness +and austerity. Carlyle's +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> conception of Christianity was that of the +worship of sorrow; and, while the essence of his gospel was labour, yet +to many minds self-denial seemed to be no longer presented, as in the +teaching of Jesus, as a means towards the attainment of further +spiritual ends. It had become an end in itself, and one that few would +desire or feel to be justified. In the reaction it was felt that +self-development had claims upon the human spirit as well as +self-denial, and indeed that the happy instincts of life had no right to +be so winsome unless they were meant to be obeyed. The beauty of the +world could not be regarded as a mere trap for the tempting of people, +if one were to retain any worthy conception of the Powers that govern +the world. From this point of view the Carlylians appeared to enter into +life maimed. That, indeed, we all must do, as Christ told us; but they +seemed to do it like the beggars of Colombo, with a deliberate and +somewhat indecent exhibition of their wounds.</p> + +<p>Carlyle found many men around him pagan, worshipping the earth without +any spiritual light in them. He feared that many others were about to go +in the same direction, so he cried aloud that the earth was too small, +and that they must find a larger object of worship. For the earth he +substituted the universe, and led men's eyes out among +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> the immensities +and eternities. Professor James tells a story of Margaret Fuller, the +American transcendentalist, having said with folded hands, "I accept the +universe," and how Carlyle, hearing this, had answered, "Gad, she'd +better!" It was this insistence upon the universe, as distinguished from +the earth, which was the note of <i>Sartor Resartus</i>.</p> + +<p>The reactionaries took Carlyle at his word. They said, "Yes, we shall +worship the universe"; but they went on to add that Carlyle's universe +is not universal. It is at once too vague and too austere. There are +other elements in life besides those to which he called +attention—elements very definite and not at all austere—and they too +have a place in the universe and a claim upon our acceptance. Many of +these are in every way more desirable to the type of mind that rebelled +than the aspects of the universe on which Carlyle had insisted, and so +they went out freely among these neglected elements, set them over +against his kind of idealism, and became themselves idealists of other +sorts.</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, found his idealism in the purely +mental region. Rossetti was the idealist of the heart, with its whole +world of emotions, and that subtle and far-reaching interplay between +soul and body for which Carlyle had +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> always made too little allowance. +Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw, proclaiming themselves idealists of +the social order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrines +at which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples, +but they are one in this, that each has protested against that +one-sidedness for which Carlyle stood. Yet each is a one-sided protest, +and falls again into the snare of setting the affections upon things +which are not eternal, and so wedding man to the green earth again.</p> + +<p>Thus we find paganism—in some quarters paganism quite openly +confessed—occupying a prominent place in our literature to-day. Before +we examine some of its aspects in detail a word or two of preliminary +warning may be permissible. It is a mistake to take the extremer forms +of this reaction too seriously, although at the present time this is +very frequently done. One must remember that such a spirit as this is to +be found in every age, and that it always creates an ephemeral +literature which imagines itself to be a lasting one. It is nothing new. +It is as old and as perennial as the complex play of the human mind and +human society.</p> + +<p>Another reason for not taking this phase too seriously is that it was +quite inevitable that some such reaction should follow upon the huge +solem +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>nities of Carlyle. Just as in literature, after the classic +formality of Johnson and his contemporaries, there must come the +reaction of the Romantic School, which includes Sir Walter Scott, Byron, +and Burns; so here there must be an inevitable reaction from austerity +to a daring freedom which will take many various forms. From Carlyle's +solemnising liturgy we were bound to pass to the slang and colloquialism +of the man in the street and the woman in the modern novel. Body and +spirit are always in unstable equilibrium, and an excess of either at +once swings the fashion back to the other extreme. Carlyle had his day +largely in consequence of what one may call the eighteenth-century +glut—the Georgian society and its economics, and the Byronic element in +literature. The later swing back was as inevitable as Carlyle had been. +Perhaps it was most clearly noticed after the deaths of Browning and +Tennyson, in the late eighties and the early nineties. But both before +and since that time it has been very manifest in England.</p> + +<p>But beyond all these things there is the general fact that before any +literature becomes pagan the land must first have been paganised. Of +course there is always here again a reaction of mutual cause and effect +between literature and national spirit. Carlyle himself, in his doctrine +of heroes, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> was continually telling us that it is the personality which +produces the <i>zeitgeist</i>, and not <i>vice versa</i>. On the other hand it is +equally certain that no personality is independent of his age and the +backing he finds in it, or the response which he may enlist for his +revolt from it. Both of these are true statements of the case; as to +which is ultimate, that is the old and rather academic question of +whether the oak or the acorn comes first. We repeat that it is +impossible, in this double play of cause and effect, to say which is the +ultimate cause and which the effect. The controversy which was waged in +the nineteenth century between the schools of Buckle and Carlyle is +likely to go on indefinitely through the future. But what concerns us at +present is this, that all paganism which finds expression in a +literature has existed in the age before it found that expression. The +literature is indeed to some extent the creator of the age, but to a far +greater extent it is the expression of the age, whose creation is due to +a vast multiplicity of causes.</p> + +<p>Among these causes one of the foremost was political advance and +freedom—the political doctrines, and the beginnings of Socialistic +thought, which had appeared about the time when <i>Sartor Resartus</i> was +written. The Reform Bill of 1832 tended to concentrate men's attention +upon questions of material +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> welfare. Commercial and industrial +prosperity followed, keeping the nation busy with the earth. In very +striking language Lord Morley describes this fact, in language specially +striking as coming from so eminently progressive a man.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> "Far the most +penetrating of all the influences that are impairing the moral and +intellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to be mentioned. The +first of them is the immense increase of material prosperity, and the +second is the immense decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. The +evil wrought by the one fills up the measure of the evil wrought by the +other. We have been, in spite of momentary declensions, on a flood-tide +of high profits and a roaring trade, and there is nothing like a roaring +trade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, +especially if they be newly acquired, in slackening moral vigour, is a +proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened by any tradition of public +duty such as lingers among the English nobles, nor as yet by any common +custom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow in +the United States. Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxury +and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed +us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and +unstrings +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and +the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for +pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element +in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over +all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, +or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered +among us the real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding +degree has been discouraged ... the sense of intellectual +responsibility.... Practically, and as a matter of history, a society is +seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals and +spirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth and +nursing the political spirit."</p> + +<p>The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand, +industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand the +beginnings of a Socialism equally pagan. The motto of both schools was +that a man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things that he +possesseth, that you should seek first all these things, and that the +Kingdom of God and His righteousness may be added unto you, if you have +any room for them. Make yourself secure of all these other things; seek +comfort whether you be rich or poor; make this world as agreeable to +yourself as your +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> means will allow, and seek to increase your means of +making it still more agreeable. After you have done all that, anything +that is left over will do for your idealism. Your God can be seen to +after you have abundantly provided for the needs of your body. Nothing +could be more characteristic paganism than this, which makes material +comfort the real end of life, and all spiritual things a residual +element. It is the story which Isaiah tells, with such sublimity of +sarcasm, of the huntsman and craftsman who warms his hands and cries to +himself, "Aha! I am warm. I have seen the fire." He bakes bread and +roasts flesh, and, with the residue of the same log which he has used +for kindling his fire, he maketh a god. So this modern god of England, +when England had become materialised, was just that ancient fire-worship +and comfort-worship in its nineteenth-century phase. In the first demand +of life there is no thought of God or of idealism of any kind. These, if +they appear at all, have to be made out of what is left. "Of the residue +he maketh a god."</p> + +<p>It is by insidious degrees that materialism invades a nation's life. At +first it attacks the externals, appearing mainly in the region of work, +wealth, and comfort. But, unless some check is put upon its progress, it +steadily works its way +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> to the central depths, attacking love and +sorrow, and changing them to sensuality and cynicism. Then the nation's +day is over, and its men and women are lost souls. Many instances might +be quoted in which this progress has actually been made in the +literature of England. At present we are only pointing to the undoubted +fact that the forces of materialism have been at work among us. If proof +of this were needed, nothing could afford it more clearly than our loss +of peace and dignity in modern society. Many costly luxuries have become +necessities, and they have increased the pace of life to a rush and fury +which makes business a turmoil and social life a fever. A symbolic +embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the motor car and the aeroplane +as they are often used. These indeed need not be ministers of paganism. +The glory of swift motion and the mounting up on wings as eagles reach +very near to the spiritual, if not indeed across its borderland, as +exhilarating and splendid stimuli to the human spirit. But, on the other +hand, they may be merely instruments for gratifying that insane human +restlessness which is but the craving for new sensations. Along the +whole line of our commercial and industrial prosperity there runs one +great division. There are some who, in the midst of all change, have +preserved their old +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> spiritual loyalties, and there are others who have +substituted novelty for loyalty. These are the idealists and the pagans +of the twentieth century.</p> + +<p>Another potent factor in the making of the new times was the scientific +advance which has made so remarkable a difference to the whole outlook +of man upon the earth. Darwin's great discovery is perhaps the most +epoch-making fact in science that has yet appeared upon the earth. The +first apparent trend of evolution seemed to be an entirely materialistic +reaction. This was due to the fact that believers in the spiritual had +identified with their spirituality a great deal that was unnecessary and +merely casual. If the balloon on which people mount up above the earth +is any such theory as that of the six days' creation, it is easy to see +how when that balloon is pricked the spiritual flight of the time +appears to have ended on the ground.</p> + +<p>Of course all that has long passed by. Of late years Haeckel has been +crying out that all his old friends have deserted him and have gone over +to the spiritual side—a cry which reminds one of the familiar juryman +who finds his fellows the eleven most obstinate men he has ever known. +The conception of evolution has long since been taken over by the +idealists, and has become perhaps the most splendidly Christian and +idealistic idea of the new age. When Darwin published +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> his <i>Origin of +Species</i>, Hegel cried out in Germany, "Darwin has destroyed design." +To-day Darwin and Hegel stand together as the prophets of the +unconquerable conviction of the reality of spirit. From the days of +Huxley and Haeckel we have passed over to the days of Bergson and Sir +Oliver Lodge.</p> + +<p>The effect of all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenon +to watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which has +invaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has become +an atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one were +to say to any company of British people, one by one, that they were +pagans, doubtless many of them would resent it, and yet more or less it +would be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for every +one of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation. +Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story of +Aaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Moses +rebuked him, said naïvely, "There came out this calf." That exactly +describes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic example +of spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it. +Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It was +the Melchizedek among cattle +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>—without father, without mother, without +descent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning of +days or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and there +comes out this calf—it is a way such calves have.</p> + +<p>Thus it is with our modern paganism. We all of us want to be idealists, +and we sometimes try, but there are hidden causes which draw us back +again to the earth. These causes lie in the opportunities that occur one +by one: in politics, in industrial and commercial matters, in scientific +theories, or by mere reaction. The earth is more habitable than once it +was, and we all desire it. It masters us, and so the golden calf +appears.</p> + +<p>We shall now glance very rapidly at a few out of the many literary +forces of our day in which we may see the various reactions from +Carlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenth +century in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, but +it lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horribly +shocked when George Eliot published <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i> and <i>Adam +Bede</i> in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and its +respectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. It +was afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship of +respectability comes to be a very dangerous kind +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> of worship, and its +idol is perhaps the most formidable of all the gods.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile that glorious band of idealists, whose chief representatives +were Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin, to be joined later by George +Meredith, were fighting paganism in the spirit of Arthur's knights, keen +to drive the heathen from the land. Tennyson, the most popular of them +all, probably achieved more than any other in this conflict. Ruskin was +too contradictory and bewildering, and so failed of much of his effect. +Browning and Meredith at first were reckoned unintelligible, and had to +wait their day for a later understanding. Still, all these, and many +others of lesser power than theirs, were knights of the ideal, warring +against the domination of dead and unthinking respectability.</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold came upon the scene, with his great protest against the +preponderance of single elements in life, and his plea for wholeness. In +this demand for whole and not one-sided views of the world, he is more +nearly akin to Goethe than perhaps any other writer of our time. His +great protest was against the worship of machinery, which he believed to +be taking the place of its own productions in England. He conceived of +the English people as being under a general delusion which led them to +mistake means for ends. He spoke of them as "Barbarians, Philistines, +and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> Populace," according to the rank in life they held; and accused +them of living for such ends as field sports, the disestablishment of +the Church of England, and the drinking of beer. He pointed out that, so +far as real culture is concerned, these can at best be but means towards +other ends, and can never be in themselves sufficient to satisfy the +human soul. He protested against Carlyle, although in the main thesis +the two are entirely at one. "I never liked Carlyle," he said; "he +always seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle." He took Carlyle +for the representative of what he called "Hebraism," and he desired to +balance the undue preponderance of that by insisting upon the necessity +of the Hellenistic element in culture. Both of these are methods of +idealism, but Arnold protested that the human spirit is greater than any +of the forces that bear it onwards; and that after you have said all +that Carlyle has to say, there still remains on the other side the +intellect, with rights of its own. He did not exclude conscience, for he +held that conduct made up three-fourths of life. He was the idealist of +a whole culture as against all one-sidedness; but curiously, by flinging +himself upon the opposite side from Carlyle, he became identified in the +popular mind with what it imagined to be Hellenic paganism. This was +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span><br /> +partly due to his personal idiosyncrasies, his fastidiousness of taste, +and the somewhat cold style of the <i>exquisite</i> in expression. These +deceived many of his readers, and kept them from seeing how great and +prophetic a message it was that came to England beneath Arnold's +mannerisms.</p> + +<p>Dante Gabriel Rossetti appeared, and many more in his train. He, more +perfectly than any other, expressed the marriage of sense and soul in +modern English poetry. He was the idealist of emotion, who, in the +far-off dim borderlands between sense and spirit, still preserved the +spiritual search, nor ever allowed himself to be completely drugged with +the vapours of the region. There were others, however, who tended +towards decadence. Some of Rossetti's readers, whose sole interest lay +in the lower world, claimed him as well as the rest for their guides, +and set a fashion which is not yet obsolete. There is no lack of +solemnity among these. The scent of sandalwood and of incense is upon +their work, and you feel as you read them that you are worshipping in +some sort of a temple with strange and solemnising rites. Indeed they +insist upon this, and assiduously cultivate a kind of lethargic and +quasi-religious manner which is supposed to be very impressive. But +their temple is a pagan +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> temple, and their worship, however much they +may borrow for it the language of a more spiritual cult, is of the +earth, earthy.</p> + +<p>Mr. Thomas Hardy was the inevitable sequel to George Eliot. Everybody +knows how beautiful and how full of charm his lighter writings can be; +and in his more tragic work there is much that is true, terrifically +expressed. Yet he has got upon the wrong side of the world, and can +never see beyond the horror of its tragedy. Consequently in him we have +another form of paganism, not this time that which the seductive earth +with its charms is suggesting, but the hopeless paganism which sees the +earth only in its bitterness. In <i>The Return of the Native</i> he says: +"What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their Aeschylus +imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned revelling in the +general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects +of natural laws, and see the quandary man is in by their operation." It +is no wonder that he who expressed the spirit of the modern age in these +words should have closed his well-known novel with the bitter saying +that the upper powers had finished their sport with <i>Tess</i>. "To have +lost the God-like conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have +acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of +temper +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a +mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise." Here is obviously +a man who would love the highest if he saw it, who would fain welcome +and proclaim the ideals if he could only find them on the earth; but who +has found instead the bitterness of darkness, the sarcasm and the +sensationalism of an age that the gods have left. He is too honest to +shout <i>pour encourager les autres</i> when his own heart has no hope in it; +and his greater books express the wail and despair of our modern +paganism.</p> + +<p>Breaking away from him and all such pessimistic voices came the glad +soul of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose old-fashioned revelling in the +situation is the exact counter-blast to Hardy's modernism, and is one of +those perennial human things which are ever both new and old. It is not +that Stevenson has not seen the other side of life. He has seen it and +he has suffered from it deeply, both in himself and in others; yet still +indomitably he "clings to his paddle." "I believe," he says, "in an +ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still +believe it."</p> + +<p>Then there came the extraordinary spirit of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. At +first sight some things that he has written appear pagan enough, and +have been regarded as such. The God of Christians +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> seems to inhabit and +preside over an amazing Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeed +throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a +most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, +during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, +they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the +pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, +was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds +us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic +pagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He is +everything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, telling +of days far in the future, can make them as living and real as the hours +of to-day. It was the late Professor James who said of him, "Kipling is +elemental; he is down among the roots of all things. He is universal +like the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be able +to get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under a +pyramid." In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be most +interesting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether his +permanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wild +Titanic paganism, or of that ancient +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> Calvinistic God whom Macandrew +worships in the temple of his engine-room.</p> + +<p>We now come to a later phase, for which we may take as representative +writers the names of Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Science, for +the meantime at least, has disentangled herself from her former +materialism, and a nobly ideal and spiritual view of science has come +again. It may even be hoped that the pagan view will never be able again +to assert itself with the same impressiveness as in the past. But social +conditions are to-day in the throes of their strife, and from that +quarter of the stage there appear such writers as those we are now to +consider. They both present themselves as idealists. Mr. Wells has +published a long volume about his religion, and Mr. Shaw prefaces his +plays with essays as long or even longer than the plays themselves, +dealing with all manner of the most serious subjects. The surface +flippancy both of prefaces and plays has repelled some readers in spite +of all their cleverness, and tended towards an unjust judgment that he +is upsetting the universe with his tongue in his cheek all the time. +Later one comes to realise that this is not the case, that Mr. Shaw does +really take himself and his message seriously, and from first to last +conceives himself as the apostle of a tremendous creed. Among many other +things which they +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> have in common, these writers have manifested the +tendency to regard all who ever went before them as, in a certain sense, +thieves and robbers; at least they give one the impression that the +present has little need for long lingering over the past. Mr. Wells, for +instance, cannot find words strong enough to describe the emancipation +of the modern young man from Mr. Kipling with his old-fashioned +injunction, "Keep ye the law." There are certain laws which Mr. Wells +proclaims on the housetops that he sees no necessity for keeping, and so +Mr. Kipling is buried under piles of opprobrium—"the tumult and the +bullying, the hysteria and the impatience, the incoherence and the +inconsistency," and so on. As for Mr. Bernard Shaw, we all know his own +view of the relation in which he stands to William Shakespeare.</p> + +<p>Mr. Wells has written many interesting books, and much could be said of +him from the point of view of science, or of style, or of social theory. +That, however, is not our present concern, either with him or with Mr. +Shaw. It is as idealist or pagan influences that we are discussing them +and the others. Mr. Wells boasts a new morality in his books, and Mr. +Shaw in his plays. One feels the same startling sense of a <i>volte face</i> +in morality as a young recruit is said to do when +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> he finds all the +precepts of his childhood reversed by the ethics of his first +battlefield. Each in his own way falls back upon crude and primitive +instincts and justifies them.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<p>Mr. Wells takes the change with zest, and seems to treat the adoption of +a new morality in the same light-hearted spirit as he might consider the +buying of a new hat. From the first he has a terrifying way of dealing +familiarly with vast things. Somehow he reminds one of those jugglers +who, for a time, toss heavy balls about, and then suddenly astonish the +audience by introducing a handkerchief, which flies lightly among its +ponderous companions. So Mr. Wells began to juggle with worlds. He has +latterly introduced that delicate thing, the human soul and conscience, +into the play, and you see it precariously fluttering among the +immensities of leaping planets. He persuades himself that the common +morality has not gripped people, and that they really don't believe in +it at all. He aims at a way of thinking which will be so great as to be +free from all commonplace and convention. Honesty is to be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> practically +the only virtue in the new world. If you say what you mean, you will +earn the right to do anything else that you please. Mr. Wells in this is +the counterpart of those plain men in private life so well known to us +all, who perpetually remind us that they are people who call a spade a +spade. Such men are apt to interpret this dictum as a kind of charter +which enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that may +occur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us fail +to find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may be +impressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in it +which masquerades as immensity.</p> + +<p>This smallness is due first of all to sheer ignorance. When a man tells +us that he prefers Oliver Goldsmith to Jesus Christ, he merely shows +that upon the subject he is discussing he is not educated, and does not +know what he is talking about. A second source of pettiness is to be +found in the mistake of imagining that mere smartness of diction and +agility of mind are signs of intellectual keenness. The mistake is as +obvious as it is unfortunate. Smartness can be learned with perhaps the +least expenditure of intellect that is demanded by any literary exercise +of the present day. It is a temptation which a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> certain kind of clever +man always has to face, and it only assumes a serious aspect when it +leads the unthinking to mistake it for a new and formidable element of +opposition to things which he has counted sacred.</p> + +<p>The whole method is not so very subtle after all. Pick out a vice or a +deformity. Do not trouble to acquaint yourself too intimately with the +history of morals in the past, but boldly canonise your vice or your +deformity with ritual of epigram and paradox. Proclaim loudly and +eloquently that this is your faith, and give it a pathetic aspect by +dwelling tenderly upon any trouble which it may be likely to cost those +who venture to adopt it. It is not perhaps a very admirable way to deal +with such subjects. The whole world of tradition and the whole +constitution of human nature are against you. Men have wrestled with +these things for thousands of years, and they have come to certain +conclusions which the experience of all time has enforced upon them. By +a dash of bold imagination you may discount all that laborious past, and +leave an irrevocable stain upon the purity of the mind of a generation. +Doubtless you will have a following—such teachers have ever had those +who followed them—and yet time is always on the side of great +traditions. If enlightened thought has in any respect to change them, it +changes them reverently, and knowing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> what their worth has been. Sooner +or later all easy ignoring of them is condemned as sheer impertinence. +There is singularly little reason for being impressed by this hasty, +romantic, and loud-sounding crusade against Christian morality and its +Ideal.</p> + +<p>In Mr. George Bernard Shaw we have a very different man. Nobody denies +Mr. Shaw's cleverness, least of all Mr. Shaw himself. He is depressingly +clever. He exhibits the spectacle of a man trying to address his +audience while standing on his head—and succeeding.</p> + +<p>He has been singularly fortunate in his biographer, Mr. Chesterton, and +one of the things that make this biography such pleasing reading is the +personal element that runs through it all. The introduction is +characteristic and delightful: "Most people either say that they agree +with Bernard Shaw, or that they do not understand him. I am the only +person who understands him, and I do not agree with him." It is not +unnatural that he should take his friend a little more seriously than +most of us will be prepared to do. It really is a big thing to stand on +the shoulders of William Shakespeare, and we shall need time to consider +it before we subscribe to the statue.</p> + +<p>For there is here an absolutely colossal egotism. There are certain +newspapers which usually begin +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> with a note of the hours of sunrise and +sunset. During the recent coal strike, some of these newspapers inserted +first of all a notice that they would not be sent out so early as usual, +and then cheered our desponding hearts by assuring us that the sun rises +at 5.37 notwithstanding—as if by permission of the newspaper. Mr. Shaw +somehow gives us a similar impression. Most things in the universe seem +to go on by his permission, and some of them he is not going to allow to +go on much longer. He will tilt without the slightest vestige of +humility against any existing institution, and the tourney is certainly +one of the most entertaining and most extraordinary of our time.</p> + +<p>No one can help admiring Mr. Shaw. The dogged persistence which has +carried him, unflinching, through adversity into his present fame, +without a single compromise or hesitation, is, apart altogether from the +question of the truth of his opinions, an admirable quality in a man. We +cannot but admire his immense forcefulness and agility, the fertility of +his mind, and the swiftness of its play. But we utterly refuse to fall +down and worship him on account of these. Indeed the kind of awe with +which he is regarded in some quarters seems to be due rather to the +eccentricities of his expression than to the greatness of his message or +the brilliance of his achievements. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is no question of his earnestness. The Puritan is deep in Mr. +Shaw, in his very blood. He has indeed given to the term Puritan a +number of unexpected meanings, and yet no one can justly question his +right to it. His <i>Plays for Puritans</i> are not exceptional in this +matter, for all his work is done in the same spirit. His favourite +author is John Bunyan, about whom he tells us that he claims him as the +precursor of Nietzsche, and that in his estimation John Bunyan's life +was one long tilt against morality and respectability. The claim is +sufficiently grotesque, yet there is a sense in which he has a right to +John Bunyan, and is in the same line as Thomas Carlyle. He is trying +sincerely to speak the truth and get it spoken. He appears as another of +the destroyers of shams, the breakers of idols. He may indeed be claimed +as a pagan, and his influence will certainly preponderate in that +direction; and yet there is a strain of high idealism which runs +perplexingly through it all.</p> + +<p>The explanation seems to be, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, that the man is +incomplete. There are certain elementary things which, if he had ever +seen them as other people do, would have made many of his positions +impossible. "Shaw is wrong," says Mr. Chesterton, "about nearly all the +things one learns early in life while one is still simple." Among those +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span><br /> +things which he has never seen are the loyalties involved in love, +country, and religion. The most familiar proof of this in regard to +religion is his extraordinary tirade against the Cross of Calvary. It is +one of the most amazing passages in print, so far as either taste or +judgment is concerned. It is significant that in this very passage he +actually refers to the "stable at Bethany," and the slip seems to +indicate from what a distance he is discussing Christianity. It is +possible for any of us to measure himself against the Cross and Him who +hung upon it, only when we have travelled very far away from them. When +we are sufficiently near, we know ourselves to be infinitesimal in +comparison. Nor in regard to home, and all that sanctifies and defends +it, does Mr. Shaw seem ever to have understood the real morality that is +in the heart of the average man. The nauseating thing which he quotes as +morality is a mere caricature of that vital sense of honour and +imperative conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still alive +among us. "My dear," he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, your +conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody +names." Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of that +instinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of its +expressions, has yet proved its moral and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> practical worth during many a +century of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this, +because those who discard patriotism have only to state their case +clearly in order to discredit it.</p> + +<p>We do not fear greatly the permanent influence of these fundamental +errors. The great heart of the civilised world still beats true, and is +healthy enough to disown so maimed an account of human nature. Yet there +is danger in any such element in literature as this. Mr. Shaw's +biographer has virtually told us that in these matters he is but a child +in whom "Irish innocence is peculiar and fundamental." The pleadings of +the nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly very +touching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes him +for, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views of +libertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuse +any such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism and +his childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because more +piquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the ten +commandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is always +considerable. If a child is playing in a powder magazine, the more +childish and innocent he is the more dangerous he will prove; and the +explosion, remember, will be just +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> as violent if lit by a child's hand +as if it had been lit by an anarchist's. We have in England borne long +enough with people trifling with the best intentions among explosives, +moral and social, and we must consider our own safety and that of +society when we are judging them.</p> + +<p>As to the relation in which Mr. Shaw stands to paganism, his relations +to anything are so "extensive and peculiar" that they are always +difficult to define. But the later phase of his work, which has become +famous in connection with the word "Superman," is due in large part to +Nietzsche, whose strange influence has reversed the Christian ideals for +many disciples on both sides of the North Sea. So this idealist, who, in +<i>Major Barbara</i>, protests so vigorously against paganism, has become one +of its chief advocates and expositors. One of his characters somewhere +says, "I wish I could get a country to live in where the facts were not +brutal and the dreams were not unreal." It may be admitted that there +are many brutal facts and perhaps more unreal dreams; but, for our part, +that which keeps us from becoming pagans is that we have found facts +that are not brutal and dreams which are the realest things in life. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_IX" id="LECTURE_IX"></a>LECTURE IX</h2><h2> +MR. G.K. CHESTERTON'S POINT OF VIEW</h2> + + +<p>There is on record the case of a man who, after some fourteen years of +robust health, spent a week in bed. His illness was apparently due to a +violent cold, but he confessed, on medical cross-examination, that the +real and underlying cause was the steady reading of Mr. Chesterton's +books for several days on end.</p> + +<p>No one will accuse Mr. Chesterton of being an unhealthy writer. On the +contrary, he is among the most wholesome writers now alive. He is +irresistibly exhilarating, and he inspires his readers with a constant +inclination to rise up and shout. Perhaps his danger lies in that very +fact, and in the exhaustion of the nerves which such sustained +exhilaration is apt to produce. But besides this, he, like so many of +our contemporaries, has written such a bewildering quantity of +literature on such an amazing variety of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> subjects, that it is no wonder +if sometimes the reader follows panting, through the giddy mazes of the +dance. He is the sworn enemy of specialisation, as he explains in his +remarkable essay on "The Twelve Men." The subject of the essay is the +British jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants a +library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle of +that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done +which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing +round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of +Christianity." For the judging of a criminal or the propagation of the +gospel, it is necessary to procure inexpert people—people who come to +their task with a virgin eye, and see not what the expert (who has lost +his freshness) sees, but the human facts of the case. So Mr. Chesterton +insists upon not being a specialist, takes the world for his parish, and +wanders over it at will.</p> + +<p>This being so, it is obvious that he cannot possibly remember all that +he has said, and must necessarily abound in inconsistencies and even +contradictions. Yet that is by no means always unconscious, but is due +in many instances to the very complex quality and subtle habit of his +mind. Were he by any chance to read this statement +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> he would deny it +fiercely, but we would repeat it with perfect calmness, knowing that he +would probably have denied any other statement we might have made upon +the subject. His subtlety is partly due to the extraordinary rapidity +with which his mind leaps from one subject to another, partly to the +fact that he is so full of ideas that many of his essays (like Mr. +Bernard Shaw's plays) find it next to impossible to get themselves +begun. He is so full of matter that he never seems to be able to say +what he wants to say, until he has said a dozen other things first.</p> + +<p>The present lecture is mainly concerned with his central position, as +that is expounded in <i>Heretics</i> and <i>Orthodoxy</i>. Our task is not to +criticise, nor even to any considerable extent to characterise his +views, but to state them as accurately as we can. It is a remarkable +phenomenon of our time that all our literary men are bent on giving us +such elaborate and solemnising confessions of their faith. It is an age +notorious for its aversion to dogma, and yet here we have Mr. Huxley, +Mr. Le Gallienne, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Wells (to mention only a few of many), +who in this creedless age proclaim in the market-place, each his own +private and brand-new creed. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> + +<p>Yet Mr. Chesterton has perhaps a special right to such a proclamation. +He believes in creeds vehemently. And, besides, the spiritual biography +of a man whose mental development has been so independent and so +interesting as his, must be well worth knowing. Amid the many weird +theologies of our time we have met with nothing so startling, so +arresting, and so suggestive since Mr. Mallock published his <i>New +Republic</i> and his <i>Contemporary Superstitions</i>. There is something +common to the two points of view. To some, they come as emancipating and +most welcome reinforcements, relieving the beleaguered citadel of faith. +But others, who differ widely from them both, may yet find in them so +much to stimulate thought and to rehabilitate strongholds held +precariously, as to awaken both appreciation and gratitude.</p> + +<p>Mr. Chesterton's political opinions do not concern us here. It is a +curious fact, of which innumerable illustrations may be found in past +and present writers, that political radicalism so often goes along with +conservative theology, and <i>vice versa</i>. Mr. Chesterton is no exception +to the rule. His orthodoxy in matters of faith we shall find to be +altogether above suspicion. His radicalism in politics is never long +silent. He openly proclaims himself at war with Carlyle's favourite +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span><br /> +dogma, "The tools to him who can use them." "The worst form of slavery," +he tells us, "is that which is called Cæsarism, or the choice of some +bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means +that men choose a representative, not because he represents them but +because he does not." And if it be answered that the worst form of +cruelty to a nation or to an individual is that abuse of the principle +of equality which is for ever putting incompetent people into false +positions, he has his reply ready: "The one specially and peculiarly +un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle—the idea that the man should +rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is +heathen."</p> + +<p>But this, and much else of its kind, although he works it into his +general scheme of thinking, is not in any sense an essential part of +that scheme. Our subject is his place in the conflict between the +paganism and the idealism of the times, and it is a sufficiently large +one. But before we come to that, we must consider another matter, which +we shall find to be intimately connected with it.</p> + +<p>That other matter is his habit of paradox, which is familiar to all his +readers. It is a habit of style, but before it became that it was +necessarily first a habit of mind, deeply ingrained. He disclaims it +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> so +often that we cannot but feel that he protesteth too much. He +acknowledges it, and explains that "paradox simply means a certain +defiant joy which belongs to belief." Whether the explanation is or is +not perfectly intelligible, it must occur to every one that a writer who +finds it necessary to give so remarkable an explanation can hardly be +justified in his astonishment when people of merely average intelligence +confess themselves puzzled. His aversion to Walter Pater—almost the +only writer whom he appears consistently to treat with disrespect—is +largely due to Pater's laborious simplicity of style. But it was a +greater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed out +that the language which appealed to the understanding of the common man +was also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton's +habit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. He +has a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he will never understand.</p> + +<p>Paradox, when it has become a habit, is always dangerous. Introduced on +rare and fitting occasions, it may be powerful and even convincing, but +when it is repeated constantly and upon all sorts of subjects, we cannot +but dispute its right and question its validity. Its effect is not +conviction but vertigo. It is like trying +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> to live in a house +constructed so as to be continually turning upside down. After a certain +time, during which terror and dizziness alternate, the most indulgent +reader is apt to turn round upon the builder of such a house with some +asperity. And, after all, the general judgment may be right and Mr. +Chesterton wrong.</p> + +<p>Upon analysis, his paradox reveals as its chief and most essential +element a certain habit of mind which always tends to see and appreciate +the reverse of accepted opinions. So much is this the case that it is +possible in many instances to anticipate what he will say upon a +subject. It is on record that one reader, coming to his chapter on Omar +Khayyám, said to himself, "Now he will be saying that Omar is not drunk +enough"; and he went on to read, "It is not poetical drinking, which is +joyous and instinctive; it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic as +an investment, as unsavoury as a dose of camomile." Similarly we are +told that Browning is only felt to be obscure because he is too +pellucid. Such apparent contradictoriness is everywhere in his work, but +along with it goes a curious ingenuity and nimbleness of mind. He cannot +think about anything without remembering something else, apparently out +of all possible connection with it, and instantly discovering some +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><br /> +clever idea, the introduction of which will bring the two together. +Christianity "is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like +a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the +pattern of the cross."</p> + +<p>In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitute +almost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes. One +such mechanical process is the play with the derivatives of words. Thus +he reminds us that the journalist is, in the literal and derivative +sense, a <i>journalist</i>, while the missionary is an eternalist. Similarly +"lunatic," "evolution," "progress," "reform," are etymologically +tortured into the utterance of the most forcible and surprising truths. +This curious word-play was a favourite method with Ruskin; and it has +the disadvantage in Mr. Chesterton which it had in the earlier critic. +It appears too clever to be really sound, although it must be confessed +that it frequently has the power of startling us into thoughts that are +valuable and suggestive.</p> + +<p>Another equally simple process is that of simply reversing sentences and +ideas. "A good bush needs no wine." "Shakespeare (in a weak moment, I +think) said that all the world is a stage. But Shakespeare acted on the +much finer principle that a stage is all the world." Perhaps the most +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span><br /> +brilliant example that could be quoted is the plea for the combination +of gentleness and ferocity in Christian character. When the lion lies +down with the lamb, it is constantly assumed that the lion becomes +lamblike. "But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of +the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion, instead of the +lion eating the lamb."</p> + +<p>By this process it is possible to attain results which are +extraordinarily brilliant in themselves and fruitful in suggestion. It +is a process not difficult to learn, but the trouble is that you have to +live up to it afterwards, and defend many curious propositions which may +have been arrived at by its so simple means. Take, for instance, the +sentence about the stage being all the world. That is undeniably clever, +and it contains an idea. But it is a haphazard idea, arrived at by a +short-cut, and not by the high road of reasonable thinking. Sometimes a +truth may be reached by such a short-cut, but such paradoxes are +occasionally no better than chartered errors.</p> + +<p>Yet even when they are that, it may be said in their favour that they +startle us into thought. And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as a +quickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers. Moreover, by +adopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkable +thing. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> He has proved what an astonishing number of paradoxical +surprises there actually are, lying hidden beneath the apparent +commonplace of the world. Every really clever paradox astonishes us not +merely with the sense of the cleverness of him who utters it, but with +the sense of how many strange coincidences exist around us, and how many +sentences, when turned outside in, will yield new and startling truths. +However much we may suspect that the performance we are watching is too +clever to be trustworthy, yet after all the world does appear to lend +itself to such treatment.</p> + +<p>There is, for example, the paradox of the love of the world—"Somehow +one must love the world without being worldly." Again, "Courage is +almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking +the form of a readiness to die." The martyr differs from the suicide in +that he cherishes a disdain of death, while the motive of the suicide is +a disdain of life. Charity, too, is a paradox, for it means "one of two +things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people." +Similarly Christian humility has a background of unheard-of arrogance, +and Christian liberty is possible only to the most abject bondsmen in +the world.</p> + +<p>This long consideration of Mr. Chesterton's use of paradox is more +relevant to our present subject than it may seem. For, curiously enough, +the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> habit of paradox has been his way of entrance into faith. At the +age of sixteen he was a complete agnostic, and it was the reading of +Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh which brought him back to +orthodox theology. For, as he read, he found that Christianity was +attacked on all sides, and for all manner of contradictory reasons; and +this discovery led him to the conviction that Christianity must be a +very extraordinary thing, abounding in paradox. But he had already +discovered the abundant element of paradox in life; and when he analysed +the two sets of paradoxes he found them to be precisely the same. So he +became a Christian.</p> + +<p>It may seem a curious way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who are +accustomed to regard the strait gate as of Gothic architecture may be +shocked to find a man professing to have entered through this +Alhambra-like portal. But it is a lesson we all have to learn sooner or +later, that there are at least eleven gates besides our own, and that +every man has to enter by that which he finds available. Paradox is the +only gate by which Mr. Chesterton could get into any place, and the +Kingdom of Heaven is no exception to the rule.</p> + +<p>His account of this entrance is characteristic. It is given in the first +chapter of his <i>Orthodoxy</i>. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> There was an English yachtsman who set out +upon a voyage, miscalculated his course, and discovered what he thought +to be a new island in the South Seas. It transpired afterwards that he +had run up his flag on the pavilion of Brighton, and that he had +discovered England. That yachtsman is Mr. Chesterton himself. Sailing +the great sea of moral and spiritual speculation, he discovered a land +of facts and convictions to which his own experience had guided him. On +that strange land he ran up his flag, only to make the further and more +astonishing discovery that it was the Christian faith at which he had +arrived. Nietzsche had preached to him, as to Mr. Bernard Shaw, his +great precept, "Follow your own will." But when Mr. Chesterton obeyed he +arrived, not at Superman, but at the ordinary old-fashioned morality. +That, he found, is what we like best in our deepest hearts, and desire +most. So he too "discovered England."</p> + +<p>He begins, like Margaret Fuller, with the fundamental principle of +accepting the universe. The thing we know best and most directly is +human nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediately +known and knowable. Like R.L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and +comically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre is +this man," says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, +lifting +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, +growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair +like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing +to set children screaming;—and yet looked at nearlier, known as his +fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes!" In like manner Mr. +Chesterton discovers man—that appalling mass of paradox and +contradiction—and it is the supreme discovery in any spiritual search.</p> + +<p>Having discovered the fundamental fact of human nature, he at once gives +in his allegiance to it. "Our attitude towards life can be better +expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of +criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, +it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world +is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is +miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the +turret, and the more miserable it is, the less we should leave it."</p> + +<p>There is a splendid courage and heartiness in his complete acceptance of +life and the universe. In a time when clever people are so busy +criticising life that they are in danger of forgetting that they have to +live it, so busy selecting such parts of it as suit their taste that +they ignore the fact that +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> the other parts are there, he ignores nothing +and wisely accepts instead of criticising. Mr. Bernard Shaw, as we have +seen, will consent to tolerate the universe <i>minus</i> the three loyalties +to the family, the nation, and God. Mr. Chesterton has no respect +whatever for any such mutilated scheme of human life. His view of the +institution of the family is full of wholesome common sense. He +perceives the immense difficulties that beset all family life, and he +accepts them with immediate and unflinching loyalty, as essential parts +of our human task. His views on patriotism belong to the region of +politics and do not concern us here. In regard to religion, he finds the +modern school amalgamating everything in characterless masses of +generalities. They deny the reality of sin, and in matters of faith +generally they have put every question out of focus until the whole +picture is blurred and vague. He attacks this way of dealing with +religion in one of his most amusing essays, "The Orthodox Barber." The +barber has been sarcastic about the new shaving—presumably in reference +to M. Gillett's excellent invention. "'It seems you can shave yourself +with anything—with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker' (here I +began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) 'or a shovel +or a—— ' Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span><br /> +about the matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetorical +vein. 'Or a button-hook,' I said, 'or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram +or a piston-rod——' He resumed, refreshed with this assistance, 'Or a +curtain-rod or a candlestick or a——' 'Cow-catcher,' I suggested +eagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. Then I +asked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thing +eloquently and at length. 'The funny part of it is,' he said, 'that the +thing isn't new at all. It's been talked about ever since I was a boy, +and long before.'" Mr. Chesterton rejoins in a long and eloquent and +most amusing sermon, the following extracts from which are not without +far-reaching significance.</p> + +<p>"'What you say reminds me in some dark and dreamy fashion of something +else. I recall it especially when you tell me, with such evident +experience and sincerity, that the new shaving is not really new. My +friend, the human race is always trying this dodge of making everything +entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it +shifts on to another.... It would be nice if we could be shaved without +troubling anybody. It would be nicer still if we could go unshaved +without annoying anybody—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"'But, O wise friend, chief Barber of the Strand,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Brother, nor you nor I have made the world.</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> + +<p>Whoever made it, who is wiser, and we hope better than we, made it under +strange limitations, and with painful conditions of pleasure.... But +every now and then men jump up with the new something or other and say +that everything can be had without sacrifice, that bad is good if you +are only enlightened, and that there is no real difference between being +shaved and not being shaved. The difference, they say, is only a +difference of degree; everything is evolutionary and relative. +Shavedness is immanent in man.... I have been profoundly interested in +what you have told me about the New Shaving. Have you ever heard of a +thing called the New Theology?' He smiled and said that he had not."</p> + +<p>In contrast with all this, it is Mr. Chesterton's conviction that the +facts must be unflinchingly and in their entirety accepted. With +characteristic courage he goes straight to the root of the matter and +begins with the fact of sin. "If it be true (as it certainly is) that a +man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious +philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the +existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union +between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to +think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat." It is as if +he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> said, Here you have direct and unmistakable experience. A man knows +his sin as he knows himself. He may explain it in either one way or +another way. He may interpret the universe accordingly in terms either +of heaven or of hell. But the one unreasonable and impossible thing to +do is to deny the experience itself.</p> + +<p>It is thus that he treats the question of faith all along the line. If +you are going to be a Christian, or even fairly to judge Christianity, +you must accept the whole of Christ's teaching, with all its +contradictions, paradoxes, and the rest. Some men select his charity, +others his social teaching, others his moral relentlessness, and so on, +and reject all else. Each one of these aspects of the Christian faith is +doubtless very interesting, but none of them by itself is an adequate +representation of Christ. "They have torn the soul of Christ into silly +strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by +His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His +garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the +coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout."</p> + +<p>The characteristic word for Mr. Chesterton and his attitude to life is +<i>vitality</i>. He has been seeking for human nature, and he has found it at +last in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> Christian idealism. But having found it, he will allow no +compromise in its acceptance. It is life he wants, in such wholeness as +to embrace every element of human nature. And he finds that Christianity +has quickened and intensified life all along the line. It is the great +source of vitality, come that men might have life and that they might +have it more abundantly. He finds an essential joy and riot in creation, +a "tense and secret festivity." And Christianity corresponds to that +riot. "The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while +it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to +give room for good things to run wild." It has let loose the wandering, +masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or another +of them shall run wild, but all of them together. The ideal of wholeness +which Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass of +theories, but a world of living things. Christ will put a check on none +of the really genuine elements in human nature. In Him there is no +compromise. His love and His wrath are both burning. All the separate +elements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimate +way of peace and safety. The various colours of life must not be mixed +but kept distinct. The red and white of passion and purity must not be +blended into the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> insipid pink of a compromising and consistent +respectability. They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazing +Cross of St. George on its shield of white.</p> + +<p>Chaucer's "Daisy" is one of the greatest conceptions in all poetry. It +has stood for centuries as the emblem of pure and priceless womanhood, +with its petals of snowy white and its heart of gold. Mr. Chesterton +once made a discovery that sent him wild with joy—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Then waxed I like the wind because of this,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And ran like gospel and apocalypse</span><br /> +<span class="i2">From door to door, with wild, anarchic lips,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Crying the very blasphemy of bliss."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The discovery was that "the Daisy has a ring of red." Purity is not the +enemy of passion; nor must passion and purity be so toned down and blent +with one another, as to give a neutral result. Both must remain, and +both in full brilliance, the virgin white and the passionate blood-red +ring.</p> + +<p>In the present age of reason, the cry is all for tolerance, and for +redefinition which will remove sharp contrasts and prove that everything +means the same as everything else. In such an age a doctrine like this +seems to have a certain barbaric splendour about it, as of a crusader +risen from the dead. But Mr. Chesterton is not afraid of the +consequences of his opinions. If rationalism opposes +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> his presentation +of Christianity, he will ride full tilt against reason. In recent years, +from the time of Newman until now, there has been a recurring habit of +discounting reason in favour of some other way of approach to truth and +life. Certainly Mr. Chesterton's attack on reason is as interesting as +any that have gone before it, and it is even more direct. Even on such a +question as the problem of poverty he frankly prefers imagination to +study. In art he demands instinctiveness, and has a profound suspicion +of anybody who is conscious of possessing the artistic temperament. As a +guide to truth he always would follow poetry in preference to logic. He +is never tired of attacking rationality, and for him anything which is +rationalised is destroyed in the process.</p> + +<p>In one of his most provokingly unanswerable sallies, he insists that the +true home of reason is the madhouse. "The madman is not the man who has +lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except +his reason." When we say that a man is mad, we do not mean that he is +unable to conduct a logical argument. On the contrary, any one who knows +madmen knows that they are usually most acute and ingeniously consistent +in argument. They isolate some one fixed idea, and round that they build +up a world that is fiercely and tremendously complete. Every +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> detail +fits in, and the world in which they live is not, as is commonly +supposed, a world of disconnected and fantastic imaginations, but one of +iron-bound and remorseless logic. No task is more humiliating, nor more +likely to shake one's sense of security in fundamental convictions, than +that of arguing out a thesis with a lunatic.</p> + +<p>Further, beneath this rationality there is in the madman a profound +belief in himself. Most of us regard with respect those who trust their +own judgment more than we find ourselves able to trust ours. But not the +most confident of them all can equal the unswerving confidence of a +madman. Sane people never wholly believe in themselves. They are liable +to be influenced by the opinion of others, and are willing to yield to +the consensus of opinion of past or present thinkers. The lunatic cares +nothing for the views of others. He believes in himself against the +world, with a terrific grip of conviction and a faith that nothing can +shake.</p> + +<p>Mr. Chesterton applies his attack upon rationality to many subjects, +with singular ingenuity. In the question of marriage and divorce, for +instance, the modern school which would break loose from the ancient +bonds can present their case with an apparently unassailable show of +rationality. But his reply to them and to all other rationalists is that +life is not rational and consistent but para +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>doxical and contradictory. +To make life rational you have to leave out so many elements as to make +it shrink from a big world to a little one, which may be complete, but +can never be much of a world. Its conception of God may be a complete +conception, but its God is not much of a God. But the world of human +nature is a vast world, and the God of Christianity is an Infinite God. +The huge mysteries of life and death, of love and sacrifice, of the wine +of Cana and the Cross of Calvary—these outwit all logic and pass all +understanding. So for sane men there comes in a higher authority. You +may call it common sense, or mysticism, or faith, as you please. It is +the extra element by virtue of which all sane thinking and all religious +life are rendered possible. It is the secret spring of vitality alike in +human nature and in Christian faith.</p> + +<p>At this point it may be permissible to question Mr. Chesterton's use of +words in one important point. He appears to fall into the old error of +confounding reason with reasoning. Reason is one thing and argument +another. It may be impossible to express either human nature or +religious faith in a series of syllogistic arguments, and yet both may +be reasonable in a higher sense. Reason includes those extra elements to +which Mr. Chesterton trusts. It is the synthesis of our whole powers +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> of +finding truth. Many things which cannot be proved by reasoning may yet +be given in reason—involved in any reasonable view of things as a +whole. Thus faith includes reason—it <i>is</i> reason on a larger scale—and +it is the only reasonable course for a man to take in a world of +mysterious experience. If the matter were stated in that way, Mr. +Chesterton would probably assent to it. Put crudely, the fashion of +pitting faith against reason and discarding reason in favour of faith, +is simply sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. The result is +that you must fall to the ground at the feet of the sceptic, who asks, +"How can you believe that which you have confessed there is no reason to +believe?" We have abundant reason for our belief, and that reason +includes those higher intuitions, that practical common sense, and that +view of things as a whole, which the argument of the mere logician +necessarily ignores.</p> + +<p>With this reservation,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Mr. Chesterton's position in regard to faith +is absolutely unassailable. He is the most vital of our modern +idealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism +has given to the term a richer and more spacious +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> meaning, which +combines excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal +is that of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a +reasoner, not any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But +then that means, Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this +world and its affairs—swings dangerously between heaven and hell. +Eternity is in the heart of every man. The fashionable modern gospel of +Pragmatism is telling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about +the ultimate truth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for +life here and now, and the practical needs which they serve. But the +most practical of all man's needs is his need of some contact with a +higher world than that of sense. "To say that a man is an idealist is +merely to say that he is a man." In the scale of differences between +important and unimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not +the material that counts. "An ignorance of the other world is boasted by +many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from +ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world." "The +moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and +for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing +incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality." +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + +<p>Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter of +faith. Mr. Chesterton is an optimist, not because he fits into this +world, but because he does not fit into it. Pagan optimism is content +with the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit into +it and find it sufficient. This is that optimism of which Browning +speaks with scorn—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Tame in earth's paddock as her prize,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and which he repudiates in the famous lines,</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i2">"Then, welcome each rebuff</span><br /> +<span class="i2">That turns earth's smoothness rough,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Be our joys three parts pain!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Strive, and hold cheap the strain;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here on +the earth there are other things which claim us from beyond. The higher +instincts which discover these are not tools to be used for making the +most of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded. He is an +idealist who has been out beyond the world. There he has found a whole +universe of mysterious but commanding facts, and has discovered that +these and these alone can satisfy human nature.</p> + +<p>The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritual +claims. How can we +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> be sure that the ideals which claim us from beyond +are realities, and not mere dream shapes? There is no answer but this, +that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the reality +of our most pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, +and arrived prematurely at the end of all things. With the habit of +questioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience. +Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place. We believe in +ourselves and we doubt the truth that is in us. But we ourselves, the +crude reality which we actually are, are altogether unreliable; while +the vision is always trustworthy. We are for ever changing the vision to +suit the world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the world +to bring it into conformity with the unchanging vision. The very essence +of orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of ideals that cannot +be changed—ideals which were the first, and shall be the last.</p> + +<p>If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers' powers of attention by +rapid and surprising movements among very difficult themes, he certainly +has charming ways of relieving the strain. The favourite among all such +methods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales. In "The Dragon's +Grandmother" he introduces us to the arch-sceptic +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> who did not believe +in them—that fresh-coloured and short-sighted young man who had a +curious green tie and a very long neck. It happened that this young man +had called on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of the +usual modern problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentment +on <i>Grimm's Fairy Tales</i>. "When he incidentally mentioned that he did +not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. 'Man,' I said, +'who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is much +easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard is +a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is far easier +to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does +not like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and +swear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say +seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that +you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the +void.'" The reason for this unexpected outbreak is a very deep one. +"Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild +and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of +routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the +fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span><br /> + fantastic world? The +problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? +In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In +the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers +from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos."</p> + +<p>In other words, the ideals, the ultimate convictions, are the +trustworthy things; the actual experience of life is often matter not +for distrust only but for scorn and contempt. And this philosophy Mr. +Chesterton learned in the nursery, from that "solemn and star-appointed +priestess," his nurse. The fairy tale, and not the problem-novel, is the +true presentment of human nature and of life. For, in the first place it +preserves in man the faculty most essential to human nature—the faculty +of wonder, without which no man can live. To regain that faculty is to +be born again, out of a false world into a true. The constant repetition +of the laws of Nature blunts our spirits to the amazing character of +every detail which she reproduces. To catch again the wonder of common +things—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i9">"the hour</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—is to pass from darkness into light, from falsehood to truth. "All the +towering materialism +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately +upon one assumption: a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing +goes on repeating itself it is probably dead: a piece of clockwork." But +that is mere blindness to the mystery and surprise of everything that +goes to make up actual human experience. "The repetition in Nature +seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry +schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed +signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed +bent on being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a +thousand times."</p> + +<p>That is one fact, which fairy tales emphasise—the constant demand for +wonder in the world, and the appropriateness and rightness of the +wondering attitude of mind, as man passes through his lifelong gallery +of celestial visions. The second fact is that all such vision is +conditional, and "hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things +conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling +things that are let loose depend upon one thing which is forbidden." +This is the very note of fairyland. "You may live in a palace of gold +and sapphire, <i>if</i> you do not say the word 'cow'; or you may live +happily with the King's daughter, <i>if</i> you do +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> not show her an onion." +The conditions may seem arbitrary, but that is not the point. The point +is that there always <i>are</i> conditions. The parallel with human life is +obvious. Many people in the modern world are eagerly bent on having the +reward without fulfilling the condition, but life is not made that way. +The whole problem of marriage is a case in point. Its conditions are +rigorous, and people on all sides are trying to relax them or to do away +with them. Similarly, all along the line, modern society is seeking to +live in a freedom which is in the nature of things incompatible with the +enjoyment or the prosperity of the human spirit. There is an <i>if</i> in +everything. Life is like that, and we cannot alter it. Quarrel with the +seemingly arbitrary or unreasonable condition, and the whole fairy +palace vanishes. "Life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as +brittle as the window-pane."</p> + +<p>From all this it is but a step to the consideration of dogma and the +orthodox Christian creed. Mr. Chesterton is at war to the knife with +vague modernism in all its forms. The eternal verities which produce +great convictions are incomparably the most important things for human +nature. No "inner light" will serve man's turn, but some outer light, +and that only and always. "Christianity came into the world, firstly in +order to assert +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, +but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a +divine company and a divine captain." This again is human nature. No man +can live his life out fully without being mastered by convictions that +he cannot challenge, and for whose origin he is not responsible. The +most essentially human thing is the sense that these, the supreme +conditions of life, are not of man's own arranging, but have been and +are imposed upon him.</p> + +<p>At almost every point this system may be disputed. Mr. Chesterton, who +never shrinks from pressing his theories to their utmost length, scoffs +at the modern habit of "saying that such-and-such a creed can be held in +one age, but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was +credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. +You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on +Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a +view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not +suitable to half-past four." That is precisely what many of us do say. +Our powers of dogmatising vary to some extent with our moods, and to a +still greater extent with the reception of new light. There are many +days on which the dogmas of early morning are +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> impossible and even +absurd when considered in the light of evening.</p> + +<p>But it is not our task to criticise Mr. Chesterton's faith nor his way +of dealing with it. Were we to do so, most of us would probably strike a +balance. We would find many of his views and statements unconvincing; +and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mind +to see fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The main +point in his orthodoxy is unquestionably a most valuable contribution to +the general faith of his time and country. That point is the adventure +which he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in the +discovery of England. He set out to find the empirical truth of human +nature and the meaning of human life, as these are to be explored in +experience. When he found them, it was infinitely surprising to him to +become aware that the system in which his faith had come at last to rest +was just Christianity—the only system which could offer any adequate +and indeed exact account of human nature. The articles of its creed he +recognised as the points of conviction which are absolutely necessary to +the understanding of human nature and to the living of human life.</p> + +<p>Thus it comes to pass that in the midst of a time resounding with pagan +voices old and new, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> he stands for an unflinching idealism. It is the +mark of pagans that they are children of Nature, boasting that Nature is +their mother: they are solemnised by that still and unresponsive +maternity, or driven into rebellion by discovering that the so-called +mother is but a harsh stepmother after all. Mr. Chesterton loves Nature, +because Christianity has revealed to him that she is but his sister, +child of the same Father. "We can be proud of her beauty, since we have +the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, +but not to imitate."</p> + +<p>It follows that two worlds are his, as is the case with all true +idealists. The modern reversion to paganism is founded on the +fundamental error that Christianity is alien to Nature, setting up +against her freedom the repellent ideal of asceticism, and frowning upon +her beauty with the scowl of the harsh moralist. For Mr. Chesterton the +bleakness is all on the side of the pagans, and the beauty with the +idealists. They do not look askance at the green earth at all. They gaze +upon it with steady eyes, until they are actually looking through it, +and discovering the radiance of heaven there, and the sublime brightness +of the Eternal Life. The pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, +are painfully reasonable and often sad. The Christian virtues are faith, +hope, and charity—each more +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> unreasonable than the last, from the point +of view of mere mundane common sense; but they are gay as childhood, and +hold the secret of perennial youth and unfading beauty, in a world which +upon any other terms than these is hastening to decay. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="LECTURE_X" id="LECTURE_X"></a>LECTURE X</h2><h2> +THE HOUND OF HEAVEN</h2> + + +<p>In bringing to a close these studies of the long battle between paganism +and idealism,—between the life which is lived under the attraction of +this world and which seeks its satisfaction there, and that wistful life +of the spirit which has far thoughts and cannot settle down to the green +and homely earth,—it is natural that we should look for some literary +work which will describe the decisive issue of the whole conflict. Such +a work is Francis Thompson's <i>Hound of Heaven</i>, which is certainly one +of the most remarkable poems that have been published in England for +many years.</p> + +<p>To estimate its full significance it is necessary in a few words to +recapitulate the course of thought which has been followed in the +preceding chapters. We began with the ancient Greeks, and distinguished +the high idealism of their religious conceptions from the paganism into +which these declined. The sense of the sacredness of beauty, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> forced +upon the Greek spirit by the earth itself, was a high idealism, without +which no conception of life or of the universe can be anything but a +maimed and incomplete expression of their meaning. Yet, for lack of some +sufficiently powerful element of restraint and some sufficiently daring +faith in spiritual reality, Hellenism sank back upon the mere earth, and +its dying fires lit up a world too sordid for their sacred flame. In +<i>Marius the Epicurean</i> the one thing lacking was supplied by the faith +of early Christianity. The Greek idealism of beauty was not only +conserved but enriched, and the human spirit was revived, by that heroic +faith which endured as seeing the invisible. The two <i>Fausts</i> revealed +the struggle at later stages of the development of Christianity. +Marlowe's showed it under the light of mediæval theology and Goethe's +under that of modern humanism, with the curious result that in the +former tragedy the man is the pagan and the devil the idealist, while in +the latter this order is reversed. Omar Khayyám and Fiona Macleod +introduce the Oriental and the Celtic strains. In both there is the cry +of the senses and the strong desire and allurement of the green earth; +but in Fiona Macleod there is the dominant undertone of the eternal and +the spiritual, never silent and finally overwhelming.</p> + +<p>The next two lectures, in a cross-section of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> seventeenth century, +showed John Bunyan keenly alive to the literature and the life of the +world of Charles the Second's time, yet burning straight flame of +spiritual idealism with these for fuel. Over against him stood Samuel +Pepys, lusty and most amusing, declaring in every page of his <i>Diary</i> +the lengths to which unblushing paganism can go.</p> + +<p>Representative of modern literature, Carlyle comes first with his +<i>Sartor Resartus</i>. At the ominous and uncertain beginning of our modern +thought he stood, blowing loud upon his iron trumpet a great blast of +harsh but grand idealism, before which the walls of the pagan Jericho +fell down in many places. Yet such an inspiring challenge as his was +bound to produce <i>reactions</i>, and we have them in many forms. Matthew +Arnold presses upon his time, in clear and unimpassioned voice, the +claim of neglected Hellenism. Rossetti, with heavy, half-closed eyes, +hardly distinguishes the body from the soul. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Titan +of the modern world, whose heart is sore with disillusion and the +bitterness of the earth, and yet blind to the light of heaven that still +shines upon it, has lived into the generation which is reading Mr. Wells +and Mr. Shaw. These appear to be outside of all such distinctions as +pagan and idealist; but their influence is strongly on the pagan side. +Mr. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Chesterton appears, with his quest of human nature, and he finds it +not on earth but in heaven. He is the David of Christian faith, come to +fight against the heretic Goliaths of his day; and, so far as his style +and literary manner go, he continues the ancient rôle, smiting Goliath +with his own sword.</p> + +<p>Francis Thompson's <i>Hound of Heaven</i> is for many reasons a fitting close +and climax to these studies. He is as much akin to Shelley and Swinburne +as Mr. Chesterton is akin to Mr. Bernard Shaw. From them he has gathered +not a little of his style and diction. He is with them, too, in his +passionate love of beauty, without which no idealist can possibly be a +fair judge of paganism. "With many," he tells us in that <i>Essay on +Shelley</i> which Mr. Wyndham pronounces the most important contribution to +English letters during the last twenty years—"with many the religion of +beauty must always be a passion and a power, and it is only evil when +divorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty." In this confession we +are brought back to the point where we began. The gods of Greece were +ideals of earthly beauty, and by them, while their worship remained +spiritual, men were exalted far above paganism. And now, as we are +drawing to a close, it is fitting that we should again remind +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> ourselves +that religious idealism must recover "the Christ beautiful," if it is to +retain its hold upon humanity. In this respect, religion has greatly and +disastrously failed, and he who can redeem that failure for us will +indeed be a benefactor to his race. Religion should lead us not merely +to inquire in God's holy place, but to behold the beauty of the Lord; +and to behold it in all places of the earth until they become holy +places for us. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, has taught the world that +wild joy of which Mr. Chesterton speaks such exciting things. It remains +for Thompson to remind us that he whose visage was more marred than any +man yet holds that secret of surpassing beauty after which the poets' +hearts are seeking so wistfully.</p> + +<p>Besides all this, we shall find here something which has not as yet been +hinted at in our long quest. The sound of the age-long battle dies away. +Here is a man who does not fight for any flag, but simply tells us the +mysterious story of his own soul and ours. It is a quiet and a fitting +close for our long tale of excursions and alarums. But into the quiet +ending there enters a very wonderful and exciting new element. We have +been watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like some +receding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. Here the +ideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> It halts for its +pilgrims—"the star which chose to stoop and stay for us." Nay, more, it +turns upon them and pursues them. The ideal is alive and aware—a real +and living force among the great forces of the universe. It is out after +men, and in this great poem we are to watch it hunting a soul down. The +whole process of idealism is now suddenly reversed, and the would-be +captors of celestial beauty are become its captives.</p> + +<p>As has been already stated, we must be in sympathetic understanding with +the pagan heart in order to be of any account as advocates of idealism. +No reader of Thompson's poetry can doubt for a moment his fitness here. +From the days of Pindar there has been a brilliant succession of singers +and worshippers of the sun, culminating in the matchless song of +Shelley. In Francis Thompson's poems of the sun, the succession is taken +up again in a fashion which is not unworthy of the splendours of +paganism at its very highest.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"And the sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Before his way</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Went forth the trumpet of the March</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Before his way, before his way,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Dances the pennon of the May!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">O Earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Behold how all things are made true!</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Exceeding glad and strong!"</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> + +<p>The great song takes us back to the days of Mithra and the <i>sol +invictus</i> of Aurelian. That outburst of sunshine in the evening of the +Roman Empire, rekindling the fires of Apollo's ancient altars for men +who loved the sunshine and felt the wonder of it, is repeated with +almost added glory in Thompson's marvellous poems.</p> + +<p>Yet for Francis Thompson all this glory of the sun is but a symbol. The +world where his spirit dwells is beyond the sun, and in nature it +displays itself to man but brokenly. In the bloody fires of sunset, in +the exquisite white artistry of the snow-flake, this supernatural +world is but showing us a few of its miracles, by which the miracles of +Christian faith are daily and hourly matched for sheer wonder and +beauty. The idealist claims as his inheritance all those things in which +the pagan finds his gods, and views them as the revelations of the +Master Spirit.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to write about Thompson's poetry without writing mainly +about himself. In <i>The Hound of Heaven</i>, as in much else that he has +written, there is abundance of his own experience, and indeed his poems +often remind us of the sorrows of Teufelsdröckh. That, however, is not +the purpose of this lecture; and, beyond a few notes of a general kind, +we shall leave him to reveal himself. Except for Mr. Meynell's +illuminative and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> too short introduction to his volume of +<i>Thompson's Selected Poems</i>, there are as yet only scattered articles in +magazines to tell his strange and most pathetic story. His writings are +few, comprising three short books of poetry, his prose <i>Essay on +Shelley</i>, and a <i>Life of St. Ignatius</i>, which is full of interest and +almost overloaded with information, but which may be discounted from the +list of his permanent contributions to literature or to thought. Yet +that small output is enough to establish him among the supreme poets of +our land.</p> + +<p>Apart from its poetic power and spiritual vision, his was an acute and +vivid mind. On things political and social he could express himself in +little casual flashes whose shrewd and trenchant incisiveness challenge +comparison with Mr. Chesterton's own asides. His acquaintance with +science seems to have been extensive, and at times he surprises us with +allusions and metaphors of an unusually technical kind, which he somehow +renders intelligible even to the non-scientific reader. These are doubly +illuminative, casting spiritual light on the material world, and +strengthening with material fact the tenuous thoughts of the spiritual. +The words which he used of Shelley are, in this respect, applicable to +himself. "To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarefied mental or +spiritual music traced +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of +outward things."</p> + +<p>His style and choice of words are an achievement in themselves, as +distinctive as those of Thomas Carlyle. They, and the attitude of mind +with which they are congruous, have already set a fashion in our poetry, +and some of its results are excellent. In <i>Rose and Vine</i>, and in other +poems of Mrs. Rachel Annand Taylor, we have the same blend of power and +beauty, the same wildness in the use of words, and the same languor and +strangeness as if we had entered some foreign and wonderfully coloured +world. In <i>Ignatius</i> the style and diction are quite simple, ordinary, +and straightforward, but that biography is decidedly the least effective +of his works. It would seem that here as elsewhere among really great +writings the style is the natural and necessary expression of the +individual mind and imagination. The <i>Life of Shelley</i>, which is +certainly one of the masterpieces of English prose, has found for its +expression a style quite unique and distinctive, in which there are +constant reminders of other stylists, yet no imitation of any. The +poetry is drugged, and as we read his poems through in the order of +their publication, we feel the power of the poppy more and more. At last +the hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though in +flashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> and beautiful as +ever. His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric and +arresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a sense +of things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mystic +rite, in a ritual which demanded language choice and strange.</p> + +<p>Something of this may be due to narcotics, and to the depressing tragedy +of his life. More of it is due to Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne. But +these do not explain the style, nor the thoughts which clothed +themselves in it. Both style and thoughts are native to the man. What he +borrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right to +borrow—a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned +from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it +has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a +lotos-flower in our buttonhole—harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not +matter—is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this +man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself +would willingly have put his own flowers there.</p> + +<p>Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the +unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and +brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his <i>Essay on Shelley</i>, +which may be summed up in the injunction +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> that "in poetry, as in the +Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we +shall be clothed, but seek first—seek <i>first</i>, not seek <i>only</i>—the +spirit, and all these things will be added unto us." He discusses his +own style with an unexpected frankness. His view of the use of +imagination is expressed in the suggestive and extraordinary words—"To +sport with the tangles of Neæra's hair may be trivial idleness or +caressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neræa is that of +heartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mere +intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics; +or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a <i>Sensitive +Plant</i>." If a man is passionate, and passion is choosing her own +language in his work, he may be forgiven much. If he chooses strange +words deliberately and in cold blood, there is no reason why we should +forgive him anything.</p> + +<p>So much has been necessary as an introduction, but our subject is +neither the man Francis Thompson nor his poetry in general, but the one +poem which is at once the most characteristic expression of his +personality and of his poetic genius. <i>The Hound of Heaven</i> has for its +idea the chase of man by the celestial huntsman. God is out after the +soul, pursuing it up and down the universe. God,—but God incarnate in +Jesus +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Christ, whose love and death are here the embodiment and +revelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men so +constantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possible +form of earthly experience—at least in every clean and noble form, for +there is nothing suggestive of low covert or the mire. It is simply the +second-best as a refuge from the best that is depicted here—the earth +at its pagan finest, in whose charm or homeliness the soul would fain +hide itself from the spiritual pursuit. And the Great Huntsman is +remorseless in his determination to win the soul for the very best of +all. The soul longs for beauty, for interest, for comfort; and in the +beautiful, various, comfortable life of the earth she finds them. The +inner voice still tells of a nobler heritage; but she understands and +loves these earthly things, and would fain linger among them, shy of the +further flight.</p> + +<p>The whole conception of the poem is the counterpart of Browning's +<i>Easter Day</i>, where the soul chooses and is allowed to choose the same +regions of the lesser good and beauty for its home. In that poem the +soul is permitted to devote itself for ever to the finest things that +earth can give—life, literature, scientific knowledge, love. The +permission sends it wild with joy, and having chosen, it settles down +for ever to the earth-bound life. But +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> eternity is too long for the +earth and all that is upon it. It wears time out, and all the desire of +our mortality ages and grows weary. The spirit, made for immortal +thoughts and loves and life, finds itself the ghastly prisoner of that +which is inevitably decaying; but its immortality postpones the decent +and appropriate end to an eternal mockery and doom. At last, in the +tremendous close, it wakens to the unspeakable blessedness of <i>not</i> +being satisfied with anything that earth can give, and so proves itself +adequate for its own inheritance of immortality. In Thompson's poem the +soul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things until +satiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels; +and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn from +it by the imperious Best of All that claims her for its own.</p> + +<p>There is no obvious sequence of the phases of the poem, nor any logical +order connecting them into a unity of experience. They may or may not be +a rescript of Thompson's own inner life, but every detail might be +placed in another order without the slightest loss to the meaning or the +truth. The only guiding and unifying element is a purely artistic +one—that of the Hound in full cry, and the unity of the poem is but +that of a day's hunting. One would like to know what remote origin it is +to which we owe the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> figure. Thompson was a Greek scholar, and some such +legend as that of Actæon may well have been in his mind. But the chase +of dogs was a common horror in the Middle Ages, and many of the mediæval +fiends are dog-faced. In those days, when conscience had as yet received +none of our modern soporifics, and men believed in hell, many a guilty +sinner knew well the baying of the hell-hounds, masterless and +bloody-fanged, that chased the souls of even good men up to the very +gates of heaven. Conscience and remorse ran wild, and the Hound of Hell +was a characteristic part of the machinery that made the tragedy of life +so terrific in those old days. But here, by a <i>tour de force</i> in which +is summed up the entire transformation from ancient to modern thought, +the hell-hounds are transformed into the Hound of Heaven. That something +or some one is out after the souls of men, no man who has understood his +inner life can question for a moment. But here the great doctrine is +proclaimed, that the Huntsman of the soul is Love and not Hate, eternal +Good and not Evil. No matter what cries may freeze the soul with horror +in the night, what echoes of the deep-voiced dogs upon the trail of +memory and of conscience, it is God and not the devil that is pursuing.</p> + +<p>The poem, by a strange device of rhythm, keeps +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> up the chase in the most +vividly dramatic realism. The metre throughout is irregular, and the +verses swing onward for the most part in long, sweeping lines. But five +times, at intervals in the poem, the sweep is interrupted by a stanza of +shorter lines, varied slightly but yet in essence the same—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i2">"But with unhurrying chase,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And unperturbèd pace,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">They beat—and a Voice beat</span><br /> +<span class="i2">More instant than the Feet—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>By this device of rhythm the footfall of the Hound is heard in all the +pauses of the poem. In the short and staccato measures you hear the +patter of the little feet padding after the soul from the unseen +distance behind. It is a daring use of the onomatopoeic device in +poetry, and it is effective to a wonder, binding the whole poem into the +unity of a single chase.</p> + +<p>The first nine lines are the story of a soul subjective as yet and +self-absorbed. The first covert in which it seeks to hide is its own +life—the thoughts and tears and laughter, the hopes and fears of a man. +This is in most men's lives the first attempt at escape. The verses here +give the inner landscape, the country of a soul's experience, with +wonderful compression. Then comes the patter of the Hound's feet, and +for the rest we +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in +the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated +transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his +<i>Sordello</i>, the turning-point between the early introspective and the +later dramatic periods.</p> + +<p>Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, the +inevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit. +The story is shortly told in nine lines. The human and the divine love +are rivals here; pagan <i>versus</i> ideal affection. The hunted heart is not +allowed to find refuge or solace in human love. The man knows that it is +Love that follows him: yet it is the warm, red, earthly passion that he +craves for, and the divine pursuer seems cold, exacting, and austere.</p> + +<p>Finding no refuge in human love from this "tremendous Lover," he seeks +it next in a kind of imaginative materialism, half-scientific, +half-fantastic. He appeals at "the gold gateways of the stars" and at +"the pale ports o' the moon" for shelter. He seeks to hide beneath the +vague and blossom-woven veil of far sky-spaces, or, in lust of swift +motion, "clings to the whistling mane of every wind!" Here is a choice +of paganism at its most modern and most impressive. The cosmic +imagination, revelling in the limitless fields of time and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> space, will +surely be sufficient for a man's idealism, without any insistence upon +further definition. Here are Carlyle's Eternities and Immensities—are +they not enough? The answer is that these are but the servants of One +mightier than they. Incorruptible and steadfast in their allegiance, +they will neither offer pity nor will they allow peace to him who is not +loyal to their Master. And the hunted soul is stung by a fever of +restlessness that chases him back across "the long savannahs of the +blue" to earth again, with the recurring patter of the little feet +behind him.</p> + +<p>Doubling upon the course, the quarry seeks the surest refuge to be found +on earth. Children are still here, and in their simplicity and innocence +there is surely a hiding-place that will suffice. Here is no danger of +earthly passion, no Titanic stride among the vast things of the +universe. Are they not the true idealists, the children? Are they not +the authentic guardians of fairyland and of heaven? Francis Thompson is +an authority here, and his love of children has expressed itself in much +exquisite prose and poetry. "Know you what it is to be a child? It is to +be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a +spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in +love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so +little +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn +pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and +nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its +own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of +infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... +He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to +watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. +The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. +He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright +mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He +teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of +its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its floor +is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of +ether. He chases the rolling world." He who could write thus, and who +could melt our hearts with <i>To Monica Thought Dying</i> and its refrain,</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"A cup of chocolate,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">One farthing is the rate,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—surely he must have had some wonderful right of entrance into the +innocent fellowships of childhood. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> Still more intimate, daring in its +incredible humility and simpleness, is his <i>Ex Ore Infantium</i>:—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Little Jesus, wast Thou shy</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Once, and just as small as I?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And what did it feel like to be</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Out of Heaven, and just like me?...</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Hadst Thou ever any toys,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Like us little girls and boys?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And didst Thou play in Heaven with all</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The angels, that were not too tall?...</span><br /> +<span class="i1">So, a little Child, come down</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And hear a child's tongue like Thy own;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Take me by the hand and walk,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And listen to my baby-talk."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"I turned me to them very wistfully;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair</span><br /> +<span class="i4">With dawning answers there,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Their angel plucked them from me by the hair."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, to +Nature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pure +abandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one with +cloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"I was heavy with the even,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">When she lit her glimmering tapers</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Round the day's dead sanctities.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">I laughed in the morning's eyes,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I triumphed and I saddened with all weather."</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr. +Chesterton, he holds the key of fairyland, like him also he can retain +through life his wonder at the grass. His nature-poetry is nearer +Shelley than anything that has been written since Shelley died. In it</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"The leaves dance, the leaves sing,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The leaves dance in the breath of spring,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>or—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"The great-vanned Angel March</span><br /> +<span class="i5">Hath trumpeted</span><br /> +<span class="i1">His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Beat his strong vans o'er earth and air and sea</span><br /> +<span class="i5">And they have heard;</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Hark to the <i>Jubilate</i> of the bird."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem <i>To a +Snowflake</i>—the delicate silver filigree of verse—rank him among the +most privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing very +close to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flying +soul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and +sheltering, but it is not for him. It is as when sunset changes the +glory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenly +fallen night. Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead to +him. Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> is not friend but +stranger. Her language is another tongue from his—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>—and the padding of the feet is heard again.</p> + +<p>Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain +attempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God has +been too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vain +endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me,</span><br /> +<span class="i6">And smitten me to my knee.</span><br /> +<span class="i4">I am defenceless utterly."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, he +remembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"In the rash lustihead of my young powers,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">I shook the pillaring hours</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And pulled my life upon me,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and,</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist</span><br /> +<span class="i1">I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God.</p> + +<p>There follows a protest against those demands. To him it appears that +they are the call for sheer sacrifice and death. He had sought +self-realisation +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> in every lovely field that lay open to the earth. But +now the trumpeter is sounding, "from the hid battlements of Eternity," +the last word and final meaning of human life. His is a dread figure, +"enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned." His demand is +for death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the green +earth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God.</p> + +<p>It is the Cross that he has seen in nature and beyond it. Long ago it +was set up in England, that same Cross, when Cynewulf sang his <i>Christ</i>. +On Judgment Day he saw it set on high, streaming with blood and flame +together, amber and crimson, illuminating the Day of Doom. Thompson has +found it, not on Calvary only, but everywhere in nature, and by <i>tour de +force</i> he blends the sunset with Golgotha and finds that the lips of +Nature proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the garden of the +monastery there stands a cross, and the sun is setting over it.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i9">"Thy straight</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me!</span><br /> +<span class="i3">What secret would thy radiant finger show?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of thy bright mastership is this the key?</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Is <i>this</i> thy secret then, and is it woe?</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">Thou dost image, thou dost follow</span><br /> +<span class="i3">That king-maker of Creation</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Who ere Hellas hailed Apollo</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Gave thee, angel-god, thy station;</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span><br /> +<span class="i1">Thou art of Him a type memorial.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Like Him thou hangst in dreadful pomp of blood</span><br /> +<span class="i5">Upon thy Western rood;</span><br /> +<span class="i3">And His stained brow did veil like thine to night.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i2">Now, with wan ray that other sun of Song</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul.</span><br /> +<span class="i2">One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long</span><br /> +<span class="i4">'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole.</span><br /> +</p><p class="poem"> +<span class="i2">Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory,</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields;</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Brightness may emanate in Heaven from Thee:</span><br /> +<span class="i4">Here Thy dread symbol only shadow yields."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This is ever the first appearance of the Highest when men see it. And, +to the far-seeing eyes of the poet, nature must also wear the same +aspect. Apollo, when his last word is said, must speak the same language +as Christ. Paganism is an elaborate device to do without the Cross. Yet +it is ever a futile device, for the Cross is in the very grain and +essence of all life; it is absolutely necessary to all permanent and +satisfying gladness. Francis Thompson is not the first who has shrunk +back from the bitter truth. Many others have found the bitterness of the +Cross a lesson too dreadful for their joyous or broken hearts to learn. +Who are we that we should judge them? Have we not all rebelled at this +bitter aspect of the Highest, and said, in our own language—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"Ah! is Thy love indeed</span><br /> +<span class="i1">A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?"</span><br /> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> + +<p>Finally we have the answer of Christ to the soul He has chased down +after so long a following—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"Strange, piteous, futile thing!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Wherefore should any set thee love apart?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Seeing none but I makes much of nought (He said),</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And human love needs human meriting:</span><br /> +<span class="i3">How hast thou merited—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Alack, thou knowest not</span><br /> +<span class="i1">How little worthy of any love thou art!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Save Me, save only Me?</span><br /> +<span class="i1">All which I took from thee I did but take,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Not for thy harms,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">But just that thou mightst seek it in My arms.</span><br /> +<span class="i3">All which thy child's mistake</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Rise, clasp my hand, and come."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>And the poem ends upon the patter of the little feet—</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i3">"Halts by me that footfall:</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Is my gloom, after all,</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?</span><br /> +<span class="i3">Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,</span><br /> +<span class="i3">I am He Whom thou seekest!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and it +tells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Cross +over the pagan gods. It is through pain and not through indulgence that +the ideals gain for themselves eternal life. Until the soul has been +transformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span><br /> +be at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be in +vain. And in our hearts we all know this quite well. We really desire +the Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day of +the wise surrender. This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxes +and contradictions.</p> + +<p>As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced to +the aspect of the age-long conflict by <i>The Hound of Heaven</i> is that the +parts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest, +the Highest is out in full cry after the soul. In this the whole quest +crosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simply +as a study of human nature. Beyond the human region, out among those +Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that +which loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. The +Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it. He is found of +those that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep may +flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered +hour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things +which we would fain choose instead of Him—He alone. The deep wisdom of +the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, +so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret +of fulfilment. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find +it. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything: +to have Him is to have all things added unto us.</p> + +<p>So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience, +but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live. +Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all its +idols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which she +repudiates:</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Worship not me but God, the angels urge."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven—the angels of +nature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, of +little children and of grave science and all learning. The desire of the +soul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorseless +footsteps down every quiet and familiar street. The land of heart's +desire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about our +heads.</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Not where the whirling systems darken,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">And our benumbed conceiving soars!—</span><br /> +<span class="i1">The drift of pinions, would we hearken,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.</span><br /> + +</p><p class="poem"> + +<span class="i1">The angels keep their ancient places;—</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Turn but a stone, and start a wing!</span><br /> +<span class="i1">'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">That miss the many-splendoured thing.</span><br /> + +</p><p class="poem"> + + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span><br /> +<span class="i1">But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss</span><br /> +<span class="i1">Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.</span><br /> + +</p><p class="poem"> + +<span class="i1">Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Cry;—clinging Heaven by the hems;</span><br /> +<span class="i1">And lo, Christ walking on the water,</span><br /> +<span class="i2">Not of Genesareth, but Thames."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr /> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a> + <i>King Lear</i>, Act III. scene vi. +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a> + Compare the song of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth beginning, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i1">"Who would true valour see"</span></p> + +<p>with Shakespeare's</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="i1">"Who doth ambition shun."</span></p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="i9"><i>As You Like It</i>, <span class="smcap">ii</span>. v.</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p> +<a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a> + For these and other points of resemblance, cf. Professor +Firth's Leaflet on Bunyan (<i>English Association Papers</i>, No. 19). +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p> +<a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a> + <i>On Compromise</i>, published 1874. +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p> +<a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a> + In his latest volume (<i>Marriage</i>), Mr. Wells has spoken in +a different tone from that of his other recent works. It is a welcome +change, and it may be the herald of something more positive still, and +of a wholesome and inspiring treatment of the human problems. But behind +it lie <i>First and Last Things</i>, <i>Tono Bungay</i>, <i>Ann Veronica</i>, and <i>The +New Macchiavelli</i>. +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a> + Mr. Chesterton perceives this, though he does not always +express it unmistakably. He tells us that he does not mean to attack the +authority of reason, but that his ultimate purpose is rather to defend +it. +</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a> + These verses, probably unfinished and certainly left rough +for future perfecting, were found among Francis Thompson's papers when +he died. +</p></div> + +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Among Famous Books, by John Kelman + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + +***** This file should be named 18104-h.htm or 18104-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/1/0/18104/ + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Among Famous Books + +Author: John Kelman + +Release Date: April 2, 2006 [EBook #18104] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + + + + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + +AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS + + BY + +JOHN KELMAN, D.D. + +HODDER AND STOUGHTON +LONDON; NEW YORK; TORONTO + +_Printed in 1912_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of the following lectures is twofold. They were delivered in +the first place for the purpose of directing the attention of readers to +books whose literary charm and spiritual value have made them +conspicuous in the vast literature of England. Such a task, however, +tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity, depending absolutely +upon the taste of the individual, and the chances of his experience in +reading. + +I have accordingly taken for the general theme of the book that constant +struggle between paganism and idealism which is the deepest fact in the +life of man, and whose story, told in one form or another, provides the +matter of all vital literature. This will serve as a thread to give +continuity of thought to the lectures, and it will keep them near to +central issues. + +Having said so much, it is only necessary to add one word more by way of +explanation. In quest of the relations between the spiritual and the +material, or (to put it otherwise) of the battle between the flesh and +the spirit, we shall dip into three different periods of time: (1) +Classical, (2) Sixteenth Century, (3) Modern. Each of these has a +character of its own, and the glimpses which we shall have of them ought +to be interesting in their own right. But the similarity between the +three is more striking than the contrast, for human nature does not +greatly change, and its deepest struggles are the same in all +generations. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + LECTURE I + The Gods of Greece + + LECTURE II + Marius the Epicurean + + LECTURE III + The Two Fausts + + LECTURE IV + Celtic Revivals of Paganism + + LECTURE V + John Bunyan + + LECTURE VI + Pepys' Diary + + LECTURE VII + Sartor Resartus + + LECTURE VIII + Pagan Reactions + + LECTURE IX + Mr. G.K. Chesterton's Point of View + + LECTURE X + The Hound of Heaven + + + + +LECTURE I + +THE GODS OF GREECE + + +It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modern +thought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The division +is an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less than +justice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associated +Greece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel with +that of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an interesting +word, whose etymology reminds us of a time when Christianity had won the +towns, while the villages still worshipped heathen gods. It is difficult +to define the word without imparting into our thought of it the idea of +the contrast between Christian dogma and all other religious thought and +life. This, however, would be an extremely unfair account of the matter, +and, in the present volume, the word will be used without reference +either to nationality or to creed, and it will stand for the +materialistic and earthly tendency as against spiritual idealism of any +kind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a thing which has died out +with the passing of heathen systems of religion. It is terribly alive in +the heart of modern England, whether formally believing or unbelieving. +Indeed there is the twofold life of puritan and pagan within us all. A +recent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally a +cannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South Sea +Islands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but to +be one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is +this universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such a +study as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary or +local phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do with +the question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject. + +Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type +of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that +distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become +hard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive national +idealisms without supplying any new ones. The Roman ploughman must have +missed the fauns whom he had been accustomed to expect in the thicket at +the end of his furrow, when the new faith told him that these were +nothing but rustling leaves. When the swish of unseen garments beside +the old nymph-haunted fountain was silenced, his heart was left lonely +and his imagination impoverished. Much charm and romance vanished from +his early world with the passing of its pagan creatures, and indeed it +is to this cause that we must trace the extraordinarily far-reaching and +varied crop of miraculous legends of all sorts which sprang up in early +Catholic times. These were the protest of unconscious idealism against +the bare world from which its sweet presences had vanished. + + "In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, + Of which that Britons speken greet honour, + Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. + The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, + Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; + This was the olde opinion, as I rede. + But now can no man see none elves mo. + For now the grete charitee and prayeres + Of limitours and othere holy freres, + + * * * * * + + This maketh that there been no fayeryes. + For ther as wont to walken was an elf, + Ther walketh now the limitour himself." + +Against this impoverishment the human revolt was inevitable, and it +explains the spirit in such writers as Shelley and Goethe. Children of +nature, who love the sun and the grass, and are at home upon the earth, +their spirits cry for something to delight and satisfy them, nearer than +speculations of theology or cold pictures of heaven. Wordsworth, in his +famous lines, has expressed the protest in the familiar words:-- + + "Great God, I'd rather be + A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; + So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, + Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; + Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, + Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." + +The early classic thought which found its most perfect expression in the +mythology of Greece was not originally or essentially pagan. It was +humanistic, and represented the response of man's spirit to that free +and beautiful spirit which he found in nature around him. All such +symbolism of Greek religion as that of the worship of Dionysus and +Ceres, shows this. In these cults the commonest things of life, the wine +and corn wherewith man sustained himself, assumed a higher and richer +meaning. Food and drink were not mere sensual gratifications, but divine +gifts, as they are in the twenty-third Psalm; and the whole material +world was a symbol and sacrament of spiritual realities and blessings. +Similarly the ritual of Eleusis interpreted man's common life into a +wonderful world of mystic spirituality. Thus there was a great fund of +spiritual insight of the finest and most beautiful sort in the very +heart of that life which has thoughtlessly been adopted as the type of +paganism. + +Yet the history of Greece affords the explanation and even the +justification of the popular idea. The pagan who is in us all, tends +ever to draw us downwards from sacramental and symbolic ways of thinking +to the easier life of the body and the earth. On the one hand, for blood +that is young and hot, the life of sense is overwhelming. On the other +hand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression of +the world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealism +difficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dream +before the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpses +by every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as well +as some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defended +against the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for the +Greek, God was the view; but when the traveller goes forward into the +view, he meets with many things which it is dangerous to identify with +God. For the young spirit of the early times the temptation to +earthliness was overwhelming. The world was fair, its gates were open, +and its barriers all down. Men took from literature and from religion +just as much of spirituality as they understood and as little as they +desired, and the effect was swift and inevitable in that degeneration +which reached its final form in the degraded sensuality of the later +Roman Empire. + +The confusing element in all such inquiry lies in the fact that one can +never get an unmixed paganism nor a perfect idealism. Just as the claims +of body and spirit are in our daily life inextricably interwoven, so the +Greek thought hung precariously between the two, and was always more or +less at the mercy of the individual interpreter and of the relative +strength of his tastes and passions. So we shall find it all through the +course of these studies. It would be preposterous to deny some sort of +idealism to almost any pagan who has ever lived. The contrast between +pagan and idealist is largely a matter of proportion and preponderating +tendency: yet the lines are clear enough to enable us to work with this +distinction and to find it valuable and illuminating. + +The fundamental fact to remember in studying any of the myths of Greece +is, that we have here a composite and not a simple system of thought and +imagination. There are always at least two layers: the primitive, and +the Olympian which came later. The primitive conceptions were those +afforded by the worship of ghosts, of dead persons, and of animals. Miss +Jane Harrison has pointed out in great detail the primitive elements +which lingered on through the Olympian worship. Perhaps the most +striking instance which she quotes is the Anthesteria, or festival of +flowers, at the close of which the spirits were dismissed with the +formula, "Depart, ye ghosts, the revels now are ended." Mr. Andrew Lang +has suggested that the animals associated with gods and goddesses (such +as the mouse which is found in the hand, or the hair, or beside the feet +of the statues of Apollo, the owl of Minerva, etc.) are relics of the +earlier worship. This would satisfactorily explain much of the +disreputable element which lingered on side by side with the noble +thoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a splendid race of gods, +representing the highest human ideals, arrived with the Greeks; but for +the sake of safety, or of old association, the primitive worship was +retained and blended with the new. In the extreme case of human +sacrifice, it was retained in the form of surrogates--little wooden +images, or even actual animals, being sacrificed in lieu of the older +victims. But all along the line, while the new gods brought their +spiritual conceptions, the older ones held men to a cruder and more +fleshly way of thinking. There is a similar blend of new and old in all +such movements as that of the Holy Grail and the Arthurian legends, +where we can see the combination of Christian and pagan elements so +clearly as to be able to calculate the moral and spiritual effect of +each. Thus we have in the early Greek mythology much of real paganism +involved in the retention of the old and earth-bound gods which attached +themselves to the nobler Olympians as they came, and dragged them down +to the ancient level. + +This blending may be seen very clearly in the mythology of Homer and +Hesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace of +superposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties of +Chronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of the +morality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continue +for a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and +man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably +follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently +than they. + +Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society +improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly +towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the +gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the +sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories. +Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temper +which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. AEschylus is +sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of +the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of +humanity his scepticism rises in protest. + +It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the +various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths. +The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities +stand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and +goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer +and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the +personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The +Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals +of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of +the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol +of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean +characteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, and +every one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East will +sympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God." + +As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with the +name of Plutarch among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more or +less completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir George +Cox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story is +beautifully told in every case, and when we have enjoyed it and felt +something of the exquisiteness of the conception and of the variety and +range of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had first +told it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that all +we have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise, +until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountable +upon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore. +If you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sun +and the lamb the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both in +religion and astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary to +school one day. This nature element, however, had undoubtedly a very +considerable part in the origin of myths, and when Max Mueller combines +it with philology it opens a vast field of extraordinarily interesting +interpretations resting upon words and their changes. + +A further theory of myths is that which regards them as the stories of +races told as if they had been the lives of individuals. This, as is +well known, has had permanent effects upon the interpretation not only +of Greek but of Hebrew ancient writings, and it throws light upon some +of those chapters of Genesis which, without it, are but strings of +forgotten and unpronounceable names. + +But beyond all such explanations, after we have allowed for them in +every possible way, there remains a conviction that behind these +fascinating stories there is a certain irreducible remainder of actual +fact. Individual historic figures, seen through the mists of time, walk +before our eyes in the dawn. Long before history was written men lived +and did striking deeds. Heroic memories and traditions of such +distinguished men passed in the form of fireside tales from one +generation to another through many centuries. Now they come to us, +doubtless hugely exaggerated and so far away from their originals as to +be unrecognisable, and yet, after all, based upon things that happened. +For the stories have living touches in them which put blood into the +glorious and ghostly figures, and when we come upon a piece of genuine +human nature there is no possibility of mistaking it. This thing has +been born, not manufactured: nor has any portrait that is lifelike been +drawn without some model. Thus, through all the mist and haze of the +past, we see men and women walking in the twilight--dim and uncertain +forms indeed, yet stately and heroic. + +Now all this has a bearing upon the main subject of our present study. +Meteorology and astronomy are indeed noble sciences, but the proper +study of mankind is man. While, no doubt, the sources of all early +folk-lore are composite, yet it matters greatly for the student of these +things whether the beginnings of religious thought were merely in the +clouds, or whether they had their roots in the same earth whereon we +live and labour. The heroes and great people of the early days are +eternal figures, because each new generation gives them a resurrection +in its own life and experience. They have eternal human meanings, +beneath whatever pageantry of sun and stars the ancient heroes passed +from birth to death. Soon everything of them is forgotten except the +ideas about human life for which they stand. Then each of them becomes +the expression of a thought common to humanity, and therefore secure of +its immortality to the end of time; for the undying interest is the +human interest, and all ideas which concern the life of man are immortal +while man's race lasts. In the case of such legends as those we are +discussing, it is probable that beyond the mere story some such ideal of +human life was suggested from the very first. Certainly, as time went +on, the ideal became so identified with the hero, that to thoughtful men +he came to stand for a particular idealism of human experience. Thus +Pater speaks of Dionysus as from first to last a type of second birth, +opening up the hope of a possible analogy between the resurrections of +nature and something else, reserved for human souls. "The beautiful, +weeping creatures, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, and +rejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out of +the hardness and stony darkness of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal +of chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering." +This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are not +only similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, those +of other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by the +common elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, when +finely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal to +the majority of the human race. + +Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in the +telling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the mere +narration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all stories +that were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high and +admirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical or +scientific bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience. Out of +these judgments there grew the great ideals which from first to last +have commanded the spirit of man. + +In this connection it is interesting to remember that in Homer the men +were regarded as the means of revealing ideas and characters, and not as +mere natural objects in themselves. The things among which they lived +are described and known by their appearances; the men are known by their +words and deeds. "There is no inventory of the features of men, or of +fair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modern +novels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanship +that delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds,' +and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought and +emotion." Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and important +element. They spring from and cling to stories of individual human +lives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidance +of the future race. The myths, with their stories of gods and men, and +their implied or declared religious doctrines, are but the forms in +which these ideals find expression. The ideals remain, but the forms of +their expression change, advancing from cruder to finer and from more +fanciful to more exactly true, with the advance of thought and culture. +Meanwhile, the ideals are above the world,--dwelling, like Plato's, in +heaven,--and there are always two alternatives for every man. He may go +back either with deliberate intellectual assent, or passion-led in +sensual moods, to the powers of nature and the actual human stories in +their crude and earthly form; or he may follow the idealisation of human +experience, and discover and adopt the ideals of which the earthly +stories and the nature processes are but shadows and hints. In the +former case he will be a pagan; in the latter, a spiritual idealist. In +what remains of this lecture, we shall consider four of the most famous +Greek legends--those of Prometheus, Medusa, Orpheus, and Apollo--in the +light of what has just been stated. + +Prometheus, in the early story, is a Titan, who in the heavenly war had +fought on the side of Zeus. It is, however, through the medium of the +later story that Prometheus has exercised his eternal influence upon the +thought of men. In this form of the legend he appears constantly living +and striving for man's sake as the foe of God. We hear of him making men +and women of clay and animating them with celestial fire, teaching them +the arts of agriculture, the taming of horses, and the uses of plants. +Again we hear of Zeus, wearied with the race of men--the new divinity +making a clean sweep, and wishing to begin with better material. Zeus is +the lover of strength and the despiser of weakness, and from the earth +with its weak and pitiful mortals he takes away the gift of fire, +leaving them to perish of cold and helplessness. Then it is that +Prometheus climbs to heaven, steals back the fire in his hollow cane, +and brings it down to earth again. For this benefaction to the despised +race Zeus has him crucified, fixed for thirty thousand years on a rock +in the Asian Caucasus, where, until Herakles comes to deliver him, the +vulture preys upon his liver. + +Such a story tempts the allegorist, and indeed the main drift of its +meaning is unmistakable. Cornutus, a contemporary of Christ, explained +it "of forethought, the quick inventiveness of human thought chained to +the painful necessities of human life, its liver gnawed unceasingly by +cares." In the main, and as a general description, this is quite +unquestionable. Prometheus is the prototype of a thousand other figures +of the same kind, not in mythology only, but in history, which tell the +story of the spiritual effort of man frustrated and brought to earth. It +is the story of Tennyson's youth who + + "Rode a horse with wings that would have flown + But that his heavy rider bore him down." + +Only, in the Prometheus idea, it is not a man's senses, as in Tennyson's +poem, but the outward necessity of things, the heavy and cruel powers of +nature around him, that prove too much for his aspirations. In this +respect the story is singularly characteristic of the Greek spirit. That +spirit was always daring with truth, feeling the risks of knowledge and +gladly taking them, passionately devoted to the love of knowledge for +its own sake. + +The legend has, however, a deeper significance than this. One of the +most elemental questions that man can ask is, What is the relation of +the gods to human inquiry and freedom of thought? There always has been +a school of thinkers who have regarded knowledge as a thing essentially +against the gods. The search for knowledge thus becomes a phase of +Titanism; and wherever it is found, it must always be regarded in the +light of a secret treasure stolen from heaven against the will of +contemptuous or jealous divinities. On the other hand, knowledge is +obviously the friend of man. Prometheus is man's champion, and no figure +could make a stronger appeal than his. Indeed, in not a few respects he +approaches the Christian ideal, and must have brought in some measure +the same solution to those who were able to receive it. Few touches in +literature, for instance, are finer than that in which he comforts the +daughters of Ocean, speaking to them from his cross. + +The idea of Titanism has become the commonplace of poets. It is familiar +in Milton, Byron, Shelley, and countless others, and Goethe tells us +that the fable of Prometheus lived within him. Many of the Titanic +figures, while they appeared to be blaspheming, were really fighting for +truth and justice. The conception of the gods as jealous and +contemptuous was not confined to the Greek mythology, but has appeared +within the pale of Christian faith as well as in all heathen cults. +Nature, in some of its aspects, seems to justify it. The great powers +appear to be arrayed against man's efforts, and present the appearance +of cruel and bullying strength. Evidently upon such a theory something +must go, either our faith in God or our faith in humanity; and when +faith has gone we shall be left in the position either of atheists or of +slaves. There have been those who accepted the alternative and went into +the one camp or the other according to their natures; but the Greek +legend did not necessitate this. There was found, as in AEschylus, a hint +of reconciliation, which may be taken to represent that conviction so +deep in the heart of humanity, that there is "ultimate decency in +things," if one could only find it out; although knowledge must always +remain dangerous, and may at times cost a man dear. + +The real secret lies in the progress of thought in its conceptions of +God and life. Nature, as we know and experience it, presents indeed an +appalling spectacle against which everything that is good in us +protests. God, so long as He is but half understood, is utterly +unpardonable; and no man yet has succeeded in justifying the ways of God +to men. But "to understand all is to forgive all"--or rather, it is to +enter into a larger view of life, and to discover how much there is in +_us_ that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was +told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases +through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest +commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can be +written. + +In two great battlegrounds of the human spirit the problem raised by +Prometheus has been fought out. On the ground of science, who does not +know the defiant and Titanic mood in which knowledge has at times been +sought? The passion for knowing flames through the gloom and depression +and savagery of the darker moods of the student. Difficulties are +continually thrust into the way of knowledge. The upper powers seem to +be jealous and outrageously thwarting, and the path of learning becomes +a path of tears and blood. That is all that has been reached by many a +grim and brave student spirit. But there is another possible +explanation; and there are those who have attained to a persuasion that +the gods have made knowledge difficult in order that the wise may also +be the strong. + +The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there has +been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and +then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness +of the human _debacle_. The only aspect of the powers above them has +seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in +the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts +up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the +worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing +man upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what they +please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest of +Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling a +noble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, there +dawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the same hope that Prometheus +vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has understood the story of +Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is divine +love. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous cruelty +yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end of +time, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God is +love, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted. + +Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that of +Medusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, for +it shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepest +depths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hung +between life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around him +in the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly felt +the attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in the +universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a +running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had +heard some of the hollow notes of _Pan's_ music. Would the wicked river +drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?" +It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and most +suggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world." It is this +combination of beauty and terror for which the myth of Medusa stands. It +finds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is seen +in such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of nature's +action, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit beauty, and +fascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen in all of the +many cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be dangerous, or at +least sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is at once one of +the most characteristic and one of the most tragic things in the world. + +There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyond +the stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun never +shines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the only +mortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhood +she had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and very +lovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess. +Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire of +Neptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty of +her priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of the +golden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that had +been so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, with +its rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a loathsome greenish +white. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning +mask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. So +dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess, that her face turned +all those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone. There is a degree +of hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it came to pass that the +cave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around it, were full of men +and wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance of her,--grim fossils +immortalised in stone,--while the snakes writhed and the red eyes +rolled, waiting for another victim. + +This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, and +there was nothing for it but to slay her. To do this, Perseus set out +upon his long journey, equipped with the magic gifts of swiftness and +invisibility, and bearing on his arm the shield that was also a mirror. +The whole picture is infinitely dreary. As he travels across the dark +sea to the land where the pillars of Atlas are visible far off, towering +into the sky, the light decreases. In the murky and dangerous twilight +he forces the Graiai, those grey-haired sisters with their miserable +fragmentary life, to bestir their aged limbs and guide him to the +Gorgons' den. By the dark stream, where the yellow light brooded +everlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it then +for Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa's +hair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and the +snakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where there +is "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor storm," he held the +magic mirror over against the monster, beheld her in it without change +or injury to himself, severed the head, and bore it away to place it on +Athene's shield. + +It is very interesting to notice how Art has treated the legend. It was +natural that so vivid an image should become a favourite alike with +poets and with sculptors, but there was a gradual development from the +old hideous and terrible representations, back to the calm repose of a +beautiful dead face. This might indeed more worthily record the maiden's +tragedy, but it missed entirely the thing that the old myth had said. +The oldest idea was horrible beyond horror, for the darker side of +things is always the most impressive to primitive man, and sheer +ugliness is a category with which it is easy to work on simple minds. +The rudest art can achieve such grotesque hideousness long before it can +depict beauty. Later, as we have seen, Art tempered the face to beauty, +but in so doing forgot the meaning of the story. It was the old story +that has been often told, of the fair and frail one who had fallen among +the pitiless. For her there was no compassion either in mortals or in +immortals. It was the tragedy of sweet beauty desecrated and lost, the +petrifying horror of which has found its most unflinching modern +expression in Thomas Hardy's _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. _Corruptio +optimi pessima_. + +To interpret such stories as these by any reference to the rising sun, +or the rivalry between night and dawn, is simply to stultify the science +of interpretation. It may, indeed, have been true that most of those who +told and heard the tale in ancient times accepted it in its own right, +and without either the desire or the thought of further meanings. Yet, +even told in that fashion, as it clung to memory and imagination, it +must continually have reminded men of certain features of essential +human nature, which it but too evidently recorded. Here was one of the +sad troop of soulless women who appear in the legends of all the races +of mankind. Medusa had herself been petrified before she turned others +to stone. The horror that had come upon her life had been too much to +bear, and it had killed her heart within her. + +So far of passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. But +this story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's head +must rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that may +petrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when the +dazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has come +the cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and, +on a wider scale, the sight of the pain and the tragedy of the world, +present to the eyes of every generation the spectacle of victims +standing petrified like those who had seen too much at the cave's mouth +in the old legend. + +It is peculiarly interesting to contrast the story of Medusa with its +Hebrew parallel in Lot's wife. Both are women presumably beautiful, and +both are turned to stone. But while the Greek petrifaction is the result +of too direct a gaze upon the horrible, the Hebrew is the result of too +loving and desirous a gaze upon the coveted beauty of the world. Nothing +could more exactly represent and epitomise the diverse genius of the +nations, and we understand the Greek story the better for the strong +contrast with its Hebrew parallel. To the Greek, ugliness was dangerous; +and the horror of the world, having no explanation nor redress, could +but petrify the heart of man. To the Hebrew, the beauty of the world was +dangerous, and man must learn to turn away his eyes from beholding +vanity. + +The legend of Medusa is a story of despair, and there is little room in +it for idealism of any kind; and yet there may be some hint, in the +reflecting shield of Perseus, of a brighter and more heartening truth. +The horror of the world we have always with us, and for all exquisite +spirits like those of the Greeks there is the danger of their being +marred by the brutality of the universe, and made hard and cold in rigid +petrifaction by the too direct vision of evil. Yet for such spirits +there is ever some shield of faith, in whose reflection they may see the +darkest horrors and yet remain flesh and blood. Those who believe in +life and love, whose religion--or at least whose indomitable clinging to +the beauty they have once descried--has taught them sufficient courage +in dwelling upon these things, may come unscathed through any such +ordeal. But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It came +out of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are the +daughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrow +of the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound, +looking upon its tragedy, will see in it only the _macabre_, and feel +that graveyard and spectral air which breathes about the haunted pagan +sepulchre. + +Another myth in which we see the contrast between essential paganism and +idealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms and +with innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successive +parts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all the +creatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing that +lived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom it +allured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuary +that adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose sweetness +surpassed that of the Sirens, nature, dead and living both (for all +lived unto Orpheus), followed him with glad and loving movement. Nay, +not only beasts and trees, but stones themselves and even mountains, +felt in the hard heart of them the power of this sweet music. It is one +of the most perfect stories ever told--the precursor of the legends that +gathered round Francis of Assisi and many a later saint and artist. It +is the prophecy from the earliest days of that consummation of which +Isaiah was afterwards to sing and St. Paul to echo the song, when nature +herself would come to the perfect reconciliation for which she had been +groaning and travailing through all the years. + +The second part of the story tells of the tragedy of love. Such a man as +Orpheus, if he be fortunate in his love, will love wonderfully, and +Eurydice is his worthy bride. Dying, bitten by a snake in the grass as +she flees from danger, she descends to Hades. But the surpassing love of +the sweet singer dares to enter that august shadow, not to drink the +Waters of Lethe only and to forget, but also to drink the waters of +Eunoe and to remember. His music charms the dead, and those who have the +power of death. Even the hard-hearted monarch of hell is moved for +Orpheus, who + + "Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, + And made hell grant what love did seek." + +But the rescue has one condition. He must restrain himself, must not +look upon the face of his beloved though he bears her in his arms, until +they have passed the region of the shadow of death, and may see one +another in the sunlight of the bright earth again. The many versions of +the tragic disobedience to this condition bear eloquent testimony, not +certainly to any changing phase of the sky, but to the manifold aspects +of human life. According to some accounts, it was the rashness of +Orpheus that did the evil--love's impatience, that could not wait the +fitting time, and, snatching prematurely that which was its due, +sacrificed all. According to other accounts, it was Eurydice who tempted +Orpheus, her love and pain having grown too hungry and blind. However +that may be, the error was fatal, and on the very eve of victory all was +lost. It was lost, not by any snatching back in which strong hands of +hell tore his beloved from the man's grasp. Within his arms the form of +Eurydice faded away, and as he clutched at her his fingers closed upon +the empty air. That, too, is a law deep in the nature of things. It is +by no arbitrary decree that self-restraint has been imposed on love. In +this, as in all other things, a man must consent to lose his life in +order to find it; and those who will not accept the conditions, will be +visited by no melodramatic or violent catastrophe. Love which has broken +law will simply fade away and vanish. + +The third part of the story is no less interesting and significant. +Maddened with this second loss, so irrevocable and yet due to so +avoidable a cause, Orpheus, in restless despair, wandered about the +lands. For him the nymphs had now no attractions, nor was there anything +in all the world but the thought of his half-regained Eurydice, now lost +for ever. His music indeed remained, nor did he cast away his lute; but +it was heard only in the most savage and lonely places. At length wild +Thracian women heard it, furious in the rites of Dionysus. They desired +him, but his heart was elsewhere, and, in the mad reaction of their +savage breasts, when he refused them they tore him limb from limb. He +was buried near the river Hebrus, and his head was thrown into the +stream. But as the waters bore it down, the lips whose singing had +charmed the world still repeated the beloved name Eurydice to the waters +as they flowed. + +Here again it is as if, searching for the dead in some ancient +sepulchre, we had found a living man and friend. The symbolism of the +story, disentangled from detail which may have been true enough in a +lesser way, is clear to every reader. It tells that love is strong as +death--that old sweet assurance which the lover in Canticles also +discovered. Love is indeed set here under conditions, or rather it has +perceived the conditions which the order of things has set, and these +conditions have been violated. But still the voice of the severed head, +crying out the beloved name as the waters bore it to the sea, speaks in +its own exquisite way the final word. It gives the same assurance with +the same thrill which we feel when we read the story of Herakles +wrestling with death for the body of Alkestis, and winning the woman +back from her very tomb. + +But before love can be a match for death, it first must conquer life, +and the early story of the power of Orpheus over the wild beasts, +restoring, as it does, an earthly paradise in which there is nothing but +gentleness, marks the conquest of life by love. All life's wildness and +savagery, which seem to give the lie to love continually, are after all +conquerable and may be tamed. And the lesson of it all is the great +persuasion that in the depth of things life is good and not evil. When +we come to the second conflict, and that love which has mastered life +now pits itself against death, it goes forward to the greater adventure +with a strange confidence. Who that has looked upon the face of one +dearly beloved who is dead, has not known the leap of the spirit, not so +much in rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that it +obviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuaded +that it has it--that death is but a puppet king, and love the master of +the universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but a +faltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it. + +For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies +of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian +women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand +for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They +but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of the +forfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, of +selfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far as +love can be slain. + +In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek creation in the form of one +of the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and ideal +aspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout the +story; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning against +paganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mighty +contrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganism +enters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle was +fought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, for +all the world to see. The two things which give their character to the +centuries from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man for +immortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On the +smaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand to +the end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus. + +It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet +singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of +Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or +Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its +greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim +the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for +the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which +professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought +of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who +derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance, +reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the early +Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and +found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story +tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good +Shepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith. + +One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, more +perhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad and +good elements. On the one hand there are the innumerable immoralities +and savageries that are found in all the records of mythology. On the +other hand, he who flays Marsias alive and visits the earth with plagues +is also the healer of men. He is the cosmopolitan god of the brotherhood +of mankind, the spirit of wisdom whose oracle acknowledged and inspired +Socrates, and, generally, the incarnation of the "glory of the Lord." + +We cannot here touch upon the marvellous tales of Delos and of Delphi, +nor repeat the strains that Pindar sang, sitting in his iron chair +beside the shrine. This much at least we may say, that both the Apollo +of Delos and the Apollo of Delphi are foreign gods, each of whom +appropriated to his own use a sacred place where the ancient earth-bound +religion had already established its rites. The Greeks brought with them +a splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he was +identified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems to +be the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between the +revolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at least +repudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning such +stories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee; +it is a hateful cleverness that slanders gods." No one who has realised +the power and glory of the Eastern sun, can wonder at the identification +both of the good and bad symbolism with the orb of day. Sun-worship is +indeed a form of nature-worship, and there are physical reasons obvious +enough for its being able to incorporate both the clean and unclean, +both the deadly and the benign legends. Yet there is a splendour in it +which is seen in its attraction for such minds as those of Aurelian and +Julian, and which is capable of refinement in the delicate spirituality +of Mithra, that worship of the essential principle of light, the soul of +sunshine. In the worship of Apollo we have a combination, than which +none on record is more striking, of the finest spirituality with the +crudest paganism. + +Here then, in the magical arena of the early world of Greece, we see in +one of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism and +spirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular stories +of Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partly +bequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which preceded +the Olympians, partly added in decadent days when the mind of man was +turned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deeper +meaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nights +or of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which is +ever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant), +and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell in +heaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought and life, +as we move about from point to point among the literature of later days. +Yet we shall seldom find any phase of the conflict which has not been +prophesied, or at least foreshadowed, in these legends of the dawn. The +link that binds the earliest to the latest page of literature is just +that human nature which, through all changes of country and of time, +remains essentially the same. It is this which lends to our subject its +individual as well as its historical interest. The battle is for each of +us our own battle, and its victories and defeats are our own. + + + + +LECTURE II + +MARIUS THE EPICUREAN + + +Much has been written, before and after the day of Walter Pater, +concerning that singularly pure and yet singularly disappointing +character, Marcus Aurelius, and his times. The ethical and religious +ferment of the period has been described with great fullness and +sympathy by Professor Dill. Yet it may be said, without fear of +contradiction, that no book has ever been written, nor is likely ever to +appear, which has conveyed to those who came under its spell a more +intimate and familiar conception of that remarkable period and man than +that which has been given by Walter Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_. + +Opinion is divided about the value of Pater's work, and if it be true +that some of his admirers have provoked criticism by their unqualified +praise, it is no less true that many of his detractors appear never to +have come in contact with his mind at all. Born in 1839, he spent the +greater part of his life in Queen's College, Oxford, where he died in +1894. As literary critic, humanist, and master of a thoroughly original +style, he made a considerable impression upon his generation from the +first; but it may be safely said that it is only now, when readers are +able to look upon his work in a more spacious and leisurely way, that he +and his contribution to English thought and letters have come to their +own. + +The family was of Dutch extraction, and while the sons of his +grandfather were trained in the Roman Catholic religion, the daughters +were Protestants from their childhood. His father left the Roman +Catholic communion early in life, without adopting any other form of +Christian faith. It is not surprising that out of so strongly marked and +widely mingled a heredity there should have emerged a writer prone to +symbolism and open to the sense of beauty in ritual, and yet too +cosmopolitan to accept easily the conventional religious forms. Before +his twentieth year he had come under the influence of Ruskin's writings, +but he soon parted from that wayward and contradictory master, whose +brilliant dogmatism enslaved so thoroughly, but so briefly, the taste of +young England. Ruskin, however, had awakened Pater, although to a style +of criticism very different from his own, and for this service we owe +him much. The environment of Oxford subjected his spirit to two widely +different sets of influences. On the one hand, he was in contact with +such men as Jowett, Nettleship, and Thomas Hill Green: on the other +hand, with Swinburne, Burne-Jones, and the pre-Raphaelites. Thus the +awakened spirit felt the dominion both of a high spiritual rationalism, +and of the beauty of flesh and the charm of the earth. A visit to Italy +in company with Shadwell, and his study of the Renaissance there, made +him an enthusiastic humanist. The immediate product of this second +awakening was the _Renaissance_ Essays, a very remarkable volume of his +early work. Twelve years later, _Marius the Epicurean_, his second book, +appeared in 1885. In Dr. Gosse, Pater has found an interpreter of rare +sympathy and insight, whose appreciations of his contemporaries are, in +their own right, fine contributions to modern literature. + +The characteristics of his style were also those both of his thought and +of his character. Dr. Gosse has summed up the reserve and shy reticence +and the fastidious taste which always characterise his work, in saying +that he was "one of the most exquisite, most self-respecting, the most +individual prose writers of the age." Even in the matter of style he +consciously respected his own individuality, refusing to read either +Stevenson or Kipling for fear that their masterful strength might lead +him out of his path. Certainly his bitterest enemies could not accuse +him of borrowing from either of them. Mr. Kipling is apt to sacrifice +everything to force, while Pater is perhaps the gentlest writer of our +time. In Stevenson there is a delicate and yet vigorous human passion, +but also a sense of fitness, a consciousness of style that is all his +own. He is preaching, and not swearing at you, as you often feel Mr. +Kipling to be doing. To preach at one may be indeed to take a great +liberty, but of course much will depend upon whether the preaching is +good preaching. Be that as it may, Pater is distinctive, and borrows +nothing from any writer whose influence can be traced in his work. He +neither swears nor preaches, but weaves about his reader a subtle film +of thought, through whose gossamer all things seem to suffer a curious +change, and to become harmonious and suggestive, as dark and +quiet-coloured things often are. The writer does not force himself upon +his readers, nor tempt even the most susceptible to imitate him; rather +he presupposes himself, and dominates without appearing. His reticence, +to which we have already referred, is one of his most characteristic +qualities. Dr. Gosse ascribes it to a somewhat low and sluggish vitality +of physical spirits. For one in this condition "the first idea in the +presence of anything too vivacious is to retreat, and the most obvious +form of social retreat is what we call affectation." That Pater's style +has impressed many readers as affected there can be no question, and it +is as unquestionable that Dr. Gosse's explanation is the true one. + +His style has been much abused by critics who have found it easy to say +smart things about such tempting peculiarities. We may admit at once +that the writing is laboured and shows constant marks of the tool. The +same criticism applies, for that matter, to much that Stevenson has +written. But unless a man's style is absolutely offensive, which Pater's +emphatically is not, it is a wise rule to accept it rather as a +revelation of the man than as a chance for saying clever things. As one +reads the work of some of our modern critics, one cannot but perceive +and regret how much of pleasure and of profit their cleverness has cost +them. Acknowledging his laboriousness and even his affectation, we still +maintain that the style of Walter Pater is a very adequate expression of +his mind. There is a calm suggestive atmosphere, a spirit half-childish +and half-aged about his work. It is the work of a solemn and sensitive +child, who has kept the innocence of his eye for impressions, and yet +brought to his speech the experience, not of years only, but of +centuries. He has many things to teach directly; but even when he is not +teaching so, the air you breathe with its delicate suggestion of faint +odours, the perfect taste in selection, the preferences and shrinkings +and shy delights, all proclaim a real and high culture. And, after all, +the most notable point in his style is just its exactness. Over-precise +it may be sometimes, and even meticulous, yet that is because it is the +exact expression of a delicate and subtle mind. In his _Appreciations_ +he lays down, as a first canon for style, Flaubert's principle of the +search, the unwearied search, not for the smooth, or winsome, or +forcible word as such, but, quite simply and honestly, for the word's +adjustment to its meaning. It will be said in reply to any such defence +that the highest art is to conceal art. That is an old saying and a hard +one, and it is not possible to apply its rule in every instance. Pater's +immense sense of the value of words, and his choice of exact +expressions, resulted in language marvellously adapted to indicate the +almost inexpressible shades of thought. When a German struggles for the +utterance of some mental complexity he fashions new compounds of words; +a Frenchman helps out his meaning by gesture, as the Greek long ago did +by tone. Pater knows only one way of overcoming such situations, and +that is by the painful search for the unique word that he ought to use. + +One result of this habit is that he has enriched our literature with a +large number of pregnant phrases which, it is safe to prophesy, will +take their place in the vernacular of literary speech. "Hard gem-like +flame," "Drift of flowers," "Tacitness of mind,"--such are some +memorable examples of the exact expression of elusive ideas. The house +of literature built in this fashion is a notable achievement in the +architecture of language. It reminds us of his own description of a +temple of AEsculapius: "His heart bounded as the refined and dainty +magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood of early +sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there, and with +all the singular expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanliness +and simplicity." Who would not give much to be able to say the thing he +wants to say so exactly and so beautifully as that is said? Indeed the +love of beauty is the key both to the humanistic thought and to the +simple and lingering style of Pater's writing. If it is not always +obviously simple, that is never due either to any vagueness or confusion +of thought, but rather to a struggle to express precise shades of +meaning which may be manifold, but which are perfectly clear to himself. + +A mind so sensitive to beauty and so fastidious in judging of it and +expressing it, must necessarily afford a fine arena for the conflict +between the tendencies of idealism and paganism. Here the great struggle +between conscience and desire, the rivalry of culture and restraint, the +choice between Athens and Jerusalem, will present a peculiarly +interesting spectacle. In Walter Pater both elements are strongly +marked. The love of ritual, and a constitutional delight in solemnities +of all kinds, was engrained in his nature. The rationalism of Green and +Jowett, with its high spirituality lighting it from within, drove off +the ritual for a time at least. The result of these various elements is +a humanism for which he abandoned the profession of Christianity with +which he had begun. Yet he could not really part from that earlier +faith, and for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not all +for Apollo, and not all for Christ." The same writer quotes as +applicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was a +disaffected cathedral," and likens him to that mysterious face of Mona +Lisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the most +brilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christian +idealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed gradually +and naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it he +never surrendered the humanistic gains of the time between. He accepted +in their fullness both ideals, and so spiritualised his humanism and +humanised his idealism. Anything less rich and complete than this could +never have satisfied him. Self-denial is obviously not an end in itself; +and yet the real end, the fulfilment of nature, can never by any +possibility be attained by directly aiming at it, but must ever involve +self-denial as a means towards its attainment. It is Pater's clear sight +of the necessity of these two facts, and his lifelong attempt to +reconcile them, that give him, from the ethical and religious point of +view, his greatest importance. + +The story of this reconciliation is _Marius the Epicurean_. It is a +spiritual biography telling the inner history of a Roman youth of the +time of Marcus Aurelius. It begins with an appreciative interpretation +of the old Roman religion as it was then, and depicts the family +celebrations by which the devout were wont to seek "to produce an +agreement with the gods." Among the various and beautiful tableaux of +that Roman life, we see the solemn thoughtful boy reading hard and +becoming a precocious idealist, too old already for his years, but +relieving the inward tension by much pleasure in the country and the +open air. A time of delicate health brings him and us to a temple of +AEsculapius. The priesthood there is a kind of hospital college +brotherhood, whose teaching and way of life inculcate a mysteriously +sacramental character in all matters of health and the body. + +Like all other vital youths, Marius must eat of the tree of knowledge +and become a questioner of hitherto accepted views. "The tyrannous +reality of things visible," and all the eager desire and delight of +youth, make their strong appeal. Two influences favour the temptation. +First there is his friend, Flavian the Epicurean, of the school that +delights in pleasure without afterthought, and is free from the burden +and restraint of conscience; and later on, _The Golden Book_ of +Apuleius, with its exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, and its search +for perfectness in the frankly material life. The moral of its main +story is that the soul must not look upon the face of its love, nor seek +to analyse too closely the elements from which it springs. Spirituality +will be left desolate if it breaks this ban, and its wiser course is to +enjoy without speculation. Thus we see the youth drawn earthwards, yet +with a clinging sense of far mystic reaches, which he refuses as yet to +explore. The death of Flavian rudely shatters this phase of his +experience, and we find him face to face with death. The section begins +with the wonderful hymn of the Emperor Hadrian to his dying soul-- + + Dear wanderer, gipsy soul of mine, + Sweet stranger, pleasing guest and comrade of my flesh, + Whither away? Into what new land, + Pallid one, stoney one, naked one? + +But the sheer spectacle and fact of death is too violent an experience +for such sweet consolations, and the death of Flavian comes like a final +revelation of nothing less than the soul's extinction. Not unnaturally, +the next phase is a rebound into epicureanism, spiritual indeed in the +sense that it could not stoop to low pleasures, but living wholly in the +present none the less, with a strong and imperative appreciation of the +fullness of earthly life. + +The next phase of the life of Marius opens with a journey to Rome, +during which he meets a second friend, the soldier Cornelius. This very +distinctly drawn character fascinates the eye from the first. In him we +meet a kind of earnestness which seems to interpret and fit in with the +austere aspects of the landscape. It is different from that disciplined +hardness which was to be seen in Roman soldiers as the result of their +military training; indeed, it seems as if this were some new kind of +knighthood, whose mingled austerity and blitheness were strangely +suggestive of hitherto unheard-of achievements in character. + +The impression made by Rome upon the mind of Marius was a somewhat +morbid one. He was haunted more or less by the thought of its passing +and its eventual ruin, and he found much, both in its religion and its +pleasure, to criticise. The dominant figure in the imperial city was +that of Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, so famous in his day that for two +hundred years after his death his image was cherished among the Penates +of many pious families. Amid much that was admirable in him, there was a +certain chill in his stoicism, and a sense of lights fading out into the +night. His words in praise of death, and much else of his, had of course +a great distinction. Yet in his private intercourse with Marcus +Aurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it the bleak sense that all +is vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity--of a +too easy acceptance of the world--in the imperial philosophy. For in the +companionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of Marcus +Aurelius, and his friend was more truly an aristocrat than his Emperor. +Cornelius did not accept the world in its entirety, either sadly or +otherwise. In him there was "some inward standard ... of distinction, +selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the period and the +corrupt life across which they were moving together." And, apparently as +a consequence of this spirit of selection, "with all the severity of +Cornelius, there was a breeze of hopefulness--freshness and +hopefulness--as of new morning, about him." Already, it may be, the +quick intelligence of the reader has guessed what is coming. Jesus +Christ said of Himself on one occasion, "For distinctions I am come into +the world." Marius' criticism of the Emperor reached its climax in his +disgust at the amusements of the amphitheatre, which also Marcus +Aurelius accepted. + +There follows a long account of Roman life and thought, with much +speculation as to the ideal commonwealth. That dream of the philosophers +remains for ever in the air, detached from actual experiences and +institutions, but Marius felt himself passing beyond it to something in +which it would be actually realised and visibly localised, "the unseen +Rome on high." Thus in correcting and supplementing the philosophies, +and in insisting upon some actual embodiment of them on the earth, he is +groping his way point by point to Christ. The late Dean Church has said: +"No one can read the wonderful sayings of Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus +Aurelius, without being impressed, abashed perhaps, by their grandeur. +No one can read them without wondering the next moment why they fell so +dead--how little response they seem to have awakened round them." It is +precisely at this point that the young Christian Church found its +opportunity. Pagan idealisms were indeed in the air. The Christian +idealism was being realised upon the earth, and it was this with which +Marius was now coming into contact. + +So he goes on until he is led up to two curious houses. The first of +these was the house of Apuleius, where in a subtle and brilliant system +of ideas it seemed as if a ladder had been set up from earth to heaven. +But Marius discovered that what he wanted was the thing itself and not +its mere theory, a life of realised ideals and not a dialectic. The +second house was more curious still. Much pains is spent upon the +description of it with its "quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble +taste," in which both colour and form, alike of stones and flowers, +seemed expressive of a rare and potent beauty in the personality that +inhabited them. There were inscriptions there to the dead martyrs, +inscriptions full of confidence and peace. Old pagan symbols were there +also--Herakles wrestling with death for possession of Alkestis, and +Orpheus taming the wild beasts--blended naturally with new symbols such +as the Shepherd and the sheep, and the Good Shepherd carrying the sick +lamb upon his shoulder. The voice of singers was heard in the house of +an evening singing the candle hymn, "Hail, Heavenly Light." Altogether +there seemed here to be a combination of exquisite and obvious beauty +with "a transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in +which the old puzzle of life had found its solution." + +It was none other than the Church of the early Christian days that +Marius had stumbled on, under the guidance of his new friend; and +already in heart he had actually become a Christian without knowing it, +for these friends of comeliness seemed to him to have discovered the +secret of actualising the ideal as none others had done. At such a +moment in his spiritual career it is not surprising that he should +hesitate to look upon that which would "define the critical +turning-point," yet he looked. He saw the blend of Greek and Christian, +each at its best--the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. In +this "minor peace of the Church," so pure, so delicate, and so vital +that it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest of +bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the +generations of living trees," he seemed to see the possibility of +satisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love and +self-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than the +Greek blitheness, and a new beauty which contrasted brightly with the +Roman insipidity. It was the humanism of Christianity that so satisfied +him, standing as it did for the fullness of life, in spite of all its +readiness for sacrifice. And it was effective too, for it seemed to be +doing rapidly what the best paganism was doing very slowly--attaining, +almost without thinking about it, the realisation of the noblest ideals. + +"And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the first +time the wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential +power over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. There +were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, +of personal type. The Roman _ingenuus_, with the white toga and gold +ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole +company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thus +unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence +so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as if +he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could +scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the +earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of +which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human +type there present, was the various expression of every form of human +sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so +pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of +humble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on the +details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some +science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly +been no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message from +beyond 'the flaming rampart of the world'--a message of hope regarding +the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of +things--already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, +now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work +in them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known look +comparatively vulgar and mean." + +The spectacle of the Sacrament adds its deep impression, "bread and wine +especially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan +vineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and +animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now +in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch and see, in the +midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things." + +The sense of youth in it all was perhaps the dominating impression--the +youth that was yet old as the world in experience and discovery of the +true meaning of life. The young Christ was rejuvenating the world, and +all things were being made new by him. + +This is the climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for a +moment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him has +been no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does not +leap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietly +realises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealism +had been all the time groping. The story closes amid scenes of plague +and earthquake and martyrdom in which he and Cornelius are taken +prisoners, and he dies at last a Christian. "It was the same people who, +in the grey, austere evening of that day, took up his remains, and +buried them secretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, +holding his death, according to their generous view in this matter, to +have been of the nature of a martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the Church had +always said, was a kind of Sacrament with plenary grace." + +Such is some very brief and inadequate conception of one of the most +remarkable books of our time, a book "written to illustrate the highest +ideal of the aesthetic life, and to prove that beauty may be made the +object of the soul in a career as pure, as concentrated, and as austere +as any that asceticism inspires. _Marius_ is an apology for the highest +Epicureanism, and at the same time it is a texture which the author has +embroidered with exquisite flowers of imagination, learning, and +passion. Modern humanism has produced no more admirable product than +this noble dream of a pursuit through life of the spirit of heavenly +beauty." Nothing could be more true, so far as it goes, than this +admirable paragraph, yet Pater's book is more than that. The main drift +of it is the reconciliation of Hellenism with Christianity in the +experience of a man "bent on living in the full stream of refined +sensation," who finds Christianity in every point fulfilling the ideals +of Epicureanism at its best. + +The spiritual stages through which Marius passes on his journey towards +this goal are most delicately portrayed. In the main these are three, +which, though they recur and intertwine in his experience, yet may be +fairly stated in their natural order and sequence as normal types of +such spiritual progress. + +The first of these stages is a certain vague fear of evil, which seems +to be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense of +some unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps," which reached its +keenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is a +very subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone to +his consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be defined +or accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vague +misgivings took shape in one definite experience. "From the steep slope +a heavy mass of stone was detached, after some whisperings among the +trees above his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell to +pieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so that he +felt the touch upon his heel." That was sufficient, just then, to rouse +out of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil--of one's "enemies." +Such distress was so much a matter of constitution with him, that at +times it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but be +snatched hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark besetting +influence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness of +enemies, seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things. When +tempted by the earth-bound philosophy of the early period of his +development, "he hardly knew how strong that old religious sense of +responsibility, the conscience, as we call it, still was within him--a +body of inward impressions, as real as those so highly valued outward +ones--to offend against which, brought with it a strange feeling of +disloyalty, as to a person." Later on, when the "acceptance of things" +which he found in Marcus Aurelius had offended him, and seemed to mark +the Emperor as his inferior, we find that there is "the loyal conscience +within him, deciding, judging himself and every one else, with a +wonderful sort of authority." This development of conscience from a +vague fear of enemies to a definite court of appeal in a man's judgment +of life, goes side by side with his approach to Christianity. The pagan +idealism of the early days had never been able to cope with that sense +of enemies, nor indeed to understand it; but in the light of his growing +Christian faith, conscience disentangles itself and becomes clearly +defined. + +Another element in the spiritual development of Marius is that which may +be called his consciousness of an unseen companion. Marius was +constitutionally _personel_, and never could be satisfied with the dry +light of pure reason, or with any impersonal ideal whatsoever. For him +the universe was alive in a very real sense. At first, however, this was +the vaguest of sentiments, and it needed much development before it +became clear enough to act as one of the actual forces which played upon +his life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy of +Marcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, made +possible by means of the _Logos_, "the reasonable spark in man, common +to him with the gods." "There could be no inward conversation with +oneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware of +our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one's +disposition of oneself." This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamental +necessity of experience--one of those "beliefs, without which life +itself must be almost impossible, principles which had their sufficient +ground of evidence in that very fact." So far Marcus Aurelius. But the +conviction of some august yet friendly companionship in life beyond the +veil of things seen, took form for Marius in a way far more picturesque. +The passage which describes it is one of the finest in the book, and may +be given at length. + +"Through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in another +life, and like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, +passing from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from various +dangers. That prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively +gratitude: it was as if he must look round for some one else to share +his joy with: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own +relief. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this +way or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one or +another long span of it, the chief delight of the journey. And was it +only the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through +his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had not +been--besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude +which in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of all +things--some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side +throughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of +his peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful +recognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was +there at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for him +altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it?" One can +see in this sense of constant companionship the untranslated and indeed +the unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God is +responsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, it +will be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for that +complexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could better +summarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, +"To have apprehended the _Great Ideal_, so palpably that it defined +personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid +the shadows of the world." + +The third essential development of Marius' thought is that of the City +of God, which for him assumes the shape of a perfected and purified +Rome, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of life and character. This +is indeed the inevitable sequel of any such spiritual developments as +the fear of enemies and the sense of an unseen companion. Man moves +inevitably to the city, and all his ideals demand an embodiment in +social form before they reach their full power and truth. In that house +of life which he calls society, he longs to see his noblest dreams find +a local habitation and a name. This is the grand ideal passed from hand +to hand by the greatest and most outstanding of the world's seers--from +Plato to Augustine, from Augustine to Dante--the ideal of the City of +God. It is but little developed in the book which we are now +considering, for that would be beside the purpose of so intimate and +inward a history. Yet we see, as it were, the towers and palaces of this +"dear City of Zeus" shining in the clear light of the early Christian +time, like the break of day over some vast prospect, with the new City, +as it were some celestial new Rome, in the midst of it. + +These are but a few glimpses at this very significant and far-reaching +book, which indeed takes for its theme the very development from pagan +to Christian idealism with which we are dealing. In it, in countless +bright and vivid glances, the beauty of the world is seen with virgin +eye. Many phases of that beauty belong to the paganism which surrounds +us as we read, yet these are purified from all elements that would make +them pagan in the lower sense, and under our eyes they free themselves +for spiritual flights which find their resting-place at last and become +at once intelligible and permanent in the faith of Jesus Christ. + + + + +LECTURE III + +THE TWO FAUSTS + + +It may seem strange to pass immediately from the time of Marcus Aurelius +to Marlowe and Goethe, and yet the tale upon which these two poets +wrought is one whose roots are very deep in history, and which revives +in a peculiarly vital and interesting fashion the age-long story of +man's great conflict. Indeed the saga on which it is founded belongs +properly to no one period, but is the tragic drama of humanity. It +tells, through all the ages, the tale of the struggle between earth and +the spiritual world above it; and the pagan forms which are introduced +take us back into the classical mythology, and indeed into still more +ancient times. + +The hero of the story must be clearly distinguished from Fust the +printer, a wealthy goldsmith of Mayence, who, in the middle of the +fifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise of +printing. Robert Browning, in _Fust and his Friends_, tells us, with +great vivacity, the story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magic +spirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkward +pause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of the +psalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fust +had, was that so long as this or any other process was kept secret, it +was attributed to supernatural powers. + +Faust, although a contemporary of Fust the printer, was a very different +character. Unfortunately, our information about him comes almost +entirely from his enemies, and their accounts are by no means sparing in +abuse. Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Spanheim in the early part of +the sixteenth century, writes of him with the most virulent contempt, as +a debauched person and a criminal whose overweening vanity arrogated to +itself the most preposterous supernatural powers. It would appear that +he had been some sort of travelling charlatan, whose performing horse +and dog were taken for evil spirits, like Esmeralda's goat in Victor +Hugo's _Notre Dame_. Even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have shared the +common view of him, and at last there was published at Frankfurt the +_Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus_. +The date of this work is 1587, and a translation of it appeared in +London in 1592. It is a discursive composition, founded upon +reminiscences of some ancient stroller who lived very much by his wits; +but it took such a hold upon the imagination of the time that, by the +latter part of the sixteenth century, Faust had become the necromancer +_par excellence_. Into the Faust-book there drifted endless necromantic +lore from the Middle Ages and earlier times. It seems to have had some +connection with Jewish legends of magicians who invoked the _Satanim_, +or lowest grade of elemental spirits not unlike the "elementals" of +modern popular spiritualism. It was the story of a Christian selling his +soul to the powers of darkness, and it had behind it one of the poems of +Hrosvitha of Gandersheim which relates a similar story of an archdeacon +of Cilicia of the sixth century, and also the popular tradition of Pope +Sylvester the Second, who was suspected of having made the same bargain. +Yet, as Lebahn says, "The Faust-legend in its complete form was the +creation of orthodox Protestantism. Faust is the foil to Luther, who +worsted the Devil with his ink-bottle when he sought to interrupt the +sacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue." This legend, +by the way, is a peculiarly happy one, for Luther not only aimed his +ink-bottle at the Devil, but most literally and effectively hit him with +it, when he wrote those books that changed the face of religious Europe. + +The _Historie_ had an immense and immediate popularity, and until well +into the nineteenth century it was reproduced and sold throughout +Europe. As we read it, we cannot but wonder what manner of man it really +was who attracted to himself such age-long hatred and fear, and held the +interest of the centuries. In many respects, doubtless, his story was +like that of Paracelsus, in whom the world has recognised the struggle +of much good with almost inevitable evil, and who, if he had been born +in another generation, might have figured as a commanding spiritual or +scientific authority. + +Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1564, two months before +Shakespeare. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was the pupil of Kett, a +fellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College. This tutor was probably +accountable for much in the future Marlowe, for he was a mystic, and was +burnt for heresy in 1589. After a short and extremely violent life, the +pupil followed his master four years later to the grave, having been +killed in a brawl under very disgraceful circumstances. He only lived +twenty-nine years, and yet he, along with Kyd, changed the literature of +England. Lyly's Pastorals had been the favourite reading of the people +until these men came, keen and audacious, to lead and sing their "brief, +fiery, tempestuous lives." When they wrote their plays and created their +villains, they were not creating so much as remembering. Marlowe's plays +were four, and they were all influential. His _Edward the Second_ was +the precursor of the historical plays of Shakespeare. His other plays +were _Tamburlaine the Great_, _Dr. Faustus_, and _The Jew of Malta_ +(Barabbas). These three were all upon congenial lines, expressing that +Titanism in revolt against the universe which was the inspiring spirit +of Marlowe. But it was the character of Faust that especially fascinated +him, for he found in the ancient magician a pretty clear image of his +own desires and ambitions. He was one of those who loved "the dangerous +edge of things," and, as Charles Lamb said, "delighted to dally with +interdicted subjects." The form of the plays is loose and broken, and +yet there is a pervading larger unity, not only of dramatic action, but +of spirit. The laughter is loud and coarse, the terror unrelieved, and +the splendour dazzling. There is no question as to the greatness of this +work as permanent literature. It has long outlived the amazing +detractions of Hallam and of Byron, and will certainly be read so long +as English is a living tongue. + +The next stage in this curious history is a peculiarly interesting one. +In former days there sprang up around every great work of art a forest +of slighter literature, in the shape of chap-books, ballads, and puppet +plays. By far the most popular of the puppet plays was that founded upon +Marlowe's _Faust_. The German version continued to be played in Germany +until three hundred years later. Goethe constructed his masterpiece +largely by its help. English actors travelling abroad had brought back +the story to its native land of Germany, and in every town the bands of +strolling players sent Marlowe's great conception far and wide. In +England also the puppet play was extremely popular. The drama had moved +from the church to the market-place, and much of the Elizabethan drama +appeared in this quaint form, played by wooden figures upon diminutive +boards. To the modern mind nothing could be more incongruous than the +idea of a solemn drama forced to assume a guise so grotesque and +childish; but, according to Jusserand, much of the stage-work was +extremely ghastly, and no doubt it impressed the multitude. There is +even a story of some actors who had gone too far, and into the midst of +whose play the real devil suddenly descended with disastrous results. It +must, however, be allowed that even the serious plays were not without +an abundant element of grotesqueness. The occasion for Faustus' final +speech of despair, for instance, was the lowering and raising before his +eyes of two or three gilded arm-chairs, representing the thrones in +heaven upon which he would never sit. It does not seem to have occurred +to the audience as absurd that heaven should be regarded as a kind of +drawing-room floating in the air, and indeed that idea is perhaps not +yet obsolete. However that may be, it is quite evident that such +machinery, ill-suited though it was to the solemnities of tragedy, must +have been abundantly employed in the puppet plays. + +The German puppet play of _Faust_ has been transcribed by Dr. Hamm and +translated by Mr. Hedderwick into English. It was obtained at first with +great difficulty, for the showmen kept the libretto secret, and could +not be induced to lend it. Dr. Hamm, however, followed the play round, +listening and committing much of it to memory, and his version was +finally completed when his amanuensis obtained for a day or two the +original manuscript after plying one of the assistants with much beer +and wine. It was a battered book, thumb-marked and soaked with lamp oil, +but it has passed on to posterity one of the most remarkable pieces of +dramatic work which have come down to us from those times. + +In all essentials the play is the same as that of Marlowe, except for +the constant interruptions of the clown Casper, who intrudes with his +absurdities even into the most sacred parts of the action, and entirely +mars the dreadful solemnity of the end by demanding his wages from Faust +while the clock is striking the diminishing intervals of the last hour. + +It was through this curious intermediary that Goethe went back to +Marlowe and created what has been well called "the most mystic poetic +work ever created," and "the _Divina Commedia_ of the eighteenth +century." Goethe's _Faust_ is elemental, like _Hamlet_. Readers of +_Wilhelm Meister_ will remember how profound an impression _Hamlet_ had +made upon Goethe's mind, and this double connection between Goethe and +the English drama forms one of the strongest and most interesting of all +the links that bind Germany to England. His _Faust_ was the direct +utterance of Goethe's own inner life. He says: "The marionette folk of +_Faust_ murmured with many voices in my soul. I, too, had wandered into +every department of knowledge, and had returned early enough, satisfied +with the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under various +aspects, and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied." Thus _Faust_ +lay in the depths of Goethe's life as a sort of spiritual pool, +mirroring all its incidents and thoughts. The play was begun originally +in the period of his _Sturm und Drang_, and it remained unpublished +until, in old age, the ripened mind of the great poet took it over +practically unchanged, and added the calmer and more intellectual parts. +The whole of the Marguerite story belongs to the earlier days. + +There is nothing in the whole of literature which could afford us a +finer and more fundamental account of the battle between paganism and +idealism in the soul of man, than the comparison between the _Fausts_ of +Marlowe and of Goethe. But before we come to this, it may be interesting +to notice two or three points of special interest in the latter drama, +which show how entirely pagan are the temptations of Faust. + +The first passage to notice is that opening one on Easter Day, where the +devil approaches Faust in the form of a dog. Choruses of women, +disciples, and angels are everywhere in the air; and although the dog +appears first in the open, yet the whole emphasis of the passage is upon +the contrast between that brilliant Easter morning with its sunshine and +its music, and the close and darkened study into which Faust has shut +himself. It is true he goes abroad, but it is not to join with the rest +in their rejoicing, but only as a spectator, with all the superiority as +well as the wistfulness of his illicit knowledge. Evidently the +impression intended is that of the wholesomeness of the crowd and the +open air. He who goes in with the rest of men in their sorrow and their +rejoicing cannot but find the meaning of Easter morning for himself. It +is a festival of earth and the spring, an earth idealised, whose spirit +is incarnate in the risen Christ. Faust longs to share in that, and on +Easter Eve tries in vain to read his Gospel and to feel its power. But +the only cure for such morbid introspectiveness as his, is to cast +oneself generously into the common life of man, and the refusal to do +this invites the pagan devil. + +Another point of interest is the coming of the _Erdgeist_ immediately +after the _Weltschmerz_. The sorrow that has filled his heart with its +melancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and the +thousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition, +are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheer +worldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's _Pilgrim's +Progress_ it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough of +Despond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Precisely the +same experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is subtler +and more complex than that of Bunyan. The _Erdgeist_ which comes to the +saddened scholar is a noble spirit, vivifying and creative. It is the +world in all its glorious fullness of meaning, quite as true an idealism +as that which is expressed in the finest spirit of the Greeks. But for +Faust it is too noble. His morbid gloom has enervated him, and the call +of the splendid earth is beyond him. So there comes, instead of it, a +figure as much poorer than that of Worldly Wiseman as the _Erdgeist_ is +richer. Wagner represents the poor commonplace world of the wholly +unideal. It is infinitely beneath the soul of Faust, and yet for the +time it conquers him, being nearer to his mood. Thus Mephistopheles +finds his opportunity. The scholar, embittered with the sense that +knowledge is denied to him, will take to mere action; and the action +will not be great like that which the _Erdgeist_ would have prompted, +but poor and unsatisfying to any nobler spirit than that of Wagner. + +The third incident which we may quote is that of _Walpurgis-Night_. Some +critics would omit this part, which, they say, "has naught of interest +in bearing on the main plot of the poem." Nothing could be more mistaken +than such a judgment. In the _Walpurgis-Night_ we have the play ending +in that sheer paganism which is the counterpart to Easter Day at the +beginning. Walpurgis has a strange history in German folklore. It is +said that Charlemagne, conquering the German forests for the Christian +faith, drove before him a horde of recalcitrant pagans, who took a last +shelter among the trees of the Brocken. There, on the pagan May-day, in +order to celebrate their ancient rites unmolested, they dressed +themselves in all manner of fantastic and bestial masks, so as to +frighten off the Christianising invaders from the revels. The Walpurgis +of _Faust_ exhibits paganism at its lowest depths. Sir Mammon is the +host who invites his boisterous guests to the riot of his festive night. +The witches arrive on broomsticks and pitchforks; singing, not without +significance, the warning of woe to all climbers--for here aspiration of +any sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact that +pious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducing +the same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which Nathaniel +Hawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of _Young Goodman +Brown_; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust in +disgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch with +whom he had been dancing there had sprung a small red mouse. Throughout +the whole play the sense of holy and splendid ideals shines at its +brightest in lurid contrast with the hopeless and sordid dark of the +pagan earth. + +Returning now to our main point, the comparison of Marlowe's play with +Goethe's, let us first of all contrast the temptations in the two. +Marlowe's play is purely theological. Jusserand finely describes the +underlying tragedy of it. "Faust, like Tamburlaine, and like all the +heroes of Marlowe, lives in thought, beyond the limit of the possible. +He thirsts for a knowledge of the secrets of the universe, as the other +thirsted for domination over the world." Both are Titanic figures +exactly in the pagan sense, but the form of Faustus' Titanism is the +revolt against theology. From the early days of the Christian +persecutions, there had been a tendency to divorce the sacred from the +secular, and to regard all that was secular as being of the flesh and +essentially evil. The mediaeval views of celibacy, hermitage, and the +monastic life, had intensified this divorce; and while many of the monks +were interested in human secular learning, yet there was a feeling, +which in many cases became a kind of conscience, that only the divine +learning was either legitimate or safe for a man's eternal well-being. +The Faust of Marlowe is the Prometheus of his own day. The new knowledge +of the Renaissance had spread like fire across Europe, and those who saw +in it a resurrection of the older gods and their secrets, unhesitatingly +condemned it. The doctrine of immortality had entirely supplanted the +old Greek ideal of a complete earthly life for man, and all that was +sensuous had come to be regarded as intrinsically sinful. Thus we have +for background a divided universe, in which there is a great gulf fixed +between this world and the next, and a hopeless cleavage between the +life of body and that of spirit. + +In this connection we may also consider the women of the two plays. +Charles Lamb has asked, "What has Margaret to do with Faust?" and has +asserted that she does not belong to the legend at all. Literally, this +is true, in so far as there is no Margaret in the earlier form of the +play, whose interest was, as we have seen, essentially theological. Yet +Margaret belongs to the essential story and cannot be taken out of it. +She is the "eternal feminine," in which the battle between the spirit +and the flesh, between idealism and paganism, will always make its last +stand. Even Marlowe has to introduce a woman. His Helen is, indeed, a +mere incident, for the real bride of the soul must be either theological +or secular science; and yet so essential and so poignant is the question +of woman to the great drama, that the passage in which the incident of +Helen is introduced far surpasses anything else in Marlowe's play, and +indeed is one of the grandest and most beautiful in all literature. + + "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, + And burned the topless towers of Ilium? + Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. + + * * * * * + + O, thou art fairer than the evening air, + Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars." + +Still, Marlowe's _motif_ is not sex but theology. The former heretics +whom we named had been saved--Theophilus by the intervention of the +Blessed Virgin Mary, and Pope Sylvester snatched from the very jaws of +hell--by a return to orthodoxy. That was in the Roman Catholic days, but +the savage antithesis between earth and heaven had been taken over by +the conscience of Protestantism, making a duality which rendered life +always intellectually anxious and almost impossible. It is this +condition in which Marlowe finds himself. The good and the evil angels +stand to right and left of his Faustus, pleading with him for and +against secular science on the one side and theological knowledge on the +other. For that is the implication behind the contest between magic and +Christianity. "The Faust of the earlier Faust-books and ballads, dramas, +puppet shows, which grew out of them, is damned because he prefers the +human to the divine knowledge. He laid the Holy Scriptures behind the +door and under the bench, refused to be called Doctor of Theology, but +preferred to be called Doctor of Medicine." Obviously here we find +ourselves in a very lamentable _cul-de-sac_. Idealism has floated apart +from the earth and all its life, and everything else than theology is +condemned as paganism. + +Goethe changes all that. In the earlier _Weltschmerz_ passages some +traces of it still linger, where Faust renounces theology; but even +there it is not theology alone that he renounces, but philosophy, +medicine, and jurisprudence as well, so that his renunciation is +entirely different from that of Marlowe's Faustus. In Goethe it is no +longer one doctrine or one point of view against another doctrine or +another point of view. It is life, vitality in all its forms, against +all mere doctrine whatsoever. + + "Grey, dearest friend, is every theory, + But golden-green is the tree of life." + +Thus the times had passed into a sense of the limits of theology such as +has been well expressed in Rossetti's lines-- + + "Let lore of all theology + Be to thee all it can be, + But know,--the power that fashions man + Measured not out thy little span + For thee to take the meting-rod + In turn and so approve on God." + +So in Goethe we have the unsatisfied human spirit with its infinite +cravings and longings for something more than earth can give--something, +however, which is not separated from the earth, and which is entirely +different from theological dogma or anything of that sort. In this, +Goethe is expressing a constant yearning of his own, which illuminated +all his writings like a gentle hidden fire within them, hardly seen in +many passages and yet always somehow felt. It is _through_ the flesh +that he will find the spirit, _through_ this world that he will find the +next. The quest is ultimately the same as that of Marlowe, but the form +of it is absolutely opposed to his. Goethe is as far from Marlowe's +theological position as _Peer Gynt_ is, and indeed there is a +considerable similarity between Ibsen's great play and Goethe's. As the +drama develops, it is true that the love of Faust becomes sensual and +his curiosity morbid; but the tragedy lies no longer in the belief that +sense and curiosity are in themselves wrong, but in the fact that Faust +fails to distinguish their high phases from their low. We have already +seen that the _Erdgeist_ which first appeals to Faust is too great for +him, and it is there that the tragedy really lies. The earth is not an +accursed place, and the _Erdgeist_ may well find its home among the +ideals; but Wagner is neither big enough nor clean enough to be man's +guide. + +The contrast between the high and low ideals comes to its finest and +most tragic in the story of Margaret. Spiritual and sensual love +alternate through the play. Its tragedy and horror concentrate round the +fact that love has followed the lower way. Margaret has little to give +to Faust of fellowship along intellectual or spiritual lines. She is a +village maiden, and he takes from her merely the obvious and lower kind +of love. It is a way which leads ultimately to the dance of the witches +and the cellar of Auerbach, yet Faust can never be satisfied with these, +and from the witch's mouth comes forth the red mouse--the climax of +disgust. In Auerbach's cellar he sees himself as the pagan man in him +would like to be. In Martha one sees the pagan counterpart to the pure +and simple Margaret, just as Mephistopheles is the pagan counterpart to +Faust. The lower forms of life are the only ones in which Martha and +Mephistopheles are at home. For Faust and Margaret the lapse into the +lower forms brings tragedy. Yet it must be remembered also that Faust +and Mephistopheles are really one, for the devil who tempts every man is +but himself after all, the animal side of him, the dog. + +The women thus stand for the most poignant aspect of man's great +temptation. It is not, as we have already said, any longer a conflict +between the secular and the sacred that we are watching, nor even the +conflict between the flesh and the spirit. It is between a higher and a +lower way of treating life, flesh and spirit both. Margaret stands for +all the great questions that are addressed to mankind. There are for +every man two ways of doing work, of reading a book, of loving a woman. +He who keeps his spiritual life pure and high finds that in all these +things there is a noble path. He who yields to his lower self will +prostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to the +mad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel in +literature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result of +choosing the pagan and refusing the ideal. The Blocksberg is the pagan +heaven. + +A still more striking contrast between the plays meets us when we +consider the respective characters of Mephistopheles. When we compare +the two devils we are reminded of that most interesting passage in +Professor Masson's great essay, which describes the secularisation of +Satan between _Paradise Lost_ and the _Faust_ of Goethe:-- + +"We shall be on the right track if we suppose Mephistopheles to be what +Satan has become after six thousand years.... Goethe's Mephistopheles is +this same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand years +in his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million times +sharper and cleverer.... For six thousand years he has been pursuing the +walk he struck out at the beginning, plying his self-selected function, +dabbling devilishly in human nature, and abjuring all interest in the +grander physics; and the consequence is, as he himself anticipated, that +his nature, once great and magnificent, has become small, virulent, and +shrunken. He, the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured and +civilised into the clever, cold-hearted Mephistopheles." + +Marlowe's devil is of the solemn earlier kind, not yet degraded into the +worldling whom Goethe has immortalised. Marlowe's Mephistophilis is +essentially the idealist, and it is his Faust who is determined for the +world. One feels about Mephistophilis that he is a kind of religious +character, although under a cloud. The things he does are done to organ +music, and he might be a figure in some stained-glass window of old. Not +only is he "a melancholy devil, with a soul above the customary hell," +but he actually retains a kind of despairing idealism which somehow +ranks him on the side rather of good than of evil. The puppet play +curiously emphasises this. "Tell me," says Faust, "what would you do if +you could attain to everlasting salvation?" "Hear and despair! Were I to +attain to everlasting salvation, I would mount to heaven on a ladder, +though every rung were a razor edge." The words are exactly in the +spirit of the earlier play. So sad is the devil, so oppressed with a +sense of the horror of it all, that, as we read, it almost seems as if +Faust were tempting the unwilling Mephistophilis to ruin him. + + "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it; + Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, + And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, + Am not tormented with ten thousand hells + In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss? + O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, + Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!" + +To which Faust replies-- + + "What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate + For being deprived of the joys of heaven? + Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, + And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess." + +Goethe's Mephistopheles near the end of the play taunts Faust in the +words, "Why dost thou seek our fellowship if thou canst not go through +with it?... Do we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?" And one has +the feeling that, like most other things the fiend says, it is an +apparent truth which is really a lie; but it would have been entirely +true if Marlowe's devil had said it. + +The Mephistopheles of Goethe is seldom solemnised at all. Once indeed on +the Harz Mountains he says-- + + "Naught of this genial influence do I know! + Within me all is wintry. + + * * * * * + + How sadly, yonder, with belated glow, + Rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round!" + +Yet there it is merely by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideous +sorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is like +Satan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuries +instead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jaunty +air that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the passage as +irreverent. He is the spirit that _denies_--sceptical and cynical, the +anti-Christian that is in us all. His business is to depreciate +spiritual values, and to persuade mortals that there is no real +distinction between good and bad, or between high and low. We have seen +in the character of Cornelius in _Marius the Epicurean_ "some inward +standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various +elements of the period." Here is the extreme opposite. There is no +divine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would never +have said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor edges. +There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is a +spirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future. +Before the throne of God he swaggers with the same easy insolence as in +Martha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism. + +So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan and +Mephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, making +paganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the nobler side of the +man. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that which +had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and +thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the +worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, +never quite lose." + +One more contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, the +fate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably damned. On +the old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and the +sacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect of +man was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for the +rebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific passage at the +close, when, with the chiming of the bell, terror grows to madness in +the victim's soul, and at last he envies the beasts that perish-- + + "For, when they die, + Their souls are soon dissolved in elements; + But mine must live still to be plagued in hell. + Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me! + No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer + That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven." + +Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not have +accepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out that +the final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; but +Goethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even if +Lessing had not asserted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play, +by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly damnable" as Martha +is. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaks +forth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery of +this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art +grinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words follow +immediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth by +Mephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first." Such a Faust as +this, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can the +Mephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for his +destruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the only +really damnable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles of +Goethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing the +sin against the Holy Ghost. + +The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning of +the play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines of +human life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere that +surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy +issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only +on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and +cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment," only + + "If ever to the passing hour I say, + So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"-- + +only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the +first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to +bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such +bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit +such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor +lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought. + +It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. It +is true that "man errs so long as he is striving," but the great word of +the play is just this, that no such errors can ever be final. The deadly +error is that of those who have ceased to strive, and who have +complacently settled down in the acceptance of the lower life with its +gratifications and delights. + +But such striving is, as Robert Browning tells us in _Rabbi ben Ezra_ +and _The Statue and the Bust_, the critical and all-important point in +human character and destiny. It is this which distinguishes pagan from +idealist in the end. Faust's errors fall off from him like a discarded +robe; the essential man has never ceased to strive. He has gone indeed +to hell, but he has never made his bed there. He is saved by want of +satisfaction. + + + + +LECTURE IV + +CELTIC REVIVALS OF PAGANISM + +OMAR KAYYAM AND FIONA MACLEOD + + +It is extremely difficult to judge justly and without prejudice the +literature of one's own time. So many different elements are pouring +into it that it assumes a composite character, far beyond the power of +definition or even of epigram to describe as a whole. But, while this is +true, it is nevertheless possible to select from this vast amalgam +certain particular elements, and to examine them and judge them fairly. + +The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included under +the head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the most +modern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, +although they have come into our literature but recently, yet represent +very ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern about +them. They describe bed-rock human passions and longings, sorrowings +and consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, +but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism. + + +OMAR KAYYAM + +In the twelfth century, at Khorassan in Persia Omar Kayyam the poet was +born. He lived and died at Naishapur, following the trade of a +tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with +astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the _Rubaiyat_, was +first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the +sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the +Omar Kayyam Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since +come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations." + +In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Sufis, or +religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which +professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be +suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It +was against the poetry of such Sufis that Omar Kayyam rose in revolt. +Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the +exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed. + +A fair specimen of the finest Sufi poetry is _The Rose Garden of Sa'di_, +which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility in +English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although of +a later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, and +he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war. +His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in hand +through a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primary +conviction that the soul is essentially part of God, and will return to +God again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints and +half-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and there +you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines-- + + "Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs, + Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries. + The guardian of the store-house of the wind + Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies." + +These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate-- + + "To God's beloved even the dark hour + Shines as the morning glory after rain. + Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power + Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain." + +It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyam revolted. He had not +any proof of such spiritual assurances, and he did not want that of +which he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, both +in its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any other +world. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, and +protested against the vague spirituality of the Sufis by an assertion of +what may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much as +they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit +an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who +"failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of +what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of +any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the +inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb--"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not +worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with +such inscriptions on them--"The future is utterly useless, make the most +of to-day,"--and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and the +inscription. + +The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. In +his view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means God; when he +speaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, no +man has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left his +meaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine and +love--earthly things, which may or may not have their spiritual +counterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. The +same persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, and +wine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life for +Omar as he knows it. + + "Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring + Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. + + A Book of verses underneath the Bough, + A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou + Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- + Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! + + We are no other than a moving row + Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go + Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held + In Midnight by the Master of the Show." + +It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too +seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of +Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in +as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained. +When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li +Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him. +That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which +neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it +would have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have found +the fashions of China somewhat _risque_. One remembers that introductory +note to Browning's _Ferishtah's Fancies_--"You, Sir, I entertain you for +one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you +will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."[1] The only safe +way of dealing with Omar Kayyam is to insist that his garments be _not_ +changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The +East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most +materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to +quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and +fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide. + +Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the +literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent +materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is +subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is +capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it +becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and +drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites +may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast +of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take +the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr. +Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on +a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart +of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a +picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the +signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons." +That is the root of the matter after all--the soul and horizons. He who +says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high +intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip +of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent +has certainly not lessened. + +The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is +only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple +life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have +a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves +for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of +degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious +self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present +world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are +moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel +the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange +scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always +will be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we +have already found to be the keynote of Goethe's _Faust_. Kingsley, in +one of the most remarkable passages of _Westward Ho!_ describes two of +Amyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly +delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the +march. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil. +But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and +fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O Lord +Jesus," said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!" + +It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce the +element of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his _Conspiracy of +Pontiac_, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the Ojibwa +Indians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out +his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; ... or he +lifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles +on the grass-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs +away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.... But when winter +descends upon the North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can +fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and +stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the +snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat +strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs." + +Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the time +trying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked up +again, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, that +impossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Those +who choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that the +song of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt at +singing and fall into an earth-bound silence. + +Thus Omar Kayyam has brought us a rich treasure from the East, of +splendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness of +poetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and a +decoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are taken +more seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as other +Eastern things have sometimes done. + + +FIONA MACLEOD + +To turn suddenly from this curious Persian life and thought to the still +more curious life and thought of ancient Scotland is indeed a violent +change. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the two types of paganism +out of which they spring; and if Fiona Macleod's work may have its +dangers for the precarious faith of modern days, they are certainly +dangers which attack the soul in a different fashion from those of Omar. + +The revelation of Fiona Macleod's identity with William Sharp came upon +the English-reading world as a complete surprise. Few deaths have been +more lamented in the literary world than his, and that for many reasons. +His biography is one of the most fascinating that could be imagined. His +personality was a singularly attractive one,--so vital, so +indefatigable,--with interests so many-sided, and a heart so sound in +all of them. It is characteristic of him that in his young days he ran +away for a time with gipsies, for he tells us, "I suppose I was a gipsy +once, and before that a wild man of the woods." The two great influences +of his life were Shelley and D.G. Rossetti. The story of his literary +struggles is brimful of courage and romance, and the impression of the +book is mainly that of ubiquity. His insatiable curiosity seems to have +led him to know everybody, and every place, and everything. + +At length Fiona Macleod was born. She arose out of nowhere, so far as +the reading public could discover. Really there was a hidden shy self in +Sharp, which must find expression impossible except in some secret way. +We knew him as the brilliant critic, the man of affairs, and the wide +and experienced traveller. We did not know him, until we discovered that +he was Fiona, in that second life of his in the borderland where flesh +and spirit meet. + +First there came _Pharais_ in 1893, and that was the beginning of much. +Then came _The Children of To-morrow_, the forerunner of Fiona Macleod. +It was his first prose expression of the subjective side of his nature, +together with the element of revolt against conventionalities, which was +always strongly characteristic of him. It introduced England to the +hidden places of the Green Life. + +The secret of his double personality was confided only to a few friends, +and was remarkably well kept. When pressed by adventurous questioners, +some of these allies gave answers which might have served for models in +the art of diplomacy. So Sharp wrote on, openly as William Sharp, and +secretly as Fiona Macleod. Letters had to reach Fiona somehow, and so it +was given out that she was his cousin, and that letters sent to him +would be safely passed on to her. If, however, it was difficult to keep +the secret from the public, it was still more difficult for one man to +maintain two distinct personalities. William Sharp of course had to +live, while Fiona might die any day. Her life entailed upon him another +burden, not of personification only, but of subject and research, and he +was driven to sore passes to keep both himself and her alive. For each +was truly alive and individual--two distinct people, one of whom thought +of the other as if she were "asleep in another room." Even the double +correspondence was a severe burden and strain, for Fiona Macleod had her +own large post-bag which had to be answered, just as William Sharp had +his. But far beyond any such outward expressions of themselves as these, +the difficulty of the double personality lay in deep springs of +character and of taste. Sharp's mind was keenly intellectual, observant, +and reasoning; while Fiona Macleod was the intuitional and spiritual +dreamer. She was indeed the expression of the womanly element in Sharp. +This element certainly dominated him, or rather perhaps he was one of +those who have successfully invaded the realm of alien sex. In his +earlier work, such as _The Lady of the Sea_,--"the woman who is in the +heart of woman,"--we have proof of this; for in that especially he so +"identified himself with woman's life, seeing it through her own eyes +that he seems to forget sometimes that he is not she." So much was this +the case that Fiona Macleod actually received at least one proposal of +marriage. It was answered quite kindly, Fiona replying that she had +other things to do, and could not think of it; but the little incident +shows how true the saying about Sharp was, that "he was always in love +with something or another." This loving and love-inspiring element in +him has been strongly challenged, and some of the women who have judged +him, have strenuously disowned him as an exponent of their sex. Yet the +fact is unquestionable that he was able to identify himself in a quite +extraordinary degree with what he took to be the feminine soul. + +It seems to have something to do with the Celtic genius. One can always +understand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one or +a Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case to +remember Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the +present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and +that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it +were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high +soprano, and Mr. Yeats in deep and most heart-searching contralto. + +The Fiona Macleod side of Sharp never throve well in London. Hers was +the fate of those who in this busy world have retained the faculty and +the need for dreaming. So Sharp had to get away from London--driven of +the spirit into the wilderness--that his other self might live and +breathe. One feels the power of this second self especially in certain +words that recur over and over again, until the reader is almost +hypnotised by their lilting, and finds himself in a kind of sleep. That +dreaming personality, with eyes half closed and poppy-decorated hair, +could never live in the bondage of the city cage. The spirit must get +free, and the longing for such freedom has been well called "a barbaric +passion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea." + +There are two ways of loving and understanding nature. Meredith speaks +of those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun. +The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of +the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must +always be doing something with nature--either hunting, or camping out, +or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. But +there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristic +of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet. The +test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn "and no' +think lang." Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed nothing to +interest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and its waters. +It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the grassy turf +and then scatter it to the east and west and north and south; or lie +down at night upon the ground that he might see the intricate patterns +of the moonlight, filtering through the branches of the trees. + +In all this, it is needless to say, Mr. Yeats offers a close parallel. +He understands so perfectly the wild life, that one knows at once that +it is in him, like a fire in his blood. Take this for instance-- + + "They found a man running there; + He had ragged long grass-coloured hair; + He had knees that stuck out of his hose; + He had puddle water in his shoes; + He had half a cloak to keep him dry, + Although he had a squirrel's eye." + +Such perfect observation is possible only to the detached spirit, which +is indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work. +In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and the +heart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the squirrel's +eye for nature. + +Fiona's favourite part of nature is the sea. That great and many-sided +wonder, whether with its glare of phosphorescence or the stillness of +its dead calm, fascinates the poems of Sharp and lends them its spell. +But of the prose of Fiona it may be truly said that everything + + "... doth suffer a sea-change, + Into something rich and strange." + +These marvellous lines were never more perfectly illustrated than here. +As we read we behold the sea, now crouching like a gigantic tiger, now +moaning with some Celtic consciousness of the grim and loathsome +treasures in its depths, ever haunted and ever haunting. It is probable +that Sharp never wrote anything that had not for his ear an undertone of +the ocean. Sitting in London in his room, he heard, on one occasion, the +sound of waves so loud that he could not hear his wife knocking at the +door. Similarly in Fiona Macleod's writing seas are always rocking and +swinging. Gulfs are opening to disclose the green dim mysteries of the +deeper depths. The wind is running riot with the surface overhead, and +the sea is lord in all its mad glory and wonder and fear. + +Mr. Yeats has the same characteristic, but again it is possible to draw +a fantastic distinction like that between the soprano and the alto. It +is lake water rather than the ocean that sounds the under-tone of Mr. +Yeats' poetry-- + + "I will arise and go now, for always night and day + I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; + While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey, + I hear it in the deep heart's core." + +The oldest sounds in the world, Mr. Yeats tells us are wind and water +and the curlew: and of the curlew he says-- + + "O curlew, cry no more in the air, + Or only to the waters of the West; + Because your crying brings to my mind + Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair + That was shaken out over my breast: + There is enough evil in the crying of wind." + +In all this you hear the crying of the wind and the swiftly borne scream +of the curlew on it, and you know that lake water will not be far away. +This magic power of bringing busy city people out of all their +surroundings into the green heart of the forest and the moorland, and +letting them hear the sound of water there, is common to them both. + +Fiona Macleod is a lover and worshipper of beauty. Long before her, the +Greeks had taught the world their secret, and the sweet spell had +penetrated many hearts beyond the pale of Greece. It was Augustine who +said, "Late I have loved thee, oh beauty, so old and yet so new, late I +have loved thee." And Marius the Epicurean, in Pater's fine phrase, "was +one who was made perfect by love of visible beauty." It is a direct +instinct, this bracing and yet intoxicating love of beauty for its own +sake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one of +the deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easily +distinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness I +ask, not lovely things," says Fiona; and it is but a step from this to +that abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the very +soul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours, +and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The pale +green of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still more +the remote and liquid colours of the sky, and the sad-toned or the gay +garments of the earth--these are more by far to those who know their +value than pigments, however delicate. They are either a sensuous +intoxication or else a mystic garment of the spirit. Seumas, the old +islander, looking seaward at sunrise, says, "Every morning like this I +take my hat off to the beauty of the world." And as we read we think of +Mr. Neil Munro's lord of Doom Castle walking uncovered in the night +before retiring to his rest, and with tears welling in his eyes +exclaiming that the mountains are his evening prayer. Such mystics as +these are in touch with far-off things. Sharp, indeed, was led +definitely to follow such leading into regions of spiritualism where not +many of his readers will be able or willing to follow him, but Fiona +Macleod left the mystery vague. It might easily have defined itself in +some sort of pantheistic theory of the universe, but it never did so. +"The green fire" is more than the sap which flows through the roots of +the trees. It is as Alfred de Musset has called it, the blood that +courses through the veins of God. As we realise the full force of that +imaginative phrase, the dark roots of trees instinct with life, and the +royal liquor rising to its foam of leaves, we have something very like +Fiona's mystic sense of nature. Any extreme moment of human experience +will give an interpretation of such symbolism--love or death or the mere +springtide of the year. + +It is not without significance that Sharp and Mr. Yeats and Mr. Symons +all dreamed on the same night the curious dream of a beautiful woman +shooting arrows among the stars. All the three had indeed the beautiful +woman in the heart of them, and in far-darting thoughts and imaginations +she was ever sending arrows among the stars. But Mr. Yeats is calmer and +less passionate than Fiona, as though he were crooning a low song all +the time, while the silent arrows flash from his bow. Sometimes, indeed, +he will blaze forth flaming with passion in showers of light of the +green fire. Yet from first to last, there is less of the green fire and +more of the poppies in Mr. Yeats and it is Fiona who shoots most +constantly and farthest among the stars. + +_Haunted_, that is the word for this world into which we have entered. +The house without its guests would be uninhabitable for such poets as +these. The atmosphere is everywhere that of a haunted earth where +strange terrors and beauties flit to and fro--phantoms of spectral lives +which seem to be looking on while we play out our bustling parts upon +the stage. They are separate from the body, these shadows, and belong to +some former life. They are an ancestral procession walking ever behind +us, and often they are changing the course of our visible adventures by +the power of sins and follies that were committed in the dim and +remotest past. Certainly the author is, as he says, "Aware of things and +living presences hidden from the rest." "The shadows are here." The +spirits of the dead and the never born are out and at large. These or +others like them were the folk that Abt Vogler encountered as he played +upon his instrument--"presences plain in the place." + +One of the most striking chapters in that very remarkable book of Mr. +Fielding Hall's, _The Soul of a People_, is that in which he describes +the nats, the little dainty spirits that haunt the trees of Burmah. But +it is not only the Eastern trees that are haunted, and Sharp is always +seeing tree-spirits, and nature-spirits of every kind, and talking with +them. Now and again he will give you a natural explanation of them, but +that always jars and sounds prosaic. In fact, we do not want it; we +prefer the "delicate throbbing things" themselves, to any facts you can +give us instead of them, for to those who have heard and seen beyond the +veil, they are far more real than any of your mere facts. Here we think +of Mr. Yeats again with his cry, "Come into the world again wild bees, +wild bees." But he hardly needed to cry upon them, for the wild bees +were buzzing in every page he wrote. + +A world haunted in this fashion has its sinister side, allied with the +decaying corpses deep in the earth. When passion has gone into the world +beyond that which eye hath seen and ear heard, it takes, in presence of +the thought of death, a double form. It is in love with death and yet it +hates death. So we come back to that singular sentence of Robert Louis +Stevenson's, "The beauty and the terror of the world," which so +adequately describes the double fascination of nature for man. Her spell +is both sweet and terrible, and we would not have it otherwise The +menace in summer's beauty, the frightful contrast between the laughing +earth and the waiting death, are all felt in the prolonged and deep +sense of gloom that broods over much of Fiona's work, and in the +second-sight which very weirdly breaks through from time to time, +forcing our entrance into the land from which we shrink. + +Mr. Yeats is not without the same sinister and moving undergloom, +although, on the whole, he is aware of kindlier powers and of a timid +affection between men and spirits. He actually addresses a remonstrance +to Scotsmen for having soured the disposition of their ghosts and +fairies, and his reconstructions of the ancient fairyland are certainly +full of lightsome and pleasing passages. Along either lane you may +arrive at peace, which is the monopoly neither of the Eastern nor of the +Western Celt, but it is a peace never free from a great wistfulness. + + "How many loved your moments of glad grace, + And loved your beauty with love false or true; + But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, + And loved the sorrows of your changing face." + +That there is much paganism in all this must be obvious to any one who +has given any attention to the subject. The tale of _The Annir-Choille_ +confesses it frankly enough, where the young Christian prince is brought +back by the forest maiden from his new faith to the ancient pagan world. +Old gods are strewn everywhere upon the waysides down which Fiona leads +us, and there are many times when we cannot disentangle the spiritual +from the material, nor indeed the good from the evil influences. Dr. +John Brown used to tell the story of a shepherd boy near Biggar, who one +day was caught out on the hill in a thunder-storm. The boy could not +remember whether thunder-storms were sent by God or Satan, and so to be +quite safe, he kept alternately repeating the ejaculations, "Eh, guid +God," and "Eh, bonny deil." One often thinks of Fiona in connection with +that story. You are seldom quite sure whether it is a Christian or a +pagan deity whom you are invoking, but there is no question as to the +paganism of the atmosphere which you often breathe. + +As a matter of fact, William Sharp began in frank and avowed paganism, +and passed from that through various phases into a high spirituality. +His early utterances in regard to Art, in which he deprecated any +connection between Art and a message, and insisted upon its being mere +expression, were of course sheer paganism. In 1892, before Fiona was +born, he published one of those delightful magazines which run through a +short and daring career and then vanish as suddenly as they arose. In +fact his magazine, _The Pagan Review_, from first to last had only one +number. It was edited by Mr. Brooks and William Sharp, and its articles +were contributed by seven other people. But these seven, and Mr. Brooks +as well, turned out eventually all to be William Sharp himself. It was +"frankly pagan; pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan in +outlook.... The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us +personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign +power in the realm." He finished up with the interesting phrase, "Sic +transit gloria Grundi," and he quotes Gautier: "'Frankly I am in earnest +this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, +a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd. I shall have +a lamb washed to complete the pastoral....' This is the lamb." + +The magazine was an extraordinarily clever production, and the fact that +he was its author is significant. For to the end of her days Fiona was a +pagan still, albeit sometimes a more or less converted pagan. In _The +Annir-Choille_, _The Sin-Eater_, _The Washer of the Ford_, and the +others, you never get away from the ancient rites, and there is one +story which may be taken as typical of all the rest, _The Walker in the +Night_:-- + +"Often he had heard of her. When any man met this woman his fate +depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she +saw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange song, and he would +go to her; and when he was before her, two flames would come out of her +eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder, +and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she +would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and a +day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is let go a +furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadow +from glade to glade, or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a +wayside Calvary: but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almost +be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a +valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now and +again unhappy nightfarers--unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal +remain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken--would be +startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some such +terrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night had +taken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the last +day of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawk +scatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry." + +We have said that nature may be either an intoxication or a sacrament, +and paganism might be defined as the view of nature in the former of +these two lights. But where you have a growing spirituality like that of +William Sharp, you are constantly made aware of the hieratic or +sacramental quality in nature also. It is this which gives its peculiar +charm and spell to Celtic folklore in general. The Saxon song of Beowulf +is a rare song, and its story is the swinging tale of a "pagan gentleman +very much in the rough," but for the most part it is quite destitute of +spiritual significance. It may be doubted if this could be said truly of +any Celtic tale that was ever told. Fiona Macleod describes _The Three +Marvels_ as "studies in old religious Celtic sentiment, so far as that +can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and +simplicity in the early Christian faith"; and there is a constant sense +that however wild and even wicked the tale may be, yet it has its +Christian counterpart, and is in some true sense a strayed idealism. + +At this point we become aware of one clear distinction between William +Sharp and Fiona Macleod. To him, literature was a craft, laboured at +most honestly and enriched with an immense wealth both of knowledge and +of cleverness; but to her, literature was a revelation, with divine +inspirations behind it--inspirations authentically divine, no matter by +what name the God might be called. So it came to pass that _The Pagan +Review_ had only one number. That marked the transition moment, when +Fiona Macleod began to predominate over William Sharp, until finally she +controlled and radically changed him into her own likeness. He passes on +to the volume entitled _The Divine Adventure_, which interprets the +spirit of Columba. Nature and the spiritual meet in the psychic phase +into which Sharp passed, not only in the poetic and native sense, but in +a more literal sense than that. For the Green Life continually leads +those who are akin to it into opportunities of psychical research among +obscure and mysterious forces which are yet very potent. With a nature +like his it was inevitable that he should be eventually lured +irresistibly into the enchanted forest, where spirit is more and more +the one certainty of existence. + +For most of us there is another guide into the spirit land. In the +region of the spectral and occult many of us are puzzled and ill at +ease, but we all, in some degree, understand the meaning of ordinary +human love. Even the most commonplace nature has its magical hours now +and then, or at least has had them and has not forgotten; and it is love +that "leads us with a gentle hand into the silent land." This may form a +bond of union between Fiona Macleod and many who are mystified rather +than enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of the +phrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality which +has been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp who +chose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than we +conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." Fiona's work, +too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she has +perceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom and +brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full +that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which +is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and +yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in +all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us +all in His "Mighty Moulding Hand." + +The relation in which all this stands to Christianity is a very curious +question. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evident +enough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definite +Christian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossible +that one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such an +open-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done otherwise +than to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted against +Christianity and every other form and convention of civilised life, and +claimed a freedom far beyond any which he ever used. We read that in his +sixth year, when already he found the God of the pulpit remote and +forbidding, he was nevertheless conscious of a benign and beautiful +presence. On the shore of Loch Long he built a little altar of rough +stones beneath a swaying pine, and laid an offering of white flowers +upon it. In the college days he turned still more definitely against +orthodox Presbyterianism; but he retained all along, not only belief in +the central truths that underlie all religions, but great reverence and +affection for them. + +It is probable that towards the close he was approaching nearer to +formal Christianity than he knew. We are told that he "does not +reverence the Bible or Christian Theology in themselves, but for the +beautiful spirituality which faintly breathes through them like a vague +wind blowing through intricate forests." His quarrel with Christianity +was that it had never done justice to beauty, that it had a gloom upon +it, and an unlovely austerity. This indeed is a strange accusation from +so perfect an interpreter of the Celtic gloom as he was, and the retort +_tu quoque_ is obvious enough. There have indeed been phases of +Christianity which seemed to love and honour the ugly for its own sake, +yet there is a rarer beauty in the Man of Sorrows than in all the +smiling faces of the world. This is that hidden beauty of which the +saints and mystics tell us. They have seen it in the face more marred +than any man's, and their record is that he who would find a lasting +beauty that will satisfy his soul, must find it through pain conquered +and ugliness transformed and sorrow assuaged. The Christ Beautiful can +never be seen when you have stripped him of the Crown of Thorns, nor is +there any loveliness that has not been made perfect by tears. Thus +though there is truth in Sharp's complaint that Christianity has often +done sore injustice to beauty as such, yet it must be repeated that this +exponent of the Celtic heart somehow missed the element in Christianity +which was not only like, but actually identical with, his own deepest +truth. + +Sharp often reminds one of Heine, with his intensely human love of life, +both in its brightness and in its darkness. Where that love is so +intense as it was in these hearts, it is almost inevitable that it +should sometimes eclipse the sense of the divine. Thus Sharp tells us +that "Celtic paganism lies profound still beneath the fugitive drift of +Christianity and civilisation, as the deep sea beneath the coming and +going of the tides." He was indeed so aware of this underlying paganism, +that we find it blending with Christian ideas in practically the whole +of his work. Nothing could be quoted as a more distinctive note of his +genius than that blend. It is seen perhaps most clearly in such stories +as _The Last Supper_ and _The Fisher of Men_. In these tales of +unsurpassable power and beauty, Fiona Macleod has created the Gaelic +Christ. The Christ is the same as He of Galilee and of the Upper Room in +Jerusalem, and His work the same. But he talks the sweet Celtic +language, and not only talks it but _thinks_ in it also. He walks among +the rowan trees of the Shadowy Glen, while the quiet light flames upon +the grass, and the fierce people that lurk in shadow have eyes for the +helplessness of the little lad who sees too far. Such tales are full of +a strange light that seems to be, at one and the same time, the Celtic +glamour and the Light of the World. + +All the lovers of Mr. Yeats must have remembered many instances of the +same kind in his work. "And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, +purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this +dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no +expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, +and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies +of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go +forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longs +for, and have no fear." + +Mr. Yeats is continually identifying these apparently unrelated things; +and youth and peace, faith and beauty, are ever meeting in converging +lines in his work. No song of his has a livelier lilt than the _Fiddler +of Dooney_. + + "I passed my brother and cousin: + They read in their books of prayer; + I read in my book of songs + I bought at Sligo fair. + + When we come at the end of time, + To Peter sitting in state, + He will smile on the three old spirits, + But call me first through the gate. + + And when the folk there spy me, + They will all come up to me, + With, 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' + And dance like a wave of the sea." + +In a few final words we may try to estimate what all this amounts to in +the long battle between paganism and idealism. There is no question that +Fiona Macleod may be reasonably claimed by either side. Certainly it is +true of her work, that it is pure to the pure and dangerous to those who +take it wrongly. Meredith's great line was never truer than it is here, +"Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare." The effect upon the mind, +and the tendency in the life, will depend upon what one brings to the +reading of it. + +All this bringing back of the discarded gods has its glamour and its +risk. Such gods are excellent as curiosities, and may provide the +quaintest of studies in human nature. They give us priceless fragments +of partial and broken truth, and they exhibit cross-sections of the +evolution of thought in some of its most charming moments. Besides all +this, they are exceedingly valuable as providing us with that general +sense of religion, vague and illusive, which is deeper than all dogma. + +But, for the unwary, there is the double danger in all this region that +they shall, on the one hand, be tempted to worship the old gods; or +that, on the other hand, even in loving them without definite worship, +the old black magic may spring out upon them. As to the former +alternative, light minds will always prefer the wonderfully coloured but +more or less formless figure in a dream, to anything more definite and +commanding. They will cry, "Here is the great god"; and, intoxicated by +the mystery, will fall down to worship. But that which does not command +can never save, and for a guiding faith we need something more sure than +this. + +Moreover, there is the second alternative of the old black magic. A +discarded god is always an uncanny thing to take liberties with. While +the earth-spirit in all its grandeur may appeal to the jaded and +perplexed minds of to-day as a satisfying object of faith, the result +will probably be but a modern form of the ancient Baal-worship. It will +in some respects be a superior cult to its ancient prototype. Its +devotees will not cut themselves with knives. They will cut themselves +with sweet and bitter poignancies of laughter and tears, when the sun +shines upon wet forests in the green earth. This, too, is Baal-worship, +hardly distinguishable in essence from that cruder devotion to the +fructifying and terrifying powers of nature against which the prophets +of Israel made their war. In much that Fiona Macleod has written we feel +the spirit struggling like Samson against its bonds of green withes, +though by no means always able to break them as he did; or lying down in +an earth-bound stupor, content with the world that nature produces and +sustains. Here, among the elemental roots of things, when the heart is +satisfying itself with the passionate life of nature, the red flower +grows in the green life, and the imperative of passion becomes the final +law. + +On the other hand, a child of nature may remember that he is also a +child of the spirit; and, even in the Vale Perilous, the spirit may be +an instinctive and faithful guide. Because we love the woods we need not +worship the sacred mistletoe. Because we listen to the sea we need not +reject greater and more intelligible voices of the Word of Life. And the +mention of the sea, and the memory of all that it has meant in Fiona +Macleod's writing, reminds us strangely of that old text, "Born of water +and of the Spirit." While man lives upon the sea-girt earth, the voices +of the ocean, that seem to come from the depths of its green heart, will +always call to him, reminding him of the mysterious powers and the +terrible beauties among which his life is cradled. Yet there are deeper +secrets which the spirit of man may learn--secrets that will still be +told when the day of earth is over, when the sea has ceased from her +swinging, and the earth-spirit has fled for ever. It is well that a man +should remember this, and remain a spiritual man in spite of every form +of seductive paganism. + +Sharp has said in his _Green Fire_:-- + +"There are three races of man. There is the myriad race which loses all, +through (not bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane) +perverted animalism; and there is the myriad race which denounces +humanity, and pins all its faith and joy to a life the very conditions +of whose existence are incompatible with the law to which we are +subject; the sole law, the law of nature. Then there is that small +untoward class which knows the divine call of the spirit through the +brain, and the secret whisper of the soul in the heart, and for ever +perceives the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our human +horizons: which hears and sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to the +life of the green earth, of which we are part, to the common kindred of +living things, with which we are at one--is content, in a word, to live, +because of the dream that makes living so mysteriously sweet and +poignant; and to dream, because of the commanding immediacy of life." + +There are indeed the three races. There is the pagan, which knows only +the fleshly aspect of life, and seeks nothing beyond it. There is the +spiritual, which ignores and seeks to flee from that to which its body +chains it. There is also that wise race who know that all things are +theirs, flesh and spirit both, and who have learned how to reap the +harvests both of time and of eternity. + + + + +LECTURE V + +JOHN BUNYAN + + +We have seen the eternal battle in its earlier phases surging to and fro +between gods of the earth that are as old as Time, and daring thoughts +of men that rose beyond them and claimed a higher inheritance. Between +that phase of the warfare and the same battle as it is fought to-day, we +shall look at two contemporary men in the latter part of the seventeenth +century who may justly be taken as examples of the opposing types. John +Bunyan and Samuel Pepys, however, will lead us no dance among the +elemental forces of the world. They will rather show us, with very +fascinating _naivete_, true pictures of their own aspirations, nourished +in the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in the +other, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete and +systematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy to +exaggerate their simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how John +Bunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which he +lived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with that +world. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon the +spiritual region, but he seems to have closed them all, and become +increasingly a simple devotee of things seen and temporal. + +Bunyan comes upon us full grown and mature in the work by which he is +best known and remembered. His originality is one of the standing +wonders of history. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ was written at a time when +every man had to take sides in a savage and atrocious ecclesiastical +controversy. The absolute judgments passed on either side by the other, +the cruelties practised and the dangers run, were such as to lead the +reader to expect extreme bitterness and sectarian violence in every +religious writing of the time. Bunyan was known to his contemporaries as +a religious writer, pure and simple, and a man whose convictions had +caused him much suffering at the hands of his enemies. Most of the first +readers of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ had no thought of any connection +between that book and worldly literature; and the pious people who shook +their heads over his allegory as being rather too interesting for a +treatise on such high themes as those which it handled, might perhaps +have shaken their heads still more solemnly had they known how much of +what they called the world was actually behind it. Bunyan was a +voluminous writer of theological works, and the complete edition of them +fills three enormous volumes, closely printed in double column. But it +is the little allegory embedded in one of these volumes which has made +his fame eternal, and for the most part the rest are remembered now only +in so far as they throw light upon that story. One exception must be +made in favour of _Grace Abounding_. This is Bunyan's autobiography, in +which he describes, without allegory, the course of his spiritual +experience. For an understanding of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ it is +absolutely necessary to know that companion volume. + +It is very curious to watch the course of criticism as it was directed +to him and to his story. The eighteenth century had lost the keenness of +former controversies, and from its classic balcony it looked down upon +what seemed to it the somewhat sordid arena of the past. _The Examiner_ +complains that he never yet knew an author that had not his admirers. +Bunyan and Quarles have passed through several editions and pleased as +many readers as Dryden and Tillotson. Even Cowper, timidly appreciative +and patronising, wrote of the "ingenious dreamer"-- + + "I name thee not, lest so despised a name + Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame," + +--lines which have a pathetic irony in them, as we contrast the anxious +Cowper, with the occasional revivals of interest and the age-long tone +of patronage which have been meted out to him, with the robust and +sturdy immortality of the man he shrank from naming. Swift discovered +Bunyan's literary power, and later Johnson and Southey did him justice. +In the nineteenth century his place was secured for ever, and Macaulay's +essay on him will probably retain its interest longer than anything else +that Macaulay wrote. + +We are apt to think of him as a mere dreamer, spinning his cobwebs of +imagination wholly out of his own substance--a pure idealist, whose +writing dwells among his ideals in a region ignorant of the earth. In +one of his own apologies he tells us, apparently in answer to +accusations that had been made against him, that he did not take his +work from anybody, but that it came from himself alone. Doubtless that +is true so far as the real originality of his work is concerned, its +general conception, and the working out of its details point by point. +Yet, to imagine that if there had been no other English literature the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ would have been exactly what it is, is simply to +ignore the facts of the case. John Bunyan is far more interesting just +because his work is part of English literature, because it did feel the +influences of his own time and of the past, than it could ever have been +as the mere monstrosity of detachment which it has been supposed to be. +The idealist who merely dreams and takes no part in the battle, refusing +to know or utilise the writing of any other man, can be no fair judge of +the life which he criticises, and no reliable guide among its facts. + +Bunyan might very easily indeed have been a pagan of the most worldly +type. It was extremely difficult for him to be a Puritan, not only on +account of outward troubles, but also of inward ones belonging to his +own disposition and experience. Accepting Puritanism, the easiest course +for him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that course +he would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far more +difficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to the +beauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what men +were writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard in +early days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding in +his ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant to +say, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecution +were raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writing +shows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of the +soul of man and the life of God, but the way in which he tells these +things shows innumerable signs of the bright world of English books. + +It is worth while to consider this large and human Bunyan, who has been +very erroneously supposed to be a mere literary freak, detached from all +such influences as go to the making of other writers. He tells us, +indeed, that "when I pulled it came," and that is delightfully true. +Yet, it came not out of nowhere, and it is our part in this essay to +inquire as to the places from which it did come. As we have said, it +came out of two worlds, and the web is most wonderfully woven and +coloured, but our present concern is rather with the earthly part of it +than the heavenly. + +No one can read John Bunyan without thinking of George Herbert. Few of +the short biographies in our language are more interesting reading than +Isaac Walton's life of Herbert. That master of simplicity is always +fascinating, and in this biography he gives us one of the most beautiful +sketches of contemporary narrative that has ever been penned. Herbert +was the quaintest of the saints. He lived in the days of Charles the +First and James the First, a High Churchman who had Laud for his friend. +Shy, sensitive, high-bred, shrinking from the world, he was at the same +time a man of business, skilful in the management of affairs, and yet a +man of morbid delicacy of imagination. The picture of his life at Little +Gidding, where he and Mr. Farrer instituted a kind of hermitage, or +private chapel of devotion, in which the whole of the Psalms were read +through once in every twenty-four hours, grows peculiarly pathetic when +we remember that the house and chapel were sacked by the parliamentary +army, in which for a time John Bunyan served. No two points of view, it +would seem, could be more widely contrasted than those of Bunyan and +Herbert, and yet the points of agreement are far more important than the +differences between them, and _The Temple_ has so much in common with +the _Pilgrim's Progress_ that one is astonished to find that the +likenesses seem to be entirely unconscious. Matthew Henry is perpetually +quoting _The Temple_ in his Commentary. Writing only a few years +earlier, Bunyan reproduces in his own fashion many of its thoughts, but +does not mention its existence. + +In order to know Bunyan's early life, and indeed to understand the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ at all adequately, one must read _Grace Abounding_. +It is a short book, written in the years when he was already growing +old, for those whom he had brought into the fold of religion. From this +autobiography it has usually been supposed that he had led a life of the +wildest debauchery before his Christian days; but the more one examines +the book, and indeed all his books, the less is one inclined to believe +in any such desperate estimate of the sins of his youth. The measure of +sin is the sensitiveness of a man's conscience; and where, as in +Bunyan's case, the conscience is abnormally delicate and subject to +violent reactions, a life which in another man would be a pattern of +innocence and respectability may be regarded as an altogether +blackguardly and vicious one. It was, however evidently a life of strong +and intense worldly interest stepping over the line here and there into +positive wrong-doing, but for the most part blameworthy mainly on +account of its absorption in the passing shows of the hour. + +What then was that world which interested Bunyan so intensely, and cost +him so many pangs of conscience? No doubt it was just the life of the +road as he travelled about his business; for though by no means a tinker +in the modern sense of the word, he was an itinerant brazier, whose +business took him constantly to and fro among the many villages of the +district of Bedford. He must have heard in inns and from wayside +companions many a catch of plays and songs, and listened to many a +lively story, or read it in the chap-books which were hawked about the +country then. It must also be remembered that these were the days of +puppet shows. The English drama, as we have already mentioned in +connection with _Faust_, was by no means confined to the boards of +actual theatres where living actors played the parts. Little mimic +stages travelled about the country in all directions reproducing the +plays, very much after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even the +solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There +is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at +these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature +at second hand. + +As to how much of it he had actually read, that is a different question. +One is tempted to believe that he must have read George Herbert, but of +this there is no positive proof. We are quite certain about five books, +for which we have his own express statements. His wife brought him as +her dowry the very modest furniture of two small volumes, Baily's +_Practice of Piety_ and Dent's _The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven_. The +first is a very complicated and elaborate statement of Christian dogma, +which Bunyan passes by with the scant praise, "Wherein I also found some +things that were somewhat pleasing to me." The other is a much more +vital production. Even to this day it is an immensely interesting piece +of reading. It consists of conversations between various men who stand +for types of worldling, ignoramus, theologian, etc., and there are very +clear traces of it in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, especially in the talks +between Bunyan's pilgrims and the man Ignorance. + +Another book which played a large part in Bunyan's life was the short +biography of Francis Spira, an Italian, who had died shortly before +Bunyan's time. Spira had been a Protestant lawyer in Italy, but had +found it expedient to abate the open profession of Protestantism with +which he began, and eventually to transfer his allegiance to the Roman +Church. The biography is for the most part an account of his death-bed +conversation, which lasted a long time, since his illness was even more +of the mind than of the body. It is an extremely ghastly account of a +morbid and insane melancholia. It was the fashion of the time to take +such matters spiritually rather than physically, and we read that many +persons went to his death-bed and listened to his miserable cries and +groanings in the hope of gaining edification for their souls. How the +book came into Bunyan's hands no one can tell, but evidently he had +found it in English translation, and many of the darkest parts of _Grace +Abounding_ are directly due to it, while the Man in the Iron Cage quotes +the very words of Spira. + +Another book which Bunyan had read was Luther's _Commentary on the +Galatians_. The present writer possesses a copy of that volume dated +1786, at the close of which there are fourteen pages, on which long +lists of names are printed. The names are those of weavers, +shoe-makers, and all sorts of tradesmen in the western Scottish towns +of Kilmarnock, Paisley, and others of that neighbourhood, who had +subscribed for a translation of the commentary that they might read it +in their own tongue. This curious fact reminds us that the book had +among the pious people of our country an audience almost as enthusiastic +as Bunyan himself was. Another of his books, and the only one quoted by +name in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Grace Abounding_, with the +exception of Luther on Galatians, is Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, traces of +which are unmistakable in such incidents as the trial and death of +Faithful and in other parts. + +In these few volumes may be summed up the entire literary knowledge +which Bunyan is known to have possessed. He stands apart from mere +book-learning, and deals with life rather through his eyes and ears +directly than through the medium of books. But then those eyes and ears +of his were no ordinary organs; and his imagination, whose servants they +were, was quick to enlist every vital and suggestive image and idea for +its own uses. Thus the rich store of observation which he had already +laid up through the medium of puppet plays, fragments of song and +popular story, was all at his disposal when he came to need it. Further, +even in his regenerate days, there was no dimming of the imaginative +faculty nor of the observant. The whole neighbourhood in which he lived +was an open book, in which he read the wonderful story of life in many +tragic and comic tales of actual fact; and in the prison where he spent +twelve years, he must often have heard from his fellow-prisoners such +fragments as they knew and remembered, with which doubtless they would +beguile the tedium of their confinement. That would be for the most part +in the first and second imprisonments, extending from the years 1660 to +1672. The third imprisonment was a short affair of only some nine +months, spent in the little prison upon the bridge of Bedford, where +there would be room for very few companions. The modern bridge crosses +the river at almost exactly the same spot; and if you look over the +parapet you may see, when the river is low, traces of what seem to be +the foundations of the old prison bridge. + +When we would try to estimate the processes by which the great allegory +was built up, the first fact that strikes us is its extreme aloofness +from current events which must have been very familiar to him. In others +of his works he tells many stories of actual life, but these are of a +private and more or less gossiping nature, many of them fantastic and +grotesque, such as those appalling tales of swearers, drunkards, and +other specially notorious sinners being snatched away by the +devil--narratives which bear the marks of crude popular imagination in +details like the actual smell of sulphur left behind. In the whole +_Pilgrim's Progress_ there is no reference whatever to the Civil War, in +which we know that Bunyan had fought, although there are certain parts +of it which were probably suggested by events of that campaign. The +allegory is equally silent concerning the Great Fire and the Great +Plague of London, which were both fresh in the memory of every living +man. The only phrase which might have been suggested by the Fire, is +that in which the Pilgrim says, "I hear that our little city is to be +destroyed by fire"--a phrase which obviously has much more direct +connection with the destruction of Sodom than with that of London. The +only suggestions of those disastrous latter years of the reign of +Charles the Second, are some doubtful allusions to the rise and fall of +persecution, few of which can be clearly identified with any particular +events. + +There are several interesting indications that Bunyan made use of recent +and contemporary secular literature. The demonology of the _Pilgrim's +Progress_ is quite different from that of the _Holy War_. It used to be +suggested that Bunyan had altered his views in consequence of the +publication of Milton's _Paradise Regained_, which appeared in 1671. +That was when it was generally supposed that he had written the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ in his earlier imprisonment. If, as is now +conceded, it was in the later imprisonment that he wrote the book, this +theory loses much of its plausibility, for Milton published his +_Paradise Regained_ before the first edition of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ +was penned. It is, of course, always possible that between the +_Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Holy War_ Bunyan may have seen Milton's +work, or may have been told about it, for he certainly changed his +demonology and made it more like Milton's. Again, there are certain +passages in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ which bear so close a resemblance +to Bunyan's description of the Celestial City, that it is difficult not +to suppose that either directly or indirectly that poem had influenced +Bunyan's creation; while in at least one of his songs he approaches so +near both the language and the rhythm of a song of Shakespeare's as to +make it very probable that he had heard it sung.[2] + +These suppositions are not meant in any way to detract from the +originality of the great allegory, but rather to link the writer in with +that English literature of which he is so conspicuous an ornament. They +are no more significant and no less, than the fact that so much of the +geography of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ seems not to have been created by +his imagination, but to have been built up from well-remembered +landscapes. From his prison window he could not but see the ruins of old +Bedford Castle, which stood demolished upon its hill even in his time. +This, together with Cainhoe Castle, only a few miles away, may well have +suggested the Castle of Despair in Bypath Meadow near the River of God. +Again, memories of Elstow play a notable part in the story. A cross +stood there, at the foot of which, when he was playing the game of cat +upon a certain Sunday, the voice came to his soul with its tremendous +question, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sins +and go to hell?" There stood the Moot Hall as it stands to-day, in +which, during his worldly days, he had danced with the rest of the +villagers and gained his personal knowledge of Vanity Fair. There, as he +tells us expressly, is the wicket gate, the rough old oak and iron gate +of Elstow parish church. Close beside it, just as you read in the story, +stands that great tower which suggested a devil's castle beside the +wicket gate, whence Satan showered his arrows on those who knocked +below. Not only so, but there was a special reason why for Bunyan that +ancient church tower may well have been symbolic of the stronghold of +the devil; for it had bells in it, and he was so fond of bell-ringing +that it got upon his conscience and became his darling sin. It is easy +to make light of his heart-searchings about so innocent an employment, +but doubtless there were other things that went along with it. We have +all seen those large drinking-vessels, known as bell-ringers' jugs; and +these perhaps may suggest an explanation of the sense of sin which +burdened his conscience so heavily. Anyhow, there the tower stands, and +in the Gothic doorway of it there are one or two deeply cut grooves, +obviously made by the ropes of the bell-ringers when, instead of +standing below their ropes, they preferred the open air, and drew the +ropes through the archway of the door, so as to cut into its moulding. +The little fact gains much significance in the light of Bunyan's own +confession that he was so afraid that the bell would fall upon him and +kill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the door +to ring it. Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, long +before Bunyan's time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as +"the ladies of Elstow." Very aristocratic and very human ladies they +seem to have been, given to the entertainment of their friends in the +intervals of their tasteful devotion, and occasionally needing a rebuke +from headquarters. Yet it seems not improbable that there is some +glorified memory of those ladies in the inhabitants of the House +Beautiful, which house itself appears to have been modelled upon +Houghton House on the Ampthill heights, built by Sir Philip Sidney's +sister but a century before. The silver mine of Demas might seem to have +come from some far-off source in chap-book or romance, until we remember +that at the village of Pulloxhill, which had been the original home of +the Bunyan family, and near which Bunyan was arrested and brought for +examination to the house of Justice Wingate, there are the actual +remains of an ancient gold mine whose tradition still lingers among the +villagers. + +All these things seem to indicate that the great allegory is by no means +so remote from the earth as has sometimes been imagined; and perhaps the +most touching commentary upon this statement is the curious and very +unlovely burying-ground in Bunhill fields, cut through by a straight +path that leads from one busy thoroughfare to another. A few yards to +the left of that path is the tomb and monument of John Bunyan, while at +an equal distance to the right lies Daniel Defoe. The _Pilgrim's +Progress_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ are perhaps the two best-known stories +in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they +seem. + +Nor was it only in the outward material with which he worked that John +Bunyan had much in common with the romance and poetry of England. He +could indeed write verses which, for sheer doggerel, it would be +difficult to match, but in spite of that there was the authentic note of +poetry in him. Some of his work is not only vigorous, inspiring, and +full of the brisk sense of action, but has an unconscious strength and +worthiness of style, whose compression and terseness have fulfilled at +least one of the canons of high literature. Take, for example, the lines +on Faithful's death-- + + "Now Faithful, play the man, speak for thy God: + Fear not the wicked's malice, nor their rod: + Speak boldly, man, the truth is on thy side; + Die for it, and to life in triumph ride." + +Or take this as a second example, from his _Prison Meditations_-- + + "Here come the angels, here come saints, + Here comes the Spirit of God, + To comfort us in our restraints + Under the wicked's rod. + + This gaol to us is as a hill, + From whence we plainly see + Beyond this world, and take our fill + Of things that lasting be. + + We change our drossy dust for gold, + From death to life we fly: + We let go shadows, and take hold + Of immortality." + +This whole poem has in it not merely the bright march of a very vigorous +mind, but also a great many of the elements which long before had built +up the ancient romances. In it, and in much else that he wrote, he finds +a congenial escape from the mere middle-class respectability of his +time, and ranges himself with the splendid chivalry both of the past and +of the present. There is an elfin element in him as there was in +Chaucer, which now and again twinkles forth in a quaint touch of humour, +or escapes from the merely spiritual into an extremely interesting human +region. + +In _Grace Abounding_ he very pleasantly tells us that he could have +written in a much higher style if he had chosen to do so, but that for +our sakes he has refrained. He does, however, sometimes "step into" his +finer style. There is some exquisite pre-Raphaelite work that comes +unexpectedly upon the reader, in which he is not only a poet, but a +writer capable of seeing and of describing the most highly coloured and +minute detail: "Besides, on the banks of this river on either side were +green trees, that bore all manner of fruit...." "On either side of the +river was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it was +green the year long." At other times he affrights us with a sudden +outburst of the most terrifying imagination, as in the close of the poem +of _The Fly at the Candle_-- + + "At last the Gospel doth become their snare, + Doth them with burning hands in pieces tear." + +His imagination was sometimes as quaint and sweet as at other times it +could be lurid and powerful. _Upon a Snail_ is not a very promising +subject for a poem, but its first lines justify the experiment-- + + "She goes but softly, but she goeth sure; + She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do." + +He can adopt the methods of the stately poets of nature, and break into +splendid descriptions of natural phenomena-- + + "Look, look, brave Sol doth peep up from beneath, + Shews us his golden face, doth on us breathe; + Yea, he doth compass us around with glories, + Whilst he ascends up to his highest stories, + Where he his banner over us displays, + And gives us light to see our works and ways." + +Again in the art of childlike interest and simplicity he can write such +lines as these-- + + OF THE CHILD WITH THE BIRD ON THE BUSH + + "My little bird, how canst thou sit + And sing amidst so many thorns? + Let me but hold upon thee get, + My love with honour thee adorns. + + 'Tis true it is sunshine to-day, + To-morrow birds will have a storm; + My pretty one, come thou away, + My bosom then shall keep thee warm. + + My father's palace shall be thine, + Yea, in it thou shalt sit and sing; + My little bird, if thou'lt be mine, + The whole year round shall be thy spring. + + I'll keep thee safe from cat and cur, + No manner o' harm shall come to thee: + Yea, I will be thy succourer, + My bosom shall thy cabin be." + +The last line might have been written by Ben Jonson, and the description +of sunrise in the former poem might almost have been from Chaucer's pen. + +Yet the finest poetry of all is the prose allegory of the _Pilgrim's +Progress_. English prose had taken many centuries to form, in the +moulding hands of Chaucer, Malory, and Bacon. It had come at last to +Bunyan with all its flexibility and force ready to his hand. He wrote +with virgin purity, utterly free from mannerisms and affectations; and, +without knowing himself for a writer of fine English, produced it. + +The material of the allegory also is supplied from ancient sources. One +curious paragraph in Bunyan's treatise entitled _Sighs from Hell_, gives +us a broad hint of this. "The Scriptures, thought I then, what are they? +A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings price. +Alack! what is Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, _George on +Horseback_ or _Bevis of Southampton_. Give me some book that teaches +curious Arts, that tells old Fables." In _The Plain Man's Pathway to +Heaven_ there is a longer list of such romances as these, including +_Ellen of Rummin_, and many others. As has been already stated, these +tales of ancient folklore would come into his hands either by recitation +or in the form of chap-books. The chap-book literature of Old England +was most voluminous and interesting. It consisted of romances and songs, +sold at country fairs and elsewhere, and the passing reference which we +have quoted proves conclusively, what we might have known without any +proof, that Bunyan knew them. + +_George on Horseback_ has been identified by Professor Firth with the +_Seven Champions of England_, an extremely artificial romance, which may +be taken as typical of hundreds more of its kind. The 1610 edition of it +is a very lively book with a good deal of playing to the gallery, such +as this: "As for the name of Queen, I account it a vain title; for I had +rather be an English lady than the greatest empress in the world." There +is not very much in this romance which Bunyan has appropriated, although +there are several interesting correspondences. It is very courtly and +conventional. The narrative is broken here and there by lyrics, quite in +Bunyan's manner, but it is difficult to imagine Bunyan, with his direct +and simple taste, spending much time in reading such sentences as the +following: "By the time the purple-spotted morning had parted with her +grey, and the sun's bright countenance appeared on the mountain-tops, +St. George had rode twenty miles from the Persian Court." On the other +hand, when Great-Heart allows Giant Despair to rise after his fall, +showing his chivalry in refusing to take advantage of the fallen giant, +we remember the incident of Sir Guy and Colebrand in the _Seven +Champions_. + + "Good sir, an' it be thy will, + Give me leave to drink my fill, + For sweet St. Charity, + And I will do thee the same deed + Another time if thou have need, + I tell thee certainly." + +St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, +traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears "dismal croakings of night +ravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring of +monsters."[3] St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, the +Vale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as the +pilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan's story traverse the Enchanted +Ground. And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land, +tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David was +tempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when his +eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned +in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself +from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament." + +_Bevis of Southampton_ has many points in common with St. George in the +_Seven Champions_. The description of the giant, the escape of Bevis +from his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much was +common stock for the writers of these earlier romances. There is the +same rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing and +stride of vigorous rhyming metre. Of the humour, one quotation will be +enough for an example. It is when they are proposing to baptize the +monstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and then +engaged as his body-servant. At the christening of Josian, wife of +Bevis, the Bishop sees the giant. + + "'What is,' sayde he, 'this bad vysage?' + 'Sir,' sayde Bevys, 'he is my page-- + I pray you crysten hym also, + Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!' + The Bysshop crystened Josian, + That was as white as any swan; + For Ascaparde was made a tonne, + And whan he shulde therein be done, + He lept out upon the brenche + And sayde: 'Churle, wylt thou me drenche? + The devyl of hel mot fetche the + I am to moche crystened to be!' + The folke had gode game and laughe, + But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe." + +There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to the +account of the fight with Apollyon in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and +which was doubtless in Bunyan's mind when he wrote that admirable battle +sketch-- + + "Beves is swerde anon upswapte, + He and the geaunt togedre rapte; + And delde strokes mani and fale, + The nombre can i nought telle in tale. + The geaunt up is clubbe haf, + And smot to Beves with is staf, + But his scheld flegh from him thore, + Three acres brede and somedel more, + Tho was Beves in strong erur + And karf ato the grete levour, + And on the geauntes brest a-wonde + That negh a-felde him to the grounde. + The geaunt thoughte this bataile hard, + Anon he drough to him a dart, + Throgh Beves scholder he hit schet, + The blold ran doun to Beves' fet, + The Beves segh is owene blod + Out of his wit he wex negh wod, + Unto the geaunt ful swithe he ran, + And kedde that he was doughti man, + And smot ato his nekke bon; + The geant fel to grounde anon." + +It is part of his general sympathy with the spirit of the romances that +Bunyan's giants were always real giants to him, and he evidently enjoyed +them for their own sake as literary and imaginative creations, as well +as for the sake of any truths which they might be made to enforce. +Despair and Slay-Good are distinct to his imagination. His interest +remains always twofold. On the one hand there is allegory, and on the +other hand there is live tale. Sometimes the allegory breaks through and +confuses the tale a little, as when Mercy begs for the great mirror that +hangs in the dining-room of the shepherds, and carries it with her +through the remainder of her journey. Sometimes the allegory has to stop +in order that a sermon may be preached on some particular point of +theology, and such sermons are by no means short. Still the story is so +true to life that its irresistible simplicity and naturalness carry it +on and make it immortal. When we read such a conversation as that +between old Honest and Mr. Standfast about Madam Bubble, we feel that +the tale has ceased to be an allegory altogether and has become a novel. +This is perhaps more noticeable in the Second Part than in the First. +The First Part is indeed almost a perfect allegory; although even there, +from time to time, the earnestness and rush of the writer's spirit +oversteps the bounds of consistency and happily forgets the moral +because the story is so interesting, or forgets for a moment the story +because the moral is so important. In the Second Part the two characters +fall apart more definitely. Now you have delightful pieces of crude +human nature, naive and sparkling. Then you have long and intricate +theological treatises. Neither the allegorical nor the narrative unity +is preserved to anything like the same extent as on the whole is the +case in Part I. The shrewd and humorous touches of human nature are +especially interesting. Bunyan was by no means the gentle saint who +shrank from strong language. When the gate of Doubting Castle is +opening, and at last the pilgrims have all but gone free, we read that +"the lock went damnable hard." When Great-Heart is delighted with Mr. +Honest, he calls him "a cock of the right kind." The poem _On Christian +Behaviour_, which we have quoted, contains the lines-- + + "When all men's cards are fully played, + Whose will abide the light?" + +These are quaint instances of the way in which even the questionable +parts of the unregenerate life of the dreamer came in the end to serve +the uses of his religion. + +There are many gems in the Second Part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ which +are full of mother-wit and sly fun. Mr. Honest confesses, "I came from +the town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City of +Destruction." Then there is Mr. Fearing, that morbidly self-conscious +creature, who is so much at home in the Valley of Humiliation that he +kneels down and kisses the flowers in its grass. He is a man who can +never get rid of himself for a moment, and who bores all the company +with his illimitable and anxious introspection. Yet, in Vanity Fair, +when practical facts have to be faced instead of morbid fancies and +inflamed conscience, he is the most valiant of men, whom they can hardly +keep from getting himself killed, and for that matter all the rest of +them. Here, again, is an inimitable flash of insight, where Simple, +Sloth, and Presumption have prevailed with "one Short-Wind, one +Sleepy-Head, and with a young woman, her name was Dull, to turn out of +the way and become as they." + +Every now and then these natural touches of portraiture rise to a true +sublimity, as all writing that is absolutely true to the facts of human +nature tends to do. Great-Heart says to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, "Let me +see thy sword," and when he has taken it in his hand and looked at it +for awhile, he adds, "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade." That sword +lingers in Bunyan's imagination, for, at the close of Valiant's life, +part of his dying speech is this "My sword I give to him that shall +succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can +get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that +I have fought His battles." + +Bunyan is so evidently an idealist and a prince of spiritual men, that +no one needs to point out this characteristic of the great dreamer, nor +to advertise so obvious a thing as his spiritual idealism. We have +accordingly taken that for granted and left it to the reader to +recognise in every page for himself. We have sought in this to show what +has sometimes been overlooked, how very human the man and his work are. +Yet his humanism is ever at the service of the spirit, enlivening his +book and inspiring it with a perpetual and delicious interest, but never +for a moment entangling him again in the old yoke of bondage, from which +at his conversion he had been set free. For the human as opposed to the +divine, the fleshly as the rival of the spiritual, he has an open and +profound contempt, which he expresses in no measured terms in such +passages as that concerning Adam the First and Madam Wanton. These are +for him sheer pagans. At the cave, indeed, which his pilgrim visits at +the farther end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we read that Pope +and Pagan dwelt there in old time, but that Pagan has been dead many a +day. Yet the pagan spirit lives on in many forms, and finds an abiding +place and home in Vanity Fair. As Professor Firth has pointed out, Ben +Jonson, in his play _Bartholomew Fair_, had already told the adventures +of two Puritans who strayed into the Fair, and who regarded the whole +affair as the shop of Satan. There were many other Fairs, such as that +of Sturbridge, and the Elstow Fair itself, which was instituted by the +nuns on the ground close to their convent, and which is held yearly to +the present day. Such Fairs as these have been a source of much +temptation and danger to the neighbourhood, and represent in its popular +form the whole spirit of paganism at its worst. + +All the various elements of Bunyan's world live on in the England of +to-day. Thackeray, with a stroke of characteristic genius, has expanded +and applied the earlier conception of paganism in his great novel whose +title _Vanity Fair_ is borrowed from Bunyan. But the main impression of +the allegory is the victory of the spiritual at its weakest over the +temporal at its mightiest. His descriptions of the supper and bed +chamber in the House Beautiful, and of the death of Christiana at the +end of the Second Part, are immortal writings, in the most literal +sense, amid the shows of time. They have indeed laid hold of immortality +not for themselves only, but for the souls of men. Nothing could sum up +the whole story of Bunyan better than the legend of his flute told by +Mr. S.S. M'Currey in his book of poems entitled _In Keswick Vale_. The +story is that in his prison Bunyan took out a bar from one of the chairs +in his cell, scooped it hollow, and converted it into a flute, upon +which he played sweet music in the dark and solitary hours of the prison +evening. The jailers never could find out the source of that music, for +when they came to search his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, +and there was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when the +jailers departed the music would mysteriously recommence. It is very +unlikely that this legend is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyan +was a musician at all (although we do have from his pen one touching and +beautiful reference to the finest music in the world being founded upon +the bass), but, like his own greater work, the little legend is an +allegory. The world for centuries has heard sweet music from Bunyan, and +has not known whence it came. It has seemed to most men a miracle, and +indeed they were right in counting it so. Yet there was a flute from +which that music issued, and the flute was part of the rough furniture +of his imprisoned world. He was no scholar, nor delicate man of _belles +lettres_, like so many of his contemporaries. He took what came to his +hand; and in this lecture we have tried to show how much did come thus +to his hand that was rare and serviceable for the purposes of his +spirit, and for the expression of high spiritual truth. + + + + +LECTURE VI + +PEPYS' DIARY + + +It is doubtful whether any of Bunyan's contemporaries had so strong a +human interest attaching to his person and his work as Samuel Pepys. +There is indeed something in common to the two men,--little or nothing +of character, but a certain _naivete_ and sincerity of writing, which +makes them remind one of each other many times. All the more because of +this does the contrast between the spirit of the two force itself upon +every reader; and if we should desire to find a typical pagan to match +Bunyan's spirituality and idealism, it would be difficult to go past +Samuel Pepys. + +There were, as everybody knows, two famous diarists of the Restoration +period, Pepys and Evelyn. It is interesting to look at the portraits of +the two men side by side. Evelyn's face is anxious and austere, +suggesting the sort of stuff of which soldiers or saints are made. Pepys +is a voluptuous figure, in the style of Charles the Second, with regular +and handsome features below his splendid wig, and eyes that are both +keen and heavy, penetrating and luxurious. These two men (who, in the +course of their work, had to compare notes on several occasions, and +between whom we have the record of more than one meeting) were among the +most famous gossips of the world. But Evelyn's gossip is a succession of +solemnities compared with the racy scandal, the infantile and insatiable +curiosity, and the incredible frankness of the pagan diarist. + +Look at his face again, and you will find it impossible not to feel a +certain amount of surprise. Of all the unlikely faces with which history +has astonished the readers of books, there are none more surprising than +those of three contemporaries in the later seventeenth century. +Claverhouse, with his powerful character and indomitable will, with his +Titanic daring and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularly +beautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was only +equalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his +picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose +large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and +very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a +miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently +unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of mean +and vulgar predicament. + +Since the deciphering and publication of his Diary, a great deal has +been written concerning it. The best accounts of it are Henry B. +Wheatley's _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in_, and Robert Louis +Stevenson's little essay in his _Short Studies of Men and Books_. The +object of the present lecture is not to give any general account of the +time and its public events, upon which the Diary touches at a thousand +points, but rather to set the spirit of this man in contrast with that +of John Bunyan, which we have just considered. The men are very typical, +and any adequate conception of the spirit of either will give a true +cross-section of the age in which he lived. Pepys, it must be confessed, +is much more at home in his times than Bunyan ever could be. One might +even say that the times seem to have been designed as a background for +the diarist. There is as little of the spirit of a stranger and pilgrim +in Pepys, even in his most pathetic hours, as there is in John Bunyan +the spirit of a man at home, even in his securest. It was a very pagan +time, and Pepys is the pagan _par excellence_ of that time, the bright +and shining example of the pagan spirit of England. + +His lot was cast in high places, to which he rose by dint of great +ability and indomitable perseverance in his office. He talks with the +King, the Duke of York, the Archbishop, and all the other great folks of +the day; and no volume has thrown more light on the character of Charles +the Second than his. We see the King at the beginning kissing the Bible, +and proclaiming it to be the thing which he loves above all other +things. He rises early in the morning, and practises others of the less +important virtues. We see him touching all sorts of people for the +King's evil, a process in which Pepys is greatly interested at first, +but which palls when it has lost its novelty. Similarly, the diarist is +greatly excited on the first occasion when he actually hears the King +speak, but soon begins to criticise him, finding that he talks very much +like other people. He describes the starvation of the fleet, the country +sinking to the verge of ruin, and the maudlin scenes of drunkenness at +Court, with a minuteness which makes one ashamed even after so long an +interval. However revolting or shameful the institution may be, the fact +that it is an institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. +He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would +mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and +his readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. +"How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the +country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the +bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "that +every one about the Court is mad." + +In politics he had been a republican in his early days, and when Charles +the First's head fell at Whitehall, he had confided to a friend the +dangerous remark that if he were to preach a sermon on that event he +would choose as his text the words, "The memory of the wicked shall +rot." The later turn of events gave him abundant opportunities for +repenting of that indiscretion, and he repents at intervals all through +his Diary. For now he is a royalist in his politics, having in him not a +little of the spirit of the Vicar of Bray, and of Bunyan's Mr. By-ends. + +The political references lead him beyond England, and we hear with +consternation now and again about the dangerous doings of the +Covenanters in Scotland. We hear much also of France and Holland, and +still more of Spain. Outside the familiar European lands there is a +fringe of curious places like Tangier, which is of great account at that +time, and is destined in Pepys' belief to play an immense part in the +history of England, and of the more distant Bombain in India, which he +considers to be a place of little account. Here and there the terror of +a new Popish plot appears. The kingdom is divided against itself, and +the King and the Commons are at drawn battle with the Lords, while every +one shapes his views of things according as his party is in or out of +power. + +Three great historic events are recorded with singular minuteness and +interest in the Diary, namely, the Plague, the Dutch War, and the Fire +of London. + +As to the Plague, we have all the vivid horror of detail with which +Defoe has immortalised it, with the additional interest that here no +consecutive history is attempted, but simply a record of daily +impressions of the streets and houses. On his first sight of the red +cross upon a door, the diarist cries out, "Lord, have mercy upon us," in +genuine terror and pity. The coachman sickens on his box and cannot +drive his horses home. The gallant draws the curtains of a sedan chair +to salute some fair lady within, and finds himself face to face with the +death-dealing eyes and breath of a plague-stricken patient. Few people +move along the streets, and at night the passenger sees and shuns the +distant lights of the link-boys guiding the dead to their burial. A +cowardly parson flies upon some flimsy excuse from his dangerous post, +and makes a weak apology on his first reappearance in the pulpit. +Altogether it is a picture unmatched in its broken vivid flashes, in +which the cruelty and wildness of desperation mingle with the despairing +cry of pity. + +The Dutch War was raging then, not on the High Seas only, but at the +very gates of England; and Pepys, whose important and responsible +position as Clerk of the Acts of the Navy gave him much first-hand +information, tells many great stories in his casual way. We hear the +guns distinctly and loud, booming at the mouth of the Thames. The +press-gang sweeps the streets, and starving women, whose husbands have +been taken from them, weep loudly in our ears. Sailors whose wages have +not been paid desert their ships, in some cases actually joining the +Dutch and fighting against their comrades. One of the finest passages +gives a heartrending and yet bracing picture of the times. "About a +dozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach-side with tears in their +eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest began, and said to Sir W. +Coventry, 'We are here a dozen of us, that have long known and loved, +and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done +the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had any +other to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is our +lives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us a +fire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us, out of all which, choose +you one to be commander; and the rest of us, whoever he is, will serve +him; and, if possible, do that which shall show our memory of our dead +commander, and our revenge.' Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved, as +well as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping, and took their names, +and so parted." + +Perhaps, however, the finest work of all is found in the descriptions of +the Fire of London. From that night when he is awakened by the red glare +of the fire in his bedroom window, on through the days and weeks of +terror, when no man knew how long he would have a home, we follow by the +light of blazing houses the story of much that is best and much that is +worst in human nature. The fire, indeed, cleanses the city from the last +dregs of the plague which are still lingering there, but it also stirs +up the city until its inhabitants present the appearance of ants upon a +disturbed ant-hill. And not the least busy among them, continually +fussing about in all directions, is the diarist himself, eagerly +planning for the preservation of his money, dragging it hither and +thither from hiding-place to hiding-place in the city, and finally +burying it in bags at dead of night in a garden. Nothing is too small +for him to notice. The scrap of burnt paper blown by the wind to a +lady's hand, on which the words are written, "Time is, it is done," is +but one of a thousand equally curious details. + +His own character, as reflected in the narrative of these events, is +often little to his credit, and the frank and unblushing selfishness of +his outlook upon things in general is as amusing as it is shameful. And +yet, on the other hand, when most men deserted London, Pepys remained in +it through the whole dangerous time of the plague, taking his life in +his hand and dying daily in his imagination in spite of the quaint +precautions against infection which he takes care on every occasion to +describe. Through the whole dismal year, with plague and fire raging +around him, he sticks to his post and does his work as thoroughly as the +disorganised circumstances of his life allow. If we could get back to +the point of view of those who thought about Pepys and formed a judgment +of him before his Diary had been made public, we should be confronted +with the figure of a man as different from the diarist as it is possible +for two men to be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, a +man who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror of +all the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no means +unimportant, even in a time so full of dangers and so critical for the +destinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him in +his day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, so +carefully written in such an unintelligible cipher, locked nightly with +its little key, and hidden in some secure place. When at last the +writing was deciphered, there came forth upon us, from the august and +honourable state in which the Navy Commissioner had lain so long, this +flood of small talk, the greatest curiosity known to English literature. +Other men than Pepys have suffered in reputation from the yapping of +dogs and the barn-door cackle that attacked their memories. England +blushed as she heard the noise when the name of Carlyle became the +centre of such commotion. But if Samuel Pepys has suffered in the same +way he has no one to thank for it but himself; for, if his own +hand-writing had not revealed it, no one could possibly have guessed +it from the facts of his public career. Yet what a rare show it is, that +multitude of queer little human interests that intermingle with the talk +about great things! It may have been quite wrong to translate it, and +undoubtedly much of it was disreputable enough for any man to write, yet +it will never cease to be read; nor will England cease to be glad that +it was translated, so long as the charm of history is doubled by touches +of strange imagination and confessions of human frailty. + +Pepys' connection with literature is that rather of a virtuoso than of a +student in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History of +the Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashion +from that of the immortality which the Diary has achieved. But his life +was crowded with business and its intervals with pleasures. The weakness +of his eyes also militated against any serious contribution to +literature, and instead of the History, for which he had gathered much +material and many manuscripts, he gave us only the little volume +entitled _Memoirs of the Navy_, which, however, shows a remarkable grasp +of his subject, and of all corresponding affairs, such as could only +have been possessed by a man of unusually thorough knowledge of his +business. He collected what was for his time a splendid library, +consisting of some three thousand volumes, now preserved in his College +(Magdalene College, Cambridge), very carefully arranged and catalogued. +We read much of this library while it is accumulating--much more about +the mahogany cases in which the books were to stand than about the books +themselves, or his own reading of them. The details of their arrangement +were very dear to his curious mind. He tells us that where the books +would not fit exactly to the shelves, but were smaller than the space, +he had little gilded stilts made, adjusted to the size of each book, and +placed under the volumes, which they lifted to the proper height. Little +time can have been left over for the study of at least the stiffer works +in that library, although there are many notes which show that he was in +some sense a reader, and that books served the same purpose as events +and personalities in leading him up and down the byways of what he +always found to be a curious and interesting world. + +But the immortal part of Pepys is undoubtedly his Diary. Among others of +the innumerable curious interests which this man cultivated was that of +studying the secret ciphers which had been invented and used by literary +people in the past. From his knowledge of these he was enabled to invent +a cipher of his own, or rather to adopt one which he altered somewhat to +serve his uses. Having found this sufficiently secret code, he was now +able to gratify his immense interest in himself and his inordinate +personal vanity by writing an intimate narrative of his own life. The +Diary covers nine and a half years in all, from January 1660 to May +1669. For nearly a century and a half it lay dead and silent, until Rev. +J. Smith, with infinite diligence and pains, discovered the key to it, +and wrote his translation. A later translation has been made by Rev. +Mynors Bright, which includes some passages by the judgment of the +former translator considered unnecessary or inadvisable. + +Opinions differ as to the wisdom, and indeed the morality, of forcing +upon the public ear the accidentally discovered secrets which a dead man +had guarded so carefully. There is, of course, the possibility that, as +some think, Pepys desired that posterity should have the complete record +in all its frankness and candour. If this be so, one can only say that +the wish is evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind. It seems much more +probable that he wrote the Diary for the luxury of reading it to +himself, always intending to destroy it before his death. But a piece of +work so intimate as this is, in a sense, a living part of the man who +creates it, and one can well imagine him putting off the day of its +destruction, and grudging that it should perish with all its power of +awakening old chords of memory and revitalising buried years. For his +own part he was no squeamish moralist and if it were only for his own +eyes he would enjoy passages which the more fastidious public might +judge differently. + +So it comes to pass that this amazing _omnium gatherum_ of a book is +among the most living of all the gifts of the past to the present, +telling everything and telling it irresistibly. His hat falls through a +hole, and he writes down all about the incident as faithfully as he +describes the palace of the King of France, and the English war with +Holland. His nature is amazingly complicated, and yet our judgment of it +is simplified by his passion for telling everything, no matter how +discreditable or how ignoble the detail may be. He is a great man and a +great statesman, and he is the liveliest of our English crickets on the +hearth. One set of excerpts would present him as the basest, another set +as the pleasantest and kindliest of men; and always without any +exception he is refreshing by his intense and genial interest in the +facts of the world. Of the many summaries of himself which he has given +us, none is more characteristic than the following, with which he closes +the month of April of the year 1666: "Thus ends this month; my wife in +the country, myself full of pleasure and expence; in some trouble for my +friends, and my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, +which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost +anything." He is essentially a virtuoso who has been forced by +circumstances into the necessity of being also a public man, and has +developed on his own account an extraordinary passion for the +observation of small and wayside things. At the high table of those +times, where Milton and Bunyan sit at the mighty feast of English +literature, he is present also: but he is under the table, a mischievous +and yet observant child, loosening the neckerchiefs of those who are too +drunk, and picking up scraps of conversation which he will retail +outside. There is something peculiarly pathetic in the whole picture. +One remembers Defoe, who for so many years lived in the reputation of +honourable politics and in the odour of such sanctity as Robinson Crusoe +could give, until the discovery of certain yellow papers revealed the +base political treachery for which the great island story had been a +kind of anodyne to conscience. So Samuel Pepys would have passed for a +great naval authority and an anxious friend of England when her foes +were those of her own household, had he only been able to make up his +mind to destroy these little manuscript volumes. + +Why did he write them, one still asks? Readers of Robert Browning's +poems, _House_ and _Shop_, will remember the scorn which that poet pours +upon any one who unlocks his heart to the general public. And these +narrations of Pepys' are certainly of such a kind that if he intended +them to be read by any public in any generation of England, he must be +set down as unique among sane men. Stevenson indeed considers that there +was in the Diary a side glance at publication, but the proof which he +adduces from the text does not seem sufficient to sustain so remarkable +a freak of human nature, nor does the fact that on one occasion Pepys +set about destroying all his papers except the Diary, appear to prove +very much one way or another. Stevenson calls it inconsistent and +unreasonable in a man to write such a book and to preserve it unless he +wanted it to be read. But perhaps no writing of diaries is quite +reasonable; and as for his desire to have it read by others than +himself, we find that his Diary was so close a secret that he expresses +regret for having mentioned it to Sir William Coventry. No other man +ever heard of it in Pepys' lifetime, "it not being necessary, nor maybe +convenient, to have it known." + +Why, then, did he write it? Why does anybody write a diary? Probably the +answer nearest to the truth will be that every one finds himself +interesting, and some people have so keen an interest in themselves that +it becomes a passion, clamorous to be gratified. Now as Bacon tells us, +"Writing maketh an exact man," and the writing of diaries reduces to the +keenest vividness our own impressions of experience and thoughts about +things. Pepys was, above all other men, interested in himself. He was +intensely in love with himself. The beautiful, jealous, troublesome, and +yet inevitable Mrs. Pepys was but second in her husband's affections +after all. He was his own wife. One remembers fashionable novels of the +time of _Evelina_ or the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, and recollects how the +ladies there speak lover-like of their diaries, and, when writing them, +feel themselves always in the best possible company. For Pepys, his +Diary does not seem to have been so much a refuge from daily cares and +worries, nor a preparation for the luxury of reading it in his old age, +as an indulgence of intense and poignant pleasure in the hour of +writing. + +His interest in himself was quite extraordinary. When his library was +collected and his books bound and gilded they were doubtless a treasured +possession of which he was hugely proud. But this was not so much a +possession as it was a kind of _alter ego_, a fragment of his living +self, hidden away from all eyes but his own. No trifle in his life is +too small for record. He cannot change his seat in the office from one +side of the fireplace to another without recording it. The gnats trouble +him at an inn in the country. His wig takes fire and crackles, and he is +mighty merry about it until he discovers that it is his own wig that is +burning and not somebody else's. He visits the ships, and, remembering +former days, notes down without a blush the sentence, "Poor ship, that I +have been twice merry in." Any one could have written the Diary, so far +as intellectual or even literary power is concerned, though perhaps few +would have chosen precisely Pepys' grammar in which to express +themselves. But nobody else that ever lived could have written it with +such sheer abandonment and frankness. He has a positive talent, nay, a +genius for self-revelation, for there must be a touch of genius in any +man who is able to be absolutely true. Other men have struggled hard to +gain sincerity, and when it is gained the struggle has made it too +conscious to be perfectly sincere. Pepys, with utter unconsciousness, is +sincere even in his insincerities. Some of us do not know ourselves and +our real motives well enough to attempt any formal statement of them. +Others of us may suspect ourselves, but would die before we would +confess our real motives even to ourselves, and would fiercely deny them +if any other person accused us of them. But this man's barriers are all +down. There is no reserve, but frankness everywhere and to an unlimited +extent. There is no pose in the book either of good or bad, and it is +one of the very few books of which such a statement could be made. He +has been accused of many things, but never of affectation. The bad +actions are qualified by regrets, and the disarmed critic feels that +they have lost any element of tragedy which they might otherwise have +had. The good actions are usually spoiled by some selfish _addendum_ +which explains and at the same time debases them. Surely the man who +could do all this constantly through so many hundreds of pages, must be +in his way a unique kind of genius, to have so clear an eye and so +little self-deception. + +The Diary is full of details, for he is the most curious man in the +world. One might apply to him the word catholicity if it were not far +too big and dignified an epithet. The catholicity of his mind is that of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_. The interest of the book is inexhaustible, +because to him the whole world was just such a book. His world was +indeed + + So full of a number of things + He was sure we should all be as happy as kings. + +Like Chaucer's Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly." Now he lights upon +a dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet again +upon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. He +will drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like a +bird, and he will tell you a tale of a boy who was disinherited because +he crowed like a cock. He will walk across half the country to see +anything new. His heart is full of a great love of processions, +raree-shows of every kind, and, above all, novelty. His confession that +the sight of the King touching for the evil gave him no pleasure because +he had seen it before, applies to most things in his life. For such a +man, this world must indeed have been an interesting place. + +We join him in well-nigh every meal he sits down to, from the first days +when they lived so plainly, on to the greater times of the end, when he +gives a dinner to his friends, which was "a better dinner than they +understood or deserved." He delights in all the detail of the table. The +cook-maid, whose wages were L4 per annum, had no easy task to satisfy +her fastidious master, and Mrs. Pepys must now and then rise at four in +the morning to make mince-pies. Any new kind of meat or drink especially +delights him. He finds ortolans to be composed of nothing but fat, and +he often seems, in his thoughts on other nations, to have for his first +point of view the sight of foreigners at dinner. But this is only part +of the insatiable and omnivorous interest in odds and ends which is +everywhere apparent. The ribbons he has seen at a wedding, the starving +seamen who are becoming a danger to the nation, the drinking of wine +with a toad in the glass, a lightning flash that melted fetters from the +limbs of slaves, Harry's chair (the latest curiosity of the +drawing-rooms, whose arms rise and clasp you into it when you sit down), +the new Messiah, who comes with a brazier of hot coals and proclaims the +doom of England--these, and a thousand other details, make up the +furniture of this most miscellaneous mind. + +Everything in the world amuses him, and from first to last there is an +immense amount of travelling, both physical and mental. With him we +wander among companies of ladies and gentlemen walking in gardens, or +are rowed up and down the Thames in boats, and it is always exciting and +delightful. That is a kind of allegory of the man's view of life. But +nothing is quite so congenial to him, after all, as plays at the +theatre. One feels that he would never have been out of theatres had it +been possible, and in order to keep himself to his business he has to +make frequent vows (which are generally more or less broken) that he +will not go to see a play again until such and such a time. When the vow +is broken and the play is past he lamentably regrets the waste of +resolution, and stays away for a time until the next outburst comes. The +plays were then held in the middle of the day, and must have cut in +considerably upon the working-time of business men; although, to be +sure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon +things were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and the +flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient +physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste in +the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patience +with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of _Twelfth Night_, +_Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Othello_; while he constantly informs us +that he "never saw anything so good in his life" as the now +long-forgotten productions of little playwrights of his time. He would, +we suspect, prefer at all times a puppet show to a play; partly, no +doubt, because that was the fashion, and partly because that type of +drama was nearer his size. Throughout the volumes of the Diary there are +few things of which he speaks with franker and more enthusiastic delight +than the enjoyment which he derives from punchinello. + +Next to the delight which he derived from the theatre must be mentioned +that which he continually found in music. He seems to have made an +expert and scientific study of it, and the reader hears continually the +sound of lutes, harpsichords, violas, theorbos, virginals, and +flageolets. He takes great numbers of music lessons, but quarrels with +his teacher from time to time. He praises extravagantly such music as he +hears, or criticises it unsparingly, passing on one occasion the +desperate censure "that Mrs. Turner sings worse than my wife." + +His interest in science is as curious and miscellaneous as his interest +in everything else. He was indeed President of the Royal Society of his +time, and he is immensely delighted with Boyle and his new discoveries +concerning colours and hydrostatics. Yet so rare a dilettante is he, +in this as in other things, that we find this President of the Royal +Society bringing in a man to teach him the multiplication table. He has +no great head for figures, and we find him listening to long lectures +upon abstruse financial questions, not unlike the bimetallism +discussions of our own day, which he finds so clear, while he is +listening, that nothing could be clearer, but half an hour afterwards he +does not know anything whatever about the subject. + +Under the category of his amusements, physic must be included; for, like +other egoists, he was immensely interested in his real or imaginary +ailments, and in the means which were taken to cure them. On some days +he will sit all day long taking physic. He derives an immense amount of +amusement from the process of doctoring himself, and still more from +writing down in all their detail both his symptoms and their treatment. +His pharmacopoeia is by no means scientific, for he includes within it +charms which will cure one of anything, and he always keeps a hare's +foot by him, and will sometimes tell of troubles which came to him +because he had forgotten it. + +He is constantly passing the shrewdest of judgments upon men and things, +or retailing them from the lips of others. "Sir Ellis Layton is, for a +speech of forty words, the wittiest man that ever I knew in my life, but +longer he is nothing." "Mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy +do abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a +fool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much +in the wrong." "How little merit do prevail in the world, but only +favour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in; and +that diligence only keeps me so, and will, living as I do among so many +lazy people that the diligent man becomes necessary, that they cannot do +anything without him." "To the Cocke-pitt where I hear the Duke of +Albemarle's chaplain make a simple sermon: among other things, +reproaching the imperfection of humane learning, he cried, 'All our +physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is not +able to number the days of a man'--which, God knows, is not the fault of +arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing." "The +blockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, and +every man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout and +honest to his country." "He advises me in what I write to him, to be as +short as I can, and obscure." "But he do tell me that the House is in +such a condition that nobody can tell what to make of them, and, he +thinks, they were never in before; that everybody leads and nobody +follows." "My Lord Middleton did come to-day, and seems to me but a +dull, heavy man; but he is a great soldier, and stout, and a needy +Lord." A man who goes about the world making remarks of that kind, would +need a cipher in which to write them down. His world is everything to +him, and he certainly makes the most of it so far as observation and +remark are concerned. + +If Pepys' curiosity and infinitely varied shrewdness and observation may +be justly regarded as phenomenal, the complexity of his moral character +is no less amazing. He is full of industry and ambition, reading for his +favourite book Bacon's _Faber Fortunae_, "which I can never read too +often." He is "joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see, +that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and has sent me masters that +do observe that I take pains." Again he is "busy till night blessing +myself mightily to see what a deal of business goes off a man's hands +when he stays at it." Colonel Birch tells him "that he knows him to be a +man of the old way of taking pains." + +This is interesting in itself, and it is a very marked trait in his +character, but it gains a wonderful pathos when we remember that this +infinite taking of pains was done in a losing battle with blindness. +There is a constantly increasing succession of references in the Diary +to his failing eyesight and his fears of blindness in the future. The +references are made in a matter-of-fact tone, and are as free from +self-pity as if he were merely recording the weather or the date. All +the more on that account, the days when he is weary and almost blind +with writing and reading, and the long nights when he is unable to read, +show him to be a very brave and patient man. He consults Boyle as to +spectacles, but fears that he will have to leave off his Diary, since +the cipher begins to hurt his eyes. The lights of the theatre become +intolerable, and even reading is a very trying ordeal, notwithstanding +the paper tubes through which he looks at the print, and which afford +him much interest and amusement. So the Diary goes on to its pathetic +close:--"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with +my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any +longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time +that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I +must forbear; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have +it kept by my people in long-hand, and must be contented to set down +no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be +anything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, +here and there, a note in shorthand with my own hand. + +"And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to +see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that +will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!--S.P." + +It is comforting to know that, in spite of these fears, he did not grow +blind, but preserved a certain measure of sight to the end of his +career. + +In regard to money and accounts, his character and conduct present the +same extraordinary mixture as is seen in everything else that concerns +him. Money flows profusely upon valentines, gloves, books, and every +sort of thing conceivable; yet he grudges the price of his wife's dress +although it is a sum much smaller than the cost of his own. He allows +her L30 for all expenses of the household, and she is immensely pleased, +for the sum is much larger than she had expected. The gift to her of a +necklace worth L60 overtops all other generosity, and impresses himself +so much that we hear of it till we are tired. A man in such a position +as his, is bound to make large contributions to public objects, both in +the forms of donations and of loans; but caution tempers his public +spirit. A characteristic incident is that in which he records his +genuine shame that the Navy Board had not lent any money towards the +expenses caused by the Fire and the Dutch War. But when the loan is +resolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naivete, how he rushes in to +begin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a larger +sum, which he would have to equal if he came after them. He hates +gambling,--it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him,--and he +records, conscientiously and very frequently, the gradual growth of his +estate from nothing at all to thousands of pounds, with constant thanks +to God, and many very quaint little confessions and remarks. + +He was on the one hand confessedly a coward, and on the other hand a man +of the most hasty and violent temper. Yet none of his readers can +despise him very bitterly for either of these vices. For he disarms all +criticism by the incredibly ingenious frankness of his confessions; and +the instances of these somewhat contemptible vices alternate with bits +of real gallantry and fineness, told in the same perfectly natural and +unconscious way. + +His relations with his wife and other ladies would fill a volume in +themselves. It would not be a particularly edifying volume, but it +certainly would be without parallel in the literature of this or any +other country for sheer extremity of frankness. Mrs. Pepys appears to +have been a very beautiful and an extremely difficult lady, disagreeable +enough to tempt him into many indiscretions, and yet so virtuous as to +fill his heart with remorse for all his failings, and still more with +vexation for her discoveries of them. But below all this surface play of +pretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and +genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about +her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with +abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her +capricious and imperious little humours. + +These curious mixtures of character, however, are but byplay compared +with the phenomenal and central vanity, which alternately amazes and +delights us. After all the centuries there is a positive charm about +this grown man who, after all, never seems to have grown up into +manhood. He is as delighted with himself as if he were new, and as +interested in himself as if he had been born yesterday. He prefers +always to talk with persons of quality if he can find them. "Mighty glad +I was of the good fortune to visit him (Sir W. Coventry), for it keeps +in my acquaintance with him, and the world sees it, and reckons my +interest accordingly." His public life was distinguished by one great +speech made in answer to the accusations of some who had attacked him +and the Navy Board in the House of Commons. That speech seems certainly +to have been distinguished and extraordinarily able, but it certainly +would have cost him his soul if he had not already lost that in other +ways. Every sentence of flattery, even to the point of being told that +he is another Cicero, he not only takes seriously, but duly records. + +There is an immense amount of snobbery, blatant and unashamed. A certain +Captain Cooke turns out to be a man who had been very great in former +days. Pepys had carried clothes to him when he was a little +insignificant boy serving in his father's workshop. Now Captain Cooke's +fortunes are reversed, and Pepys tells us of his many and careful +attempts to avoid him, and laments his failure in such attempts. He +hates being seen on the shady side of any street of life, and is +particularly sensitive to such company as might seem ridiculous or +beneath his dignity. His brother faints one day while walking with him +in the street, on which his remark is, "turned my head, and he was +fallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into a +great fright; and, to see my brotherly love! I did presently lift him up +from the ground." This last sentence is so delightful that, were it not +for the rest of the Diary, it would be quite incredible in any human +being past the age of short frocks. All this side of his character +culminates in the immense amount of information which we have concerning +his coach. He has great searching of heart as to whether it would be +good policy or bad to purchase it. All that is within him longs to have +a coach of his own, but, on the other hand, he fears the jealousy of his +rivals and the increased demands upon his generosity which such a luxury +may be expected to bring. At last he can resist no longer, and the coach +is purchased. No sooner does he get inside it than he assumes the air of +a gentleman whose ancestors have ridden in coaches since the beginning +of time. "The Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and +now and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, there +were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's." + +A somewhat amazing fact in this strange and contradictory character is +the constant element of subtlety which blends with so much frankness. He +wants to do wrong in many different ways but he wants still more to do +it with propriety, and to have some sort of plausible excuse which will +explain it in a respectable light. Nor is it only other people whom he +is bent on deceiving. Were that all, we should have a very simple type +of hypocritical scoundrel, which would be as different as possible from +the extraordinary Pepys. There is a sense of propriety in him, and a +conscience of obeying the letter of the law and keeping up appearances +even in his own eyes. If he can persuade himself that he has done that, +all things are open to him. He will receive a bribe, but it must be +given in such a way that he can satisfy his conscience with ingenious +words. The envelope has coins in it, but then he opens it behind his +back and the coins fall out upon the floor. He has only picked them up +when he found them there, and can defy the world to accuse him of having +received any coins in the envelope. That was the sort of conscience +which he had, and whose verdicts he never seems seriously to have +questioned. He vows he will drink no wine till Christmas, but is +delighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is not +necessarily included in his vow. He vows he will not go to the play +until Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goes +with the borrowed money; or goes to a new playhouse which was not open +when the vow was made. He buys books which no decent man would own to +having bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has only +read them and has not put them in his library. Thus, along the whole +course of his life, he cheats himself continually. He prefers the way of +honour if it be consistent with a sufficient number of other +preferences, and yet practises a multitude of curiously ingenious +methods of being excusably dishonourable. On the whole, in regard to +public business and matters of which society takes note, he keeps his +conduct surprisingly correct, but all the time he is remembering, not +without gusto, what he might be doing if he were a knave. It is a +curious question what idea of God can be entertained by a man who plays +tricks with himself in this fashion. Of Pepys certainly it cannot be +said that God "is not in all his thoughts," for the name and the +remembrance are constantly recurring. Yet God seems to occupy a quite +hermetically sealed compartment of the universe; for His servant in +London shamelessly goes on with the game he is playing, and appears to +take a pride in the very conscience he systematically hoodwinks. + +It is peculiarly interesting to remember that Samuel Pepys and John +Bunyan were contemporaries. There is, as we said, much in common between +them, and still more in violent contrast. He had never heard of the +Tinker or his Allegory so far as his Diary tells us, nor is it likely +that he would greatly have appreciated the _Pilgrim's Progress_ if it +had come into his hands. Even _Hudibras_ he bought because it was the +proper thing to do, and because he had met its author, Butler; but he +never could see what it was that made that book so popular. Bunyan and +Pepys were two absolutely sincere men. They were sincere in opposite +ways and in diametrically opposite camps, but it was their sincerity, +the frank and natural statement of what they had to say, that gave its +chief value to the work of each of them. It is interesting to remember +that Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in the +year 1678. The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, and +his imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record: while Bunyan's +charge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promise +not to repeat the offence. Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probably +have approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who were +living for conscience' sake, like Dr. Johnson's friend, Dr. Campbell, of +whom it was said he never entered a church, but always took off his hat +when he passed one. On the whole Pepys' references to the Fanatiques, as +he calls them, are not only fair but favourable. He is greatly +interested in their zeal, and impatient with the stupidity and brutality +of their persecutors. + +In regard to outward details there are many interesting little points of +contact between the Diary and the _Pilgrims Progress_. We hear of Pepys +purchasing Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_; Bartholomew and Sturbridge Fairs +come in for their own share of notice; nor is there wanting a +description of such a cage as Christian and Faithful were condemned to +in Vanity Fair. Justice Keelynge, the judge who condemned Bunyan, is +mentioned on several occasions by Pepys, very considerably to his +disadvantage. But by far the most interesting point that the two have in +common is found in that passage which is certainly the gem of the whole +Diary. Bunyan, in the second part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, +introduces a shepherd boy who sings very sweetly upon the Delectable +Mountains. It is the most beautiful and idyllic passage in the whole +allegory, and has become classical in English literature. Yet Pepys' +passage will match it for simple beauty. He rises with his wife a little +before four in the morning to make ready for a journey into the country +in the neighbourhood of Epsom. There, as they walk upon the Downs, they +come "where a flock of sheep was; and the most pleasant and innocent +sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd and his little boy +reading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him; so I +made the boy read to me, which he did.... He did content himself +mightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, the +most like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and it +brought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two or +three days after." + +Such is some slight conception, gathered from a few of many thousands of +quaint and sparkling revelations of this strange character. Over against +the "ingenious dreamer," Bunyan, here is a man who never dreams. He is +the realist, pure and unsophisticated; and the stray touches of pathos, +on which here and there one chances in his Diary, are written without +the slightest attempt at sentiment, or any other thought than that they +are plain matters of fact. He might have stood for this prototype of +many of Bunyan's characters. Now he is Mr. Worldly Wiseman, now Mr. +By-ends, and Mr. Hold-the-World; and taken altogether, with all his +good and bad qualities, he is a fairly typical citizen of Vanity Fair. + +There are indeed in his character exits towards idealism and +possibilities of it, but their promise is never fulfilled. There is, for +instance, his kindly good-nature. That quality was the one and +all-atoning virtue of the times of Charles the Second, and it was +supposed to cover a multitude of sins. Yet Charles the Second's was a +reign of constant persecution, and of unspeakable selfishness in high +places. Pepys persecutes nobody, and yet some touch of unblushing +selfishness mars every kindly thing he does. If he sends a haunch of +venison to his mother, he lets you know that it was far too bad for his +own table. He loves his father with what is obviously a quite genuine +affection, but in his references to him there is generally a significant +remembrance of himself. He tells us that his father is a man "who, +besides that he is my father, and a man that loves me, and hath ever +done so, is also, at this day, one of the most careful and innocent men +of the world." He advises his father "to good husbandry and to be living +within the bounds of L50 a year, and all in such kind words, as not only +made both them but myself to weep." He hopes that his father may recover +from his illness, "for I would fain do all I can, that I may have him +live, and take pleasure in my doing well in the world." Similarly, when +his uncle is dying, we have a note "that he is very ill, and so God's +Will be done." When the uncle is dead, Pepys' remark is, "sorry in one +respect, glad in my expectations in another respect." When his +predecessor dies, he writes, "Mr. Barlow is dead; for which God knows my +heart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, +by whose death he gets L100 per annum." + +Another exit towards idealism of the Christian and spiritual sort might +be supposed to be found in his abundant and indeed perpetual references +to churches and sermons. He is an indomitable sermon taster and critic. +But his criticisms, although they are among the most amusing of all his +notes, soon lead us to surrender any expectation of escape from paganism +along this line. "We got places, and staid to hear a sermon; but it, +being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of it +we went away, and I home, and dined; and then my wife and I by water to +the Opera." This is not, perhaps, surprising, and may in some measure +explain his satisfaction with Dr. Creeton's "most admirable, good, +learned, and most severe sermon, yet comicall," in which the preacher +"railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the +Presbyterians," and ripped up Hugh Peters' preaching, calling him "the +execrable skellum." One man preaches "well and neatly"; another "in a +devout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, +and that he would preach holily"; while Mr. Mills makes "an unnecessary +sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people." +On the whole, his opinion of the Church is not particularly high, and he +seems to share the view of the Confessor of the Marquis de Caranen, +"that the three great trades of the world are, the lawyers, who govern +the world; the Churchmen who enjoy the world; and a sort of fellows whom +they call soldiers, who make it their work to defend the world." + +It must be confessed that, when there were pretty ladies present and +when his wife was absent, the sermons had but little chance. "To +Westminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with my +perspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great +pleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and what +with that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done." +Sometimes he goes further, as at St. Dunstan's, where "I heard an able +sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, +whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got +further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take +pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again--which, +seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design." + +He visits cathedrals, and tries to be impressed by them, but more +interesting things are again at hand. At Rochester, "had no mind to stay +there, but rather to our inne, the White Hart, where we drank." At +Canterbury he views the Minster and the remains of Beckett's tomb, but +adds, "A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a +great while." There is something ludicrously incongruous about the idea +of Samuel Pepys in a cathedral, just as there is about his presence in +the Great Plague and Fire. Among any of these grand phenomena he is +altogether out of scale. He is a fly in a thunderstorm. + +His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can +lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God +continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, +with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his +last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking +of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as +of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On +a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind +of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and +home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter +merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when +in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will +recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, +he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse +hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman +can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an +audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, +but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is +this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing +the knave and dissimulation." + +Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly +governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion +was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience +enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within +the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man--a +conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are +constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems +as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which +he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which +there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are +all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are? + +Pepys was a pagan man in a pagan time, if ever there was such a man. The +deepest secret of him is his intense vitality. Here, on the earth, he is +thoroughly alive, and puts his whole heart into most of his actions. He +is always in the superlative mood, finding things either the best or the +worst that "he ever saw in all his life." His great concern is to be +merry, and he never outgrows the crudest phases of this desire, but +carries the monkey tricks of a boy into mature age. He will draw his +merriment from any source. He finds it "very pleasant to hear how the +old cavaliers talk and swear." At the Blue Ball, "we to dancing, and +then to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then +to dance and sing; and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve +at night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I +love to do, enjoy myself." "This day my wife made it appear to me that +my late entertainment of this week cost me above L12, an expence which I +am almost ashamed of, though it is but once in a great while, and is the +end for which, in the most part, we live, to have such a merry day once +or twice in a man's life." + +The only darkening element in his merriment is his habit of examining it +too anxiously. So greedy is he of delight that he cannot let himself go, +but must needs be measuring the extent to which he has achieved his +desire. Sometimes he finds himself "merry," but at other times only +"pretty merry." And there is one significant confession in connection +with some performance of a favourite play, "and indeed it is good, +though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are." +This is one of the very few touches of anything approaching to cynicism +which are to be found in his writings. His greed of merriment overleaps +itself, and the confession of that is the deepest note in all his music. + +Thus all the avenues leading beyond the earth were blocked. Other men +escape along the lines of kindliness, love of friends, art, poetry, or +religion. In all these avenues he walks or dances, but they lead him +nowhere. At the bars he stands, an absolute worldling and pagan, full of +an insatiable curiosity and an endless hunger and thirst. There is no +touch of eternity upon his soul: his universe is Vanity Fair. + + + + +LECTURE VII + +SARTOR RESARTUS + + +We now begin the study of the last of the three stages in the battle +between paganism and idealism. Having seen something of its primitive +and classical forms, we took a cross section of it in the seventeenth +century, and now we shall review one or two of its phases in our own +time. The leap from the seventeenth century to the twentieth necessarily +omits much that is vital and interesting. The eighteenth century, in its +stately and complacent fashion, produced some of the most deliberate and +finished types of paganism which the world has seen, and these were +opposed by memorable antagonists. We cannot linger there, however, but +must pass on to that great book which sounded the loudest bugle-note +which the nineteenth century heard calling men to arms in this warfare. + +Nothing could be more violent than the sudden transition from Samuel +Pepys, that inveterate tumbler in the masque of life, whose absurdities +and antics we have been looking at but now, to this solemn and +tremendous book. Great in its own right, it is still greater when we +remember that it stands at the beginning of the modern conflict between +the material and spiritual development of England. Every student of the +fourteenth century is familiar with two great figures, typical of the +two contrasted features of its life. On the one hand stands Chaucer, +with his infinite human interest, his good-humour, and his inexhaustible +delight in man's life upon the earth. On the other hand, dark in shadows +as Chaucer is bright with sunshine, stands Langland, colossal in his +sadness, perplexed as he faces the facts of public life which are still +our problems, earnest as death. There is no one figure which corresponds +to Chaucer in the modern age, but Carlyle is certainly the counterpart +of Langland. Standing in the shadow, he sends forth his great voice to +his times, now breaking into sobs of pity, and anon into shrieks of +hoarse laughter, terrible to hear. He, too, is bewildered, and he comes +among his fellows "determined to pluck out the heart of the +mystery"--the mystery alike of his own times and of general human life +and destiny. + +The book is in a great measure autobiographical, and is drawn from deep +wells of experience, thought, and feeling. Inasmuch as its writer was a +very typical Scotsman, it also was in a sense a manifesto of the +national convictions which had made much of the noblest part of Scottish +history, and which have served to stiffen the new races with which +Scottish emigrants have blended, and to put iron into their blood. It is +a book of incalculable importance, and if it be the case that it finds +fewer readers in the rising generation than it did among their fathers, +it is time that we returned to it. It is for want of such strong meat as +this that the spirit of an age tends to grow feeble. + +The object of the present lecture is neither to explain _Sartor +Resartus_ nor to summarise it. It certainly requires explanation, and it +is no wonder that it puzzled the publishers. Before it was finally +accepted by Fraser, its author had "carried it about for some two years +from one terrified owl to another." When it appeared, the criticisms +passed on it were amusing enough. Among those mentioned by Professor +Nichol are, "A heap of clotted nonsense," and "When is that stupid +series of articles by the crazy tailor going to end?" A book which could +call forth such abuse, even from the dullest of minds, is certainly in +need of elucidation. Yet here, more perhaps than in any other volume one +could name, the interpretation must come from within. The truth which it +has to declare will appeal to each reader in the light of his own +experience of life. And the endeavour of the present lecture will simply +be to give a clue to its main purpose. Every reader, following up that +clue for himself, may find the growing interest and the irresistible +fascination which the Victorians found in it. And when we add that +without some knowledge of _Sartor_ it is impossible to understand any +serious book that has been written since it appeared, we do not +exaggerate so much as might be supposed on the first hearing of so +extraordinary a statement. + +The first and chief difficulty with most readers is a very obvious and +elementary one. What is it all about? As you read, you can entertain no +doubt about the eloquence, the violent and unrestrained earnestness of +purpose, the unmistakable reserves of power behind the detonating words +and unforgettable phrases. But, after all, what is it that the man is +trying to say? This is certainly an unpromising beginning. Other great +prophets have prophesied in the vernacular; but "he that speaketh in an +unknown tongue speaketh not unto men but unto God; for no man +understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries." Yet +there are some things which cannot convey their full meaning in the +vernacular, thoughts which must coin a language for themselves; and +although at first there may be much bewilderment and even irritation, +yet in the end we shall confess that the prophecy has found its proper +language. + +Let us go back to the time in which the book was written. In the late +twenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century a quite +exceptional group of men and women were writing books. It was one of +those galaxies that now and then over-crowd the literary heavens with +stars. To mention only a few of the famous names, there were Byron, +Scott, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and the Brownings. It fills one +with envy to think of days when any morning might bring a new volume +from any one of these. Emerson was very much alive then, and was already +corresponding with Carlyle. Goethe died in 1832, but not before he had +found in Carlyle one who "is almost more, at home in our literature than +ourselves," and who had penetrated to the innermost core of the German +writings of his day. + +At that time, too, momentous changes were coming upon the industrial and +political life of England. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway +was opened, and in 1832 the Reform Bill was passed. Men were standing in +the backwash of the French Revolution. The shouts of acclamation with +which the promise of that dawn was hailed, had been silenced long ago by +the bloody spectacle of Paris and the career of Napoleon Buonaparte. The +day of Byronism was over, and polite England was already settling down +to the conventionalities of the Early Victorian period. The romantic +school was passing away, and the new generation was turning from it to +seek reality in physical science. But deep below the conventionality and +the utilitarianism alike there remained from the Revolution its legacy +of lawlessness, and many were more intent on adventure than on +obedience. + +It was in the midst of this confused _melee_ of opinions and impulses +that Thomas Carlyle strode into the lists with his strange book. On the +one hand it is a Titanic defence of the universe against the stage +Titanism of Byron's _Cain_. On the other hand it is a revolt of reality +against the empire of proprieties and appearances and shams. In a +generation divided between the red cap of France and the coal-scuttle +bonnet of England Carlyle stands bareheaded under the stars. Along with +him stand Benjamin Disraeli, combining a genuine sympathy for the poor +with a most grotesque delight in the aristocracy; and John Henry Newman, +fierce against the Liberals, and yet the author of "Lead, kindly Light." + +The book was handicapped more heavily by its own style than perhaps any +book that ever fought its way from neglect and vituperation to +idolatrous popularity. There is in it an immense amount of gag and +patter, much of which is brilliant, but so wayward and fantastic as to +give a sense of restlessness and perpetual noise. The very title is +provoking, and not less so is the explanation of it--the pretended +discovery of a German volume upon "Clothes, their origin and influence," +published by Stillschweigen and Co., of Weissnichtwo, and written by +Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh. The puffs from the local newspaper, and the +correspondence with Hofrath "Grasshopper," in no wise lessen the odds +against such a work being taken seriously. + +Again, as might be expected of a Professor of "Things in General," the +book is discursive to the point of bewilderment. The whole progeny of +"aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils" breaks loose upon us just as +we are about to begin such a list of human apparel as never yet was +published save in the catalogue of a museum collected by a madman. A dog +with a tin kettle at his tail rushes mad and jingling across the street, +leaving behind him a new view of the wild tyranny of Ambition. A great +personage loses much sawdust through a rent in his unfortunate nether +garments. Sirius and the Pleiades look down from above. The book is +everywhere, and everywhere at once. The _asides_ seem to occupy more +space than the main thesis, whatever that may be. Just when you think +you have found the meaning of the author at last, another display of +these fireworks distracts your attention. It is not dark enough to see +their full splendour, yet they confuse such daylight as you have. + +Yet the main thesis cannot long remain in doubt. Through whatever +amazement and distraction, it becomes clear enough at last. Clothes, +which at once reveal and hide the man who wears them, are an allegory of +the infinitely varied aspects and appearances of the world, beneath +which lurk ultimate realities. But essential man is a naked animal, not +a clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drastic +stripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor will +not linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown's +button, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to the +essential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than an +interesting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that. +Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. This +philosophy of clothes, then, is religion and not _belles lettres_. The +reason for our sojourn on earth, and the only ground of any hope for a +further sojourn elsewhere, is that in God's name we do battle with the +devil. + +The quest of reality must obviously be wide as the universe, but if we +are to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it +_somewhere_. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal of +things--a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion of +theories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring the +search down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on its +remaining there. For this end the device of biography is adopted, and we +see the meaning of all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, and +of the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into Book +I. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life and +experience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances to +reality; and Carlyle constructs a typical and immortal biography. + +To the childless old people, Andreas and Gretchen Futteral, leading +their sweet orchard life, there comes, in the dusk of evening, a +stranger of reverend aspect--comes, and leaves with them the "invaluable +Loan" of the baby Teufelsdroeckh. Thenceforward, beside the little +Kuhbach stream, we watch the opening out of a human life, from infancy +to boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood. The story has been told a +million times, but never quite in this fashion before. For rough +delicacy, for exquisitely tender sternness, the biography is unique. + +From the sleep of mere infancy the child is awakened to the +consciousness of creatorship by the gift of tools with which to make +things. Tales open up for him the long vistas of history; and the +stage-coach with its slow rolling blaze of lights teaches him geography, +and the far-flung imaginative suggestiveness of the road; while the +annual cattle-fair actually gathers the ends of the earth about his +wondering eyes, and gives him his first impression of the variety of +human life. + +Childhood brings with it much that is sweet and gentle, flowing on like +the little Kuhbach; and yet suggests far thoughts of Time and Eternity, +concerning which we are evidently to hear more before the end. The +formal education he receives--that "wood and leather education"--calls +forth only protest. But the development of his spirit proceeds in spite +of it. So far as the passive side of character goes, he does +excellently. On the active side things go not so well. Already he begins +to chafe at the restraints of obedience, and the youthful spirit is +beating against its bars. The stupidities of an education which only +appeals to the one faculty of memory, and to that mainly by means of +birch-rods, increase the rebellion, and the sense of restraint is +brought to a climax when at last old Andreas dies. Then "the dark +bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale +kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and +generations, stood before him; the inexorable word NEVER! now +first showed its meaning." + +The youth is now ready to enter, as such a one inevitably must, upon the +long and losing battle of faith and doubt. He is at the theorising stage +as yet, not having learned to make anything, but only to discuss things. +And yet the time is not wasted if the mind have been taught to think. +For "truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can +have." + +The immediate consequence and employment of this unripe time of +half-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is much +reminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, and +tutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdroeckh's desultory period. The +climax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, to +which the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed--well +for all concerned if it did not end in his feeding on the chickens +instead! It is an unwholesome time with the lad--a time of sullen +contempt alternating with loud rebellion, of mingled vanity and +self-indulgence, and of much sheer devilishness of temper. + +Upon this exaggerated and most disagreeable period, lit by "red streaks +of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness," there +comes suddenly the master passion of romantic love. Had this adventure +proved successful, we should have simply had the old story, which ends +in "so they lived happily ever after." What the net result of all the +former strivings after truth and freedom would have been, we need not +inquire. For this is another story, equally old and to the end of time +ever newly repeated. There is much of Werther in it, and still more of +Jean Paul Richter. Its finest English counterpart is Longfellow's +_Hyperion_--the most beautiful piece of our literature, surely, that has +ever been forgotten--in which Richter's story lives again. But never has +the tale been more exquisitely told than in _Sartor Resartus_. For one +sweet hour of life the youth has been taken out of himself and pale +doubt flees far away. Life, that has been but a blasted heath, blooms +suddenly with unheard-of blossoms of hope and of delight. Then comes the +end. "Their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dewdrops, rushed +into one,--for the first time, and for the last! Thus was Teufelsdroeckh +made immortal by a Kiss. And then? Why, then--thick curtains of Night +rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; and +through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, +towards the Abyss." + +The sorrows of Teufelsdroeckh are but too well known. Flung back upon his +former dishevelment of mind from so great and calm a height, the crash +must necessarily be terrible. Yet he will not take up his life where he +left it to follow Blumine. Such an hour inevitably changes a man, for +better or for worse. There is at least a dignity about him now, even +while the "nameless Unrest" urges him forward through his darkened +world. The scenes of his childhood in the little Entepfuhl bring no +consolation. Nature, even in his wanderings among her mountains, is +equally futile, for the wanderer can never escape from his own shadow +among her solitudes. Yet is his nature not dissolved, but only +"compressed closer," as it were, and we watch the next stage of this +development with a sense that some mysteriously great and splendid +experience is on the eve of being born. + +Thus we come to those three central chapters--chapters so fundamental +and so true to human life, that it is safe to prophesy that they will be +familiar so long as books are read upon the earth--"The Everlasting No," +"Centre of Indifference" and "The Everlasting Yea." + +In "The Everlasting No" we watch the work of negation upon the soul of +man. His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and the +unbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened into +Unbelief; shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have +the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." "Is there no God, then; but at +best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the +outside of his Universe, and _seeing_ it go? Has the word Duty no +meaning?" + +"Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, +shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and +receive no Answer but an Echo." Faith, indeed, lies dormant but alive +beneath the doubt. But in the meantime the man's own weakness paralyses +action; and, while this paralysis lasts, all faith appears to have +departed. He has ceased to believe in himself, and to believe in his +friends. "The very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as +believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, +of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable +Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind men limb +from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death!" + +He is saved from suicide simply by the after-shine of Christianity. +The religion of his fathers lingers, no longer as a creed, but as a +powerful set of associations and emotions. It is a small thing to cling +to amid the wrack of a man's universe; yet it holds until the appearance +of a new phase in which he is to find escape from the prison-house. He +has begun to realise that fear--a nameless fear of he knows not +what--has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, +pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous." Fear affects men in widely +different ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies" +obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleared +itself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. But +Teufelsdroeckh is prouder and more violent of spirit than the sedate and +patrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. +"What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever +pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! What +is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: +and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, +will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou not +suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, +trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it +come, then; I will meet it and defy it!" + +This is no permanent or stable resting-place, but it is the beginning of +much. It is the assertion of self in indignation and wild defiance, +instead of the former misery of a man merely haunted by himself. This is +that "Baphometic Fire-baptism" or new-birth of spiritual awakening, +which is the beginning of true manhood. The Everlasting No had said: +"Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the +Devil's); to which my whole Me now made answer: I am not thine, but +Free, and forever hate thee!" + +The immediate result of this awakening is told in "Centre of +Indifference"--_i.e._, indifference to oneself, one's own feelings, and +even to fate. It is the transition from subjective to objective +interests, from eating one's own heart out to a sense of the wide and +living world by which one is surrounded. It is the same process which, +just about this time, Robert Browning was describing in _Paracelsus_ and +_Sordello_. Once more Teufelsdroeckh travels, but this time how +differently! Instead of being absorbed by the haunting shadow of +himself, he sees the world full of vital interests--cities of men, +tilled fields, books, battlefields. The great questions of the +world--the true meanings alike of peace and war--claim his interest. The +great men, whether Goethe or Napoleon, do their work before his +astonished eyes. "Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, +look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and +pertinently enough note what is passing there." He has +reached--strangely enough through self-assertion--the centre of +indifference to self, and of interest in other people and things. And +the supreme lesson of it all is the value of _efficiency_. Napoleon "was +a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the +cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carriere ouverte aux talens_ +(the tools to him that can handle them)." + +This bracing doctrine carries us at once into The Everlasting Yea. It is +not enough that a man pass from the morbid and self-centered mood to an +interest in the outward world that surrounds him. That might transform +him simply into a curious but heartless dilettante, a mere tourist of +the spirit, whose sole desire is to see and to take notes. But that +could never satisfy Carlyle; for that is but self-indulgence in its more +refined form of the lust of the eyes. It was not for this that the +Everlasting No had set Teufelsdroeckh wailing, nor for this that he had +risen up in wrath and bidden defiance to fear. From his temptation in +the wilderness the Son of Man must come forth, not to wander +open-mouthed about the plain, but to work his way "into the higher +sunlit slopes of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is +in Heaven only." + +In other words, a great compassion for his fellow-men has come upon him. +"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow-man: with an +infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou +not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou +bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, +so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my +Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears +from thy eyes!" The words remind us of the famous passage, occurring +early in the book, which describes the Professor's Watchtower. It was +suggested by the close-packed streets of Edinburgh's poorer quarter, as +seen from the slopes of the hills which stand close on her eastern side. +Probably no passage ever written has so vividly and suggestively massed +together the various and contradictory aspects of the human tragedy. + +One more question, however, has yet to be answered before we have solved +our problem. What about happiness? We all cry aloud for it, and make its +presence or absence the criterion for judging the worth of days. +Teufelsdroeckh goes to the heart of the matter with his usual directness. +It is this search for happiness which is the explanation of all the +unwholesomeness that culminated in the Everlasting No. "Because the +THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, +soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act of +Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago +thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and +predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other +than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after +somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not +given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_." In effect, happiness +is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the +amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be +hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: +fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a +luxury to die in hemp." + +Such teaching is neither sympathetic enough nor positive enough to be of +much use to poor mortals wrestling with their deepest problems. Yet in +the very negation of happiness he discovers a positive religion--the +religion of the Cross, the Worship of Sorrow. Expressed crudely, this +seems to endorse the ascetic fallacy of the value of self-denial for its +own sake. But from that it is saved by the divine element in sorrow +which Christ has brought--"Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the +EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein +whoso walks and works, it is well with him." + +This still leaves us perilously near to morbidness. The Worship of +Sorrow might well be but a natural and not less morbid reaction from the +former morbidness, the worship of self and happiness. From that, +however, it is saved by the word "works," which is spoken with emphasis +in this connection. So we pass to the last phase of the Everlasting Yea, +in which we return to the thesis upon which we began, viz., that "Doubt +of any sort cannot be removed except by action." "Do the Duty which +_lies nearest thee_, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty +will already have become clearer.... Yes here, in this poor, miserable, +hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or +nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, +be free.... Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal +fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou +hast in thee; out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to +do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the +Night cometh, wherein no man can work." + +Thus the goal of human destiny is not any theory, however true; not any +happiness, however alluring. It is for practical purposes that the +universe is built, and he who would be "in tune with the universe" must +first and last be practical. In various forms this doctrine has +reappeared and shown itself potent. Ritschl based his system on +practical values in religion, and Professor William James has proclaimed +the same doctrine in a still wider application in his Pragmatism. The +essential element in both systems is that they lay the direct stress of +life, not upon abstract theory but upon experience and vital energy. +This transference from theorising and emotionalism to the prompt and +vigorous exercise of will upon the immediate circumstance, is Carlyle's +understanding of the word Conversion. + +When it comes to the particular question of what work the Professor is +to do, the answer is that he has within him the Word Omnipotent, waiting +for a man to speak it forth. And here in this volume upon Clothes, this +_Sartor Resartus_, is his deliberate response to the great demand. At +first he seems here to relapse from the high seriousness of the chapters +we have just been reading, and to come with too great suddenness to +earth again. Yet that is not the case; for, as we shall see, the rest of +the volume is the attempt to reconstruct the universe on the principles +he has discovered within his own experience. The story to which we have +been listening is Teufelsdroeckh's way of discovering reality; now we are +to have the statement of it on the wider planes of social and other +philosophy. This we shall briefly review, but the gist of the book is in +what we have already found. To most readers the quotations must have +been old and well-remembered friends. Yet they will pardon the +reappearance of them here, for they have been amongst the most powerful +of all winged words spoken in England for centuries. The reason for the +popularity of the book is that these biographical chapters are the +record of normal and typical human experience. This, or something like +this, will repeat itself so long as human nature lasts; and men, grown +discouraged with the mystery and bewilderment of life, will find heart +from these chapters to start "once more on their adventure, brave and +new." + +This, then, is Teufelsdroeckh's reconstruction of the world; and the +world of each one of us requires some such reconstruction. For life is +full of deceptive outward appearances, from which it is the task of +every man to come back in his own way to the realities within. The +shining example of such reconstruction is that of George Fox, who sewed +himself a suit of leather and went out to the woods with it--"Every +stitch of his needle pricking into the heart of slavery, and +world-worship, and the Mammon god." The leather suit is an allegory of +the whole. The appearances of men and things are but the fantastic +clothes with which they cover their nakedness. They take these clothes +of theirs to be themselves, and the first duty and only hope of a man is +to divest himself of all such coverings, and discover what manner of man +he really is. + +This process of divesting, however, may yield either of two results. A +man may take, for the reality of himself, either the low view of human +nature, in which man is but "a forked straddling animal with bandy +legs," or the high view, in which he is a spirit, and unutterable +Mystery of Mysteries. It is the latter view which Thomas Carlyle +champions, through this and many other volumes, against the +materialistic thought of his time. + +The chapter on Dandies is a most extraordinary attack on the keeping up +of appearances. The Dandy is he who not only keeps up appearances but +actually worships them. He is their advocate and special pleader. His +very office and function is to wear clothes. Here we have the illusion +stripped from much that we have taken for reality. Sectarianism is a +prominent example of it, the reading of fashionable novels is another. +In the former two are seen the robes of eternity flung over one very +vulgar form of self-worship, and in the latter the robe of fashionable +society is flung over another. The reality of man's intercourse with +Eternity and with his fellow-men has died within these vestures, but the +eyes of the public are satisfied, and never guess the corpse within. +Sectarianism and Vanity Fair are but common forms of self-worship, in +which every one is keeping up appearances, and is so intent upon that +exercise that all thought of reality has vanished. + +A shallower philosopher would have been content with exposing these and +other shams; and consequently his philosophy would have led nowhere. +Carlyle is a greater thinker, and one who takes a wider view. He is no +enemy of clothes, although fools have put them to wrong uses and made +them the instruments of deception. His choice is not between worshipping +and abandoning the world and its appearances. He will frankly confess +the value of it and of its vesture, and so we have the chapter on +Adamitism, in defence of clothes, which acknowledges in great and +ingenious detail the many uses of the existing order of institutions. +But still, through all such acknowledgment, we are reminded constantly +of the main truth. All appearance is for the sake of reality, and all +tools for expressing the worker. When the appearance becomes a +substitute for the reality, and the tools absorb the attention that +should be devoted to the work for whose accomplishment they exist, then +we have relapsed into the fundamental human error. The object of the +book is to plunge back from appearance to reality, from clothes to him +who wears them. "Who am I? What is this ME?... some embodied, +visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind." + +This swift retreat upon reality occurs at intervals throughout the whole +book, and in connection with every conceivable department of human life +and interest. In many parts there is little attempt at sequence or +order. The author has made voluminous notes on men and things, and the +whole fantastic structure of _Sartor Resartus_ is a device for +introducing these disjointedly. In the remainder of this lecture we +shall select and displace freely, in order to present the main teachings +of the book in manageable groups. + +1. _Language and Thought._--Language is the natural garment of thoughts, +and while sometimes it performs its function of revealing them, it often +conceals them. Many people's whole intellectual life is spent in dealing +with words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all. Still more +commonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have come +to be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought. +Thus the _Name_ is the first garment wrapped around the essential +ME; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, is +simply an attempt at right naming. The names by which we call things are +apt to become labelled pigeon-holes in which we bury them. Having +catalogued and indexed our facts, we lose sight of them thenceforward, +and think and speak in terms of the catalogue. If you are a Liberal, it +is possible that all you may know or care to know about Conservatism is +the name. Nay, having catalogued yourself a Liberal, you may seldom even +find it necessary to inquire what the significance of Liberalism really +is. If you happen to be a Conservative, the corresponding risks will +certainly not be less. + +The dangers of these word-garments, and the habit of losing all contact +with reality in our constant habit of living among mere words, naturally +suggest to Carlyle his favourite theme--a plea for silence. We all talk +too much, and the first lesson we have to learn on our way to reality is +to be oftener silent. This duty of silence, as has been wittily +remarked, Carlyle preaches in thirty-seven volumes of eloquent English +speech. "SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised to them (were +this an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the +element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at +length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of +Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.... Nay, in thy own mean +perplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the +morrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties." Andreas, in his +old camp-sentinel days, once challenged the emperor himself with the +demand for the password. "Schweig, Hund!" replied Frederich; and +Andreas, telling the tale in after years would add, "There is what I +call a King." + +Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require +something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their +silences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently +expounded. Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousand +thoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol. In itself it +may be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all--a clouted +shoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing. +Yet such a thing may so work upon men's silences as to fill them with +the glimmer of a divine idea. + +Other symbols there are which _have_ intrinsic value--works of art, +lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternity +working through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passing +shows. Religious symbols are the highest of all, and highest among these +stands Jesus of Nazareth. "Higher has the human Thought not yet reached: +this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, +infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew +enquired into, and anew made manifest." In other words, Jesus stands for +all that is permanently noble and permanently real in human life. + +Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time at +length effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become but +meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can +never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding +generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them +from the Babel of meaningless words. + +2. _Body and Spirit._--Souls are "rendered visible in bodies that took +shape and will lose it, melting into air." Thus bodies, and not spirits, +are the true apparitions, the souls being the realities which they both +reveal and hide. In fact, body is literally a garment of flesh--a +garment which the soul has for a time put on, but which it will lay +aside again. One of the greatest of all the idolatries of appearance is +our constant habit of judging one another by the attractiveness of the +bodily vesture. Many of the judgments which we pass upon our fellows +would be reversed if we trained ourselves to look through the vestures +of flesh to the men themselves--the souls that are hidden within. + +The natural expansion of this is in the general doctrine of matter and +spirit. Purely material science--science which has lost the faculty of +wonder and of spiritual perception--is no true science at all. It is but +a pair of spectacles without an eye. For all material things are but +emblems of spiritual things--shadows or images of things in the +heavens--and apart from these they have no reality at all. + +3. _Society and Social Problems._--It follows naturally that a change +must come upon our ways of regarding the relations of man to man. If +every man is indeed a temple of the divine, and therefore to be revered, +then much of our accepted estimates and standards of social judgment +will have to be abandoned. Society, as it exists, is founded on class +distinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness and +wealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me is +the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning +virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable +too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude +intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living man like." How far away +we are from all this with our mammon-worship and our fantastic social +unrealities, every student of our times must know, or at least must have +often heard. He would not have heard it so often, however, had not +Thomas Carlyle cried it out with that harsh voice of his, in this and +many others of his books. It was his gunpowder, more than any other +explosive of the nineteenth century, that broke up the immense +complacency into which half England always tends to relapse. + +He is not hopeless of the future of society. Society is the true +Phoenix, ever repeating the miracle of its resurrection from the ashes +of the former fire. There are indestructible elements in the race of +man--"organic filaments" he calls them--which bind society together, and +which ensure a future for the race after any past, however lamentable. +Those "organic filaments" are Carlyle's idea of Social Reality--the real +things which survive all revolution. There are four such realities which +ensure the future for society even when it seems extinct. + +First, there is the fact of man's brotherhood to man--a fact quite +independent of man's willingness to acknowledge that brotherhood. +Second, there is the common bond of tradition, and all our debt to the +past, which is a fact equally independent of our willingness to +acknowledge it. Third, there is the natural and inevitable fact of man's +necessity for reverencing some one above him. Obedience and reverence +are forthcoming, whenever man is in the presence of what he _ought_ to +reverence, and so hero-worship is secure. + +These three bonds of social reality are inseparable from one another. +The first, the brotherhood of man, has often been used as the watchword +of a false independence. It is only possible on the condition of +reverence and obedience for that which is higher than oneself, either in +the past or the present. "Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for +Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your +Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them +were even your only possible freedom." These three, then, are the social +realities, and all other social distinctions and conventionalities are +but clothes, to be replaced or thrown away at need. + +But there is a fourth bond of social reality--the greatest and most +powerful of all. That reality is Religion. Here, too, we must +distinguish clothes from that which they cover--forms of religion from +religion itself. Church-clothes, indeed, are as necessary as any other +clothes, and they will harm no one who remembers that they are but +clothes, and distinguishes between faith and form. The old forms are +already being discarded, yet Religion is so vital that it will always +find new forms for itself, suited to the new age. For religion, in one +form or in another, is absolutely essential to society; and, being a +grand reality, will continue to keep society from collapse. + +4. From this we pass naturally to the great and final doctrine in which +the philosophy of clothes is expounded. That doctrine, condensed into a +single sentence, is that "the whole Universe is the Garment of God." +This brings us back to the song of the _Erdgeist_ in Goethe's _Faust_:-- + + "In Being's floods, in Action's storm, + I walk and work, above, beneath, + Work and weave in endless motion! + Birth and Death, + An infinite ocean; + A seizing and giving + The fire of Living: + 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, + And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." + +This is, of course, no novelty invented by Goethe. We find it in Marius +the Epicurean, and he found it in ancient wells of Greek philosophy. +Carlyle's use of it has often been taken for Pantheism. In so mystic a +region it is impossible to expect precise theological definition, and +yet it is right to remember that Carlyle does not identify the garment +with its Wearer. The whole argument of the book is to distinguish +appearance from reality in every instance, and this is no exception. +"What is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the +'living garment of God'? O Heavens, is it in very deed He, then, that +ever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives and +loves in me?... The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house +with spectres: but godlike and my Father's." "This fair Universe, were +it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City +of God; through every star, through every grass-blade, and most +through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But +Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, +hides Him from the foolish." + +Such is some very broken sketch of this great book. It will at least +serve to recall to the memory of some readers thoughts and words which +long ago stirred their blood in youth. No volume could so fitly be +chosen as a background against which to view the modern surge of the +age-long battle. But the charm of _Sartor Resartus_ is, after all, +personal. We go back to the life-story of Teufelsdroeckh, out of which +such varied and such lofty teachings sprang, and we read it over and +over again because we find in it so much that is our own story too. + + + + +LECTURE VIII + +PAGAN REACTIONS + + +In the last lecture we began the study of the modern aspects of our +subject with Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Now, in a rapid sketch, we +shall look at some of the writings which followed that great book; and, +with it as background, we shall see them in stronger relief. It is +impossible to over-estimate the importance of the influence which was +wielded by Carlyle, and especially by his _Sartor Resartus_. His was a +gigantic power, both in literature and in morals. At first, as we have +already noted, he met with neglect and ridicule in abundance, but +afterwards these passed into sheer wonder, and then into a wide and +devoted worship. Everybody felt his power, and all earnest thinkers were +seized in the strong grip of reality with which he laid hold upon his +time. + +The religious thought and faith both of England and of Scotland felt +him, but his mark was deepest upon Scotland, because of two interesting +facts. First of all, Carlyle represented that old Calvinism which had +always fitted so exactly the national character and spirit; and second, +there were in Scotland many people who, while retaining the Calvinistic +spirit, had lost touch with the old definite creed. Nothing could be +more characteristic of Carlyle than this Calvinism of the spirit which +had passed beyond the letter of the old faith. He stands like an old +Covenanter in the mist; and yet a Covenanter grasping his father's iron +sword. It is because of these two facts _Sartor Resartus_ has taken so +prominent a place in our literature. It stands for a kind of conscience +behind the manifold modern life of our day. Beneath the shrieks and the +laughter of the time we hear in it the boom of great breakers. Never +again can we forget, amidst the gaieties of any island paradise, the +solemn ocean that surrounds it. Carlyle's teaching sounds and recurs +again and again like the Pilgrims' March in _Tannhaeuser_ breaking +through the overture, and rivalling until it vanquishes the music of the +Venusberg. + +Yet it was quite inevitable that there should be strong reaction from +any such work as this. To the warm blood and the poignant sense of the +beauty of the world it brought a sense of chill, a forbidding sombreness +and austerity. Carlyle's conception of Christianity was that of the +worship of sorrow; and, while the essence of his gospel was labour, yet +to many minds self-denial seemed to be no longer presented, as in the +teaching of Jesus, as a means towards the attainment of further +spiritual ends. It had become an end in itself, and one that few would +desire or feel to be justified. In the reaction it was felt that +self-development had claims upon the human spirit as well as +self-denial, and indeed that the happy instincts of life had no right to +be so winsome unless they were meant to be obeyed. The beauty of the +world could not be regarded as a mere trap for the tempting of people, +if one were to retain any worthy conception of the Powers that govern +the world. From this point of view the Carlylians appeared to enter into +life maimed. That, indeed, we all must do, as Christ told us; but they +seemed to do it like the beggars of Colombo, with a deliberate and +somewhat indecent exhibition of their wounds. + +Carlyle found many men around him pagan, worshipping the earth without +any spiritual light in them. He feared that many others were about to go +in the same direction, so he cried aloud that the earth was too small, +and that they must find a larger object of worship. For the earth he +substituted the universe, and led men's eyes out among the immensities +and eternities. Professor James tells a story of Margaret Fuller, the +American transcendentalist, having said with folded hands, "I accept the +universe," and how Carlyle, hearing this, had answered, "Gad, she'd +better!" It was this insistence upon the universe, as distinguished from +the earth, which was the note of _Sartor Resartus_. + +The reactionaries took Carlyle at his word. They said, "Yes, we shall +worship the universe"; but they went on to add that Carlyle's universe +is not universal. It is at once too vague and too austere. There are +other elements in life besides those to which he called +attention--elements very definite and not at all austere--and they too +have a place in the universe and a claim upon our acceptance. Many of +these are in every way more desirable to the type of mind that rebelled +than the aspects of the universe on which Carlyle had insisted, and so +they went out freely among these neglected elements, set them over +against his kind of idealism, and became themselves idealists of other +sorts. + +Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, found his idealism in the purely +mental region. Rossetti was the idealist of the heart, with its whole +world of emotions, and that subtle and far-reaching inter-play between +soul and body for which Carlyle had always made too little allowance. +Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw, proclaiming themselves idealists of +the social order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrines +at which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples, +but they are one in this, that each has protested against that +one-sidedness for which Carlyle stood. Yet each is a one-sided protest, +and falls again into the snare of setting the affections upon things +which are not eternal, and so wedding man to the green earth again. + +Thus we find paganism--in some quarters paganism quite openly +confessed--occupying a prominent place in our literature to-day. Before +we examine some of its aspects in detail a word or two of preliminary +warning may be permissible. It is a mistake to take the extremer forms +of this reaction too seriously, although at the present time this is +very frequently done. One must remember that such a spirit as this is to +be found in every age, and that it always creates an ephemeral +literature which imagines itself to be a lasting one. It is nothing new. +It is as old and as perennial as the complex play of the human mind and +human society. + +Another reason for not taking this phase too seriously is that it was +quite inevitable that some such reaction should follow upon the huge +solemnities of Carlyle. Just as in literature, after the classic +formality of Johnson and his contemporaries, there must come the +reaction of the Romantic School, which includes Sir Walter Scott, Byron, +and Burns; so here there must be an inevitable reaction from austerity +to a daring freedom which will take many various forms. From Carlyle's +solemnising liturgy we were bound to pass to the slang and colloquialism +of the man in the street and the woman in the modern novel. Body and +spirit are always in unstable equilibrium, and an excess of either at +once swings the fashion back to the other extreme. Carlyle had his day +largely in consequence of what one may call the eighteenth-century +glut--the Georgian society and its economics, and the Byronic element in +literature. The later swing back was as inevitable as Carlyle had been. +Perhaps it was most clearly noticed after the deaths of Browning and +Tennyson, in the late eighties and the early nineties. But both before +and since that time it has been very manifest in England. + +But beyond all these things there is the general fact that before any +literature becomes pagan the land must first have been paganised. Of +course there is always here again a reaction of mutual cause and effect +between literature and national spirit. Carlyle himself, in his doctrine +of heroes, was continually telling us that it is the personality which +produces the _zeitgeist_, and not _vice versa_. On the other hand it is +equally certain that no personality is independent of his age and the +backing he finds in it, or the response which he may enlist for his +revolt from it. Both of these are true statements of the case; as to +which is ultimate, that is the old and rather academic question of +whether the oak or the acorn comes first. We repeat that it is +impossible, in this double play of cause and effect, to say which is the +ultimate cause and which the effect. The controversy which was waged in +the nineteenth century between the schools of Buckle and Carlyle is +likely to go on indefinitely through the future. But what concerns us at +present is this, that all paganism which finds expression in a +literature has existed in the age before it found that expression. The +literature is indeed to some extent the creator of the age, but to a far +greater extent it is the expression of the age, whose creation is due to +a vast multiplicity of causes. + +Among these causes one of the foremost was political advance and +freedom--the political doctrines, and the beginnings of Socialistic +thought, which had appeared about the time when _Sartor Resartus_ was +written. The Reform Bill of 1832 tended to concentrate men's attention +upon questions of material welfare. Commercial and industrial prosperity +followed, keeping the nation busy with the earth. In very striking +language Lord Morley describes this fact, in language specially striking +as coming from so eminently progressive a man.[4] "Far the most +penetrating of all the influences that are impairing the moral and +intellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to be mentioned. The +first of them is the immense increase of material prosperity, and the +second is the immense decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. The +evil wrought by the one fills up the measure of the evil wrought by the +other. We have been, in spite of momentary declensions, on a flood-tide +of high profits and a roaring trade, and there is nothing like a roaring +trade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, +especially if they be newly acquired, in slackening moral vigour, is a +proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened by any tradition of public +duty such as lingers among the English nobles, nor as yet by any common +custom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow in +the United States. Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxury +and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed +us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and +unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and +the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for +pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element +in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over +all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, +or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered +among us the real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding +degree has been discouraged ... the sense of intellectual +responsibility.... Practically, and as a matter of history, a society is +seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals and +spirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth and +nursing the political spirit." + +The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand, +industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand the +beginnings of a Socialism equally pagan. The motto of both schools was +that a man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things that he +possesseth, that you should seek first all these things, and that the +Kingdom of God and His righteousness may be added unto you, if you have +any room for them. Make yourself secure of all these other things; seek +comfort whether you be rich or poor; make this world as agreeable to +yourself as your means will allow, and seek to increase your means of +making it still more agreeable. After you have done all that, anything +that is left over will do for your idealism. Your God can be seen to +after you have abundantly provided for the needs of your body. Nothing +could be more characteristic paganism than this, which makes material +comfort the real end of life, and all spiritual things a residual +element. It is the story which Isaiah tells, with such sublimity of +sarcasm, of the huntsman and craftsman who warms his hands and cries to +himself, "Aha! I am warm. I have seen the fire." He bakes bread and +roasts flesh, and, with the residue of the same log which he has used +for kindling his fire, he maketh a god. So this modern god of England, +when England had become materialised, was just that ancient fire-worship +and comfort-worship in its nineteenth-century phase. In the first demand +of life there is no thought of God or of idealism of any kind. These, if +they appear at all, have to be made out of what is left. "Of the residue +he maketh a god." + +It is by insidious degrees that materialism invades a nation's life. At +first it attacks the externals, appearing mainly in the region of work, +wealth, and comfort. But, unless some check is put upon its progress, it +steadily works its way to the central depths, attacking love and sorrow, +and changing them to sensuality and cynicism. Then the nation's day is +over, and its men and women are lost souls. Many instances might be +quoted in which this progress has actually been made in the literature +of England. At present we are only pointing to the undoubted fact that +the forces of materialism have been at work among us. If proof of this +were needed, nothing could afford it more clearly than our loss of peace +and dignity in modern society. Many costly luxuries have become +necessities, and they have increased the pace of life to a rush and fury +which makes business a turmoil and social life a fever. A symbolic +embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the motor car and the aeroplane +as they are often used. These indeed need not be ministers of paganism. +The glory of swift motion and the mounting up on wings as eagles reach +very near to the spiritual, if not indeed across its borderland, as +exhilarating and splendid stimuli to the human spirit. But, on the other +hand, they may be merely instruments for gratifying that insane human +restlessness which is but the craving for new sensations. Along the +whole line of our commercial and industrial prosperity there runs one +great division. There are some who, in the midst of all change, have +preserved their old spiritual loyalties, and there are others who have +substituted novelty for loyalty. These are the idealists and the pagans +of the twentieth century. + +Another potent factor in the making of the new times was the scientific +advance which has made so remarkable a difference to the whole outlook +of man upon the earth. Darwin's great discovery is perhaps the most +epoch-making fact in science that has yet appeared upon the earth. The +first apparent trend of evolution seemed to be an entirely materialistic +reaction. This was due to the fact that believers in the spiritual had +identified with their spirituality a great deal that was unnecessary and +merely casual. If the balloon on which people mount up above the earth +is any such theory as that of the six days' creation, it is easy to see +how when that balloon is pricked the spiritual flight of the time +appears to have ended on the ground. + +Of course all that has long passed by. Of late years Haeckel has been +crying out that all his old friends have deserted him and have gone over +to the spiritual side--a cry which reminds one of the familiar juryman +who finds his fellows the eleven most obstinate men he has ever known. +The conception of evolution has long since been taken over by the +idealists, and has become perhaps the most splendidly Christian and +idealistic idea of the new age. When Darwin published his _Origin of +Species_, Hegel cried out in Germany, "Darwin has destroyed design." +To-day Darwin and Hegel stand together as the prophets of the +unconquerable conviction of the reality of spirit. From the days of +Huxley and Haeckel we have passed over to the days of Bergson and Sir +Oliver Lodge. + +The effect of all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenon +to watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which has +invaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has become +an atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one were +to say to any company of British people, one by one, that they were +pagans, doubtless many of them would resent it, and yet more or less it +would be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for every +one of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation. +Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story of +Aaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Moses +rebuked him, said naively, "There came out this calf." That exactly +describes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic example +of spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it. +Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It was +the Melchizedek among cattle--without father, without mother, without +descent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning of +days or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and there +comes out this calf--it is a way such calves have. + +Thus it is with our modern paganism. We all of us want to be idealists, +and we sometimes try, but there are hidden causes which draw us back +again to the earth. These causes lie in the opportunities that occur one +by one: in politics, in industrial and commercial matters, in scientific +theories, or by mere reaction. The earth is more habitable than once it +was, and we all desire it. It masters us, and so the golden calf +appears. + +We shall now glance very rapidly at a few out of the many literary +forces of our day in which we may see the various reactions from +Carlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenth +century in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, but +it lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horribly +shocked when George Eliot published _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam +Bede_ in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and its +respectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. It +was afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship of +respectability comes to be a very dangerous kind of worship, and its +idol is perhaps the most formidable of all the gods. + +Meanwhile that glorious band of idealists, whose chief representatives +were Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin, to be joined later by George +Meredith, were fighting paganism in the spirit of Arthur's knights, keen +to drive the heathen from the land. Tennyson, the most popular of them +all, probably achieved more than any other in this conflict. Ruskin was +too contradictory and bewildering, and so failed of much of his effect. +Browning and Meredith at first were reckoned unintelligible, and had to +wait their day for a later understanding. Still, all these, and many +others of lesser power than theirs, were knights of the ideal, warring +against the domination of dead and unthinking respectability. + +Matthew Arnold came upon the scene, with his great protest against the +preponderance of single elements in life, and his plea for wholeness. In +this demand for whole and not one-sided views of the world, he is more +nearly akin to Goethe than perhaps any other writer of our time. His +great protest was against the worship of machinery, which he believed to +be taking the place of its own productions in England. He conceived of +the English people as being under a general delusion which led them to +mistake means for ends. He spoke of them as "Barbarians, Philistines, +and Populace," according to the rank in life they held; and accused them +of living for such ends as field sports, the disestablishment of the +Church of England, and the drinking of beer. He pointed out that, so far +as real culture is concerned, these can at best be but means towards +other ends, and can never be in themselves sufficient to satisfy the +human soul. He protested against Carlyle, although in the main thesis +the two are entirely at one. "I never liked Carlyle," he said; "he +always seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle." He took Carlyle +for the representative of what he called "Hebraism," and he desired to +balance the undue preponderance of that by insisting upon the necessity +of the Hellenistic element in culture. Both of these are methods of +idealism, but Arnold protested that the human spirit is greater than any +of the forces that bear it onwards; and that after you have said all +that Carlyle has to say, there still remains on the other side the +intellect, with rights of its own. He did not exclude conscience, for he +held that conduct made up three-fourths of life. He was the idealist of +a whole culture as against all one-sidedness; but curiously, by flinging +himself upon the opposite side from Carlyle, he became identified in the +popular mind with what it imagined to be Hellenic paganism. This was +partly due to his personal idiosyncrasies, his fastidiousness of taste, +and the somewhat cold style of the _exquisite_ in expression. These +deceived many of his readers, and kept them from seeing how great and +prophetic a message it was that came to England beneath Arnold's +mannerisms. + +Dante Gabriel Rossetti appeared, and many more in his train. He, more +perfectly than any other, expressed the marriage of sense and soul in +modern English poetry. He was the idealist of emotion, who, in the +far-off dim borderlands between sense and spirit, still preserved the +spiritual search, nor ever allowed himself to be completely drugged with +the vapours of the region. There were others, however, who tended +towards decadence. Some of Rossetti's readers, whose sole interest lay +in the lower world, claimed him as well as the rest for their guides, +and set a fashion which is not yet obsolete. There is no lack of +solemnity among these. The scent of sandalwood and of incense is upon +their work, and you feel as you read them that you are worshipping in +some sort of a temple with strange and solemnising rites. Indeed they +insist upon this, and assiduously cultivate a kind of lethargic and +quasi-religious manner which is supposed to be very impressive. But +their temple is a pagan temple, and their worship, however much they may +borrow for it the language of a more spiritual cult, is of the earth, +earthy. + +Mr. Thomas Hardy was the inevitable sequel to George Eliot. Everybody +knows how beautiful and how full of charm his lighter writings can be; +and in his more tragic work there is much that is true, terrifically +expressed. Yet he has got upon the wrong side of the world, and can +never see beyond the horror of its tragedy. Consequently in him we have +another form of paganism, not this time that which the seductive earth +with its charms is suggesting, but the hopeless paganism which sees the +earth only in its bitterness. In _The Return of the Native_ he says: +"What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their Aeschylus +imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned revelling in the +general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects +of natural laws, and see the quandary man is in by their operation." It +is no wonder that he who expressed the spirit of the modern age in these +words should have closed his well-known novel with the bitter saying +that the upper powers had finished their sport with _Tess_. "To have +lost the God-like conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have +acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper +which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, +though disappointed, forswears compromise." Here is obviously a man who +would love the highest if he saw it, who would fain welcome and proclaim +the ideals if he could only find them on the earth; but who has found +instead the bitterness of darkness, the sarcasm and the sensationalism +of an age that the gods have left. He is too honest to shout _pour +encourager les autres_ when his own heart has no hope in it; and his +greater books express the wail and despair of our modern paganism. + +Breaking away from him and all such pessimistic voices came the glad +soul of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose old-fashioned revelling in the +situation is the exact counter-blast to Hardy's modernism, and is one of +those perennial human things which are ever both new and old. It is not +that Stevenson has not seen the other side of life. He has seen it and +he has suffered from it deeply, both in himself and in others; yet still +indomitably he "clings to his paddle." "I believe," he says, "in an +ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still +believe it." + +Then there came the extraordinary spirit of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. At +first sight some things that he has written appear pagan enough, and +have been regarded as such. The God of Christians seems to inhabit and +preside over an amazing Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeed +throughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in a +most inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, +during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, +they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon the +pier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, +was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that reminds +us of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybantic +pagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He is +everything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, telling +of days far in the future, can make them as living and real as the hours +of to-day. It was the late Professor James who said of him, "Kipling is +elemental; he is down among the roots of all things. He is universal +like the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be able +to get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under a +pyramid." In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be most +interesting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether his +permanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wild +Titanic paganism, or of that ancient Calvinistic God whom Macandrew +worships in the temple of his engine-room. + +We now come to a later phase, for which we may take as representative +writers the names of Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Science, for +the meantime at least, has disentangled herself from her former +materialism, and a nobly ideal and spiritual view of science has come +again. It may even be hoped that the pagan view will never be able again +to assert itself with the same impressiveness as in the past. But social +conditions are to-day in the throes of their strife, and from that +quarter of the stage there appear such writers as those we are now to +consider. They both present themselves as idealists. Mr. Wells has +published a long volume about his religion, and Mr. Shaw prefaces his +plays with essays as long or even longer than the plays themselves, +dealing with all manner of the most serious subjects. The surface +flippancy both of prefaces and plays has repelled some readers in spite +of all their cleverness, and tended towards an unjust judgment that he +is upsetting the universe with his tongue in his cheek all the time. +Later one comes to realise that this is not the case, that Mr. Shaw does +really take himself and his message seriously, and from first to last +conceives himself as the apostle of a tremendous creed. Among many other +things which they have in common, these writers have manifested the +tendency to regard all who ever went before them as, in a certain sense, +thieves and robbers; at least they give one the impression that the +present has little need for long lingering over the past. Mr. Wells, for +instance, cannot find words strong enough to describe the emancipation +of the modern young man from Mr. Kipling with his old-fashioned +injunction, "Keep ye the law." There are certain laws which Mr. Wells +proclaims on the housetops that he sees no necessity for keeping, and so +Mr. Kipling is buried under piles of opprobrium--"the tumult and the +bullying, the hysteria and the impatience, the incoherence and the +inconsistency," and so on. As for Mr. Bernard Shaw, we all know his own +view of the relation in which he stands to William Shakespeare. + +Mr. Wells has written many interesting books, and much could be said of +him from the point of view of science, or of style, or of social theory. +That, however, is not our present concern, either with him or with Mr. +Shaw. It is as idealist or pagan influences that we are discussing them +and the others. Mr. Wells boasts a new morality in his books, and Mr. +Shaw in his plays. One feels the same startling sense of a _volte face_ +in morality as a young recruit is said to do when he finds all the +precepts of his childhood reversed by the ethics of his first +battlefield. Each in his own way falls back upon crude and primitive +instincts and justifies them.[5] + +Mr. Wells takes the change with zest, and seems to treat the adoption of +a new morality in the same light-hearted spirit as he might consider the +buying of a new hat. From the first he has a terrifying way of dealing +familiarly with vast things. Somehow he reminds one of those jugglers +who, for a time, toss heavy balls about, and then suddenly astonish the +audience by introducing a handkerchief, which flies lightly among its +ponderous companions. So Mr. Wells began to juggle with worlds. He has +latterly introduced that delicate thing, the human soul and conscience, +into the play, and you see it precariously fluttering among the +immensities of leaping planets. He persuades himself that the common +morality has not gripped people, and that they really don't believe in +it at all. He aims at a way of thinking which will be so great as to be +free from all commonplace and convention. Honesty is to be practically +the only virtue in the new world. If you say what you mean, you will +earn the right to do anything else that you please. Mr. Wells in this is +the counterpart of those plain men in private life so well known to us +all, who perpetually remind us that they are people who call a spade a +spade. Such men are apt to interpret this dictum as a kind of charter +which enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that may +occur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us fail +to find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may be +impressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in it +which masquerades as immensity. + +This smallness is due first of all to sheer ignorance. When a man tells +us that he prefers Oliver Goldsmith to Jesus Christ, he merely shows +that upon the subject he is discussing he is not educated, and does not +know what he is talking about. A second source of pettiness is to be +found in the mistake of imagining that mere smartness of diction and +agility of mind are signs of intellectual keenness. The mistake is as +obvious as it is unfortunate. Smartness can be learned with perhaps the +least expenditure of intellect that is demanded by any literary exercise +of the present day. It is a temptation which a certain kind of clever +man always has to face, and it only assumes a serious aspect when it +leads the unthinking to mistake it for a new and formidable element of +opposition to things which he has counted sacred. + +The whole method is not so very subtle after all. Pick out a vice or a +deformity. Do not trouble to acquaint yourself too intimately with the +history of morals in the past, but boldly canonise your vice or your +deformity with ritual of epigram and paradox. Proclaim loudly and +eloquently that this is your faith, and give it a pathetic aspect by +dwelling tenderly upon any trouble which it may be likely to cost those +who venture to adopt it. It is not perhaps a very admirable way to deal +with such subjects. The whole world of tradition and the whole +constitution of human nature are against you. Men have wrestled with +these things for thousands of years, and they have come to certain +conclusions which the experience of all time has enforced upon them. By +a dash of bold imagination you may discount all that laborious past, and +leave an irrevocable stain upon the purity of the mind of a generation. +Doubtless you will have a following--such teachers have ever had those +who followed them--and yet time is always on the side of great +traditions. If enlightened thought has in any respect to change them, it +changes them reverently, and knowing what their worth has been. Sooner +or later all easy ignoring of them is condemned as sheer impertinence. +There is singularly little reason for being impressed by this hasty, +romantic, and loud-sounding crusade against Christian morality and its +Ideal. + +In Mr. George Bernard Shaw we have a very different man. Nobody denies +Mr. Shaw's cleverness, least of all Mr. Shaw himself. He is depressingly +clever. He exhibits the spectacle of a man trying to address his +audience while standing on his head--and succeeding. + +He has been singularly fortunate in his biographer, Mr. Chesterton, and +one of the things that make this biography such pleasing reading is the +personal element that runs through it all. The introduction is +characteristic and delightful: "Most people either say that they agree +with Bernard Shaw, or that they do not understand him. I am the only +person who understands him, and I do not agree with him." It is not +unnatural that he should take his friend a little more seriously than +most of us will be prepared to do. It really is a big thing to stand on +the shoulders of William Shakespeare, and we shall need time to consider +it before we subscribe to the statue. + +For there is here an absolutely colossal egotism. There are certain +newspapers which usually begin with a note of the hours of sunrise and +sunset. During the recent coal strike, some of these newspapers inserted +first of all a notice that they would not be sent out so early as usual, +and then cheered our desponding hearts by assuring us that the sun rises +at 5.37 notwithstanding--as if by permission of the newspaper. Mr. Shaw +somehow gives us a similar impression. Most things in the universe seem +to go on by his permission, and some of them he is not going to allow to +go on much longer. He will tilt without the slightest vestige of +humility against any existing institution, and the tourney is certainly +one of the most entertaining and most extraordinary of our time. + +No one can help admiring Mr. Shaw. The dogged persistence which has +carried him, unflinching, through adversity into his present fame, +without a single compromise or hesitation, is, apart altogether from the +question of the truth of his opinions, an admirable quality in a man. We +cannot but admire his immense forcefulness and agility, the fertility of +his mind, and the swiftness of its play. But we utterly refuse to fall +down and worship him on account of these. Indeed the kind of awe with +which he is regarded in some quarters seems to be due rather to the +eccentricities of his expression than to the greatness of his message or +the brilliance of his achievements. + +There is no question of his earnestness. The Puritan is deep in Mr. +Shaw, in his very blood. He has indeed given to the term Puritan a +number of unexpected meanings, and yet no one can justly question his +right to it. His _Plays for Puritans_ are not exceptional in this +matter, for all his work is done in the same spirit. His favourite +author is John Bunyan, about whom he tells us that he claims him as the +precursor of Nietzsche, and that in his estimation John Bunyan's life +was one long tilt against morality and respectability. The claim is +sufficiently grotesque, yet there is a sense in which he has a right to +John Bunyan, and is in the same line as Thomas Carlyle. He is trying +sincerely to speak the truth and get it spoken. He appears as another of +the destroyers of shams, the breakers of idols. He may indeed be claimed +as a pagan, and his influence will certainly preponderate in that +direction; and yet there is a strain of high idealism which runs +perplexingly through it all. + +The explanation seems to be, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, that the man is +incomplete. There are certain elementary things which, if he had ever +seen them as other people do, would have made many of his positions +impossible. "Shaw is wrong," says Mr. Chesterton, "about nearly all the +things one learns early in life while one is still simple." Among those +things which he has never seen are the loyalties involved in love, +country, and religion. The most familiar proof of this in regard to +religion is his extraordinary tirade against the Cross of Calvary. It is +one of the most amazing passages in print, so far as either taste or +judgment is concerned. It is significant that in this very passage he +actually refers to the "stable at Bethany," and the slip seems to +indicate from what a distance he is discussing Christianity. It is +possible for any of us to measure himself against the Cross and Him who +hung upon it, only when we have travelled very far away from them. When +we are sufficiently near, we know ourselves to be infinitesimal in +comparison. Nor in regard to home, and all that sanctifies and defends +it, does Mr. Shaw seem ever to have understood the real morality that is +in the heart of the average man. The nauseating thing which he quotes as +morality is a mere caricature of that vital sense of honour and +imperative conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still alive +among us. "My dear," he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, your +conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody +names." Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of that +instinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of its +expressions, has yet proved its moral and practical worth during many a +century of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this, +because those who discard patriotism have only to state their case +clearly in order to discredit it. + +We do not fear greatly the permanent influence of these fundamental +errors. The great heart of the civilised world still beats true, and is +healthy enough to disown so maimed an account of human nature. Yet there +is danger in any such element in literature as this. Mr. Shaw's +biographer has virtually told us that in these matters he is but a child +in whom "Irish innocence is peculiar and fundamental." The pleadings of +the nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly very +touching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes him +for, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views of +libertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuse +any such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism and +his childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because more +piquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the ten +commandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is always +considerable. If a child is playing in a powder magazine, the more +childish and innocent he is the more dangerous he will prove; and the +explosion, remember, will be just as violent if lit by a child's hand as +if it had been lit by an anarchist's. We have in England borne long +enough with people trifling with the best intentions among explosives, +moral and social, and we must consider our own safety and that of +society when we are judging them. + +As to the relation in which Mr. Shaw stands to paganism, his relations +to anything are so "extensive and peculiar" that they are always +difficult to define. But the later phase of his work, which has become +famous in connection with the word "Superman," is due in large part to +Nietzsche, whose strange influence has reversed the Christian ideals for +many disciples on both sides of the North Sea. So this idealist, who, in +_Major Barbara_, protests so vigorously against paganism, has become one +of its chief advocates and expositors. One of his characters somewhere +says, "I wish I could get a country to live in where the facts were not +brutal and the dreams were not unreal." It may be admitted that there +are many brutal facts and perhaps more unreal dreams; but, for our part, +that which keeps us from becoming pagans is that we have found facts +that are not brutal and dreams which are the realest things in life. + + + + +LECTURE IX + +MR. G.K. CHESTERTON'S POINT OF VIEW + + +There is on record the case of a man who, after some fourteen years of +robust health, spent a week in bed. His illness was apparently due to a +violent cold, but he confessed, on medical cross-examination, that the +real and underlying cause was the steady reading of Mr. Chesterton's +books for several days on end. + +No one will accuse Mr. Chesterton of being an unhealthy writer. On the +contrary, he is among the most wholesome writers now alive. He is +irresistibly exhilarating, and he inspires his readers with a constant +inclination to rise up and shout. Perhaps his danger lies in that very +fact, and in the exhaustion of the nerves which such sustained +exhilaration is apt to produce. But besides this, he, like so many of +our contemporaries, has written such a bewildering quantity of +literature on such an amazing variety of subjects, that it is no wonder +if sometimes the reader follows panting, through the giddy mazes of the +dance. He is the sworn enemy of specialisation, as he explains in his +remarkable essay on "The Twelve Men." The subject of the essay is the +British jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants a +library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle of +that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done +which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing +round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of +Christianity." For the judging of a criminal or the propagation of the +gospel, it is necessary to procure inexpert people--people who come to +their task with a virgin eye, and see not what the expert (who has lost +his freshness) sees, but the human facts of the case. So Mr. Chesterton +insists upon not being a specialist, takes the world for his parish, and +wanders over it at will. + +This being so, it is obvious that he cannot possibly remember all that +he has said, and must necessarily abound in inconsistencies and even +contradictions. Yet that is by no means always unconscious, but is due +in many instances to the very complex quality and subtle habit of his +mind. Were he by any chance to read this statement he would deny it +fiercely, but we would repeat it with perfect calmness, knowing that he +would probably have denied any other statement we might have made upon +the subject. His subtlety is partly due to the extraordinary rapidity +with which his mind leaps from one subject to another, partly to the +fact that he is so full of ideas that many of his essays (like Mr. +Bernard Shaw's plays) find it next to impossible to get themselves +begun. He is so full of matter that he never seems to be able to say +what he wants to say, until he has said a dozen other things first. + +The present lecture is mainly concerned with his central position, as +that is expounded in _Heretics_ and _Orthodoxy_. Our task is not to +criticise, nor even to any considerable extent to characterise his +views, but to state them as accurately as we can. It is a remarkable +phenomenon of our time that all our literary men are bent on giving us +such elaborate and solemnising confessions of their faith. It is an age +notorious for its aversion to dogma, and yet here we have Mr. Huxley, +Mr. Le Gallienne, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Wells (to mention only a few of many), +who in this creedless age proclaim in the market-place, each his own +private and brand-new creed. + +Yet Mr. Chesterton has perhaps a special right to such a proclamation. +He believes in creeds vehemently. And, besides, the spiritual biography +of a man whose mental development has been so independent and so +interesting as his, must be well worth knowing. Amid the many weird +theologies of our time we have met with nothing so startling, so +arresting, and so suggestive since Mr. Mallock published his _New +Republic_ and his _Contemporary Superstitions_. There is something +common to the two points of view. To some, they come as emancipating and +most welcome reinforcements, relieving the beleaguered citadel of faith. +But others, who differ widely from them both, may yet find in them so +much to stimulate thought and to rehabilitate strongholds held +precariously, as to awaken both appreciation and gratitude. + +Mr. Chesterton's political opinions do not concern us here. It is a +curious fact, of which innumerable illustrations may be found in past +and present writers, that political radicalism so often goes along with +conservative theology, and _vice versa_. Mr. Chesterton is no exception +to the rule. His orthodoxy in matters of faith we shall find to be +altogether above suspicion. His radicalism in politics is never long +silent. He openly proclaims himself at war with Carlyle's favourite +dogma, "The tools to him who can use them." "The worst form of slavery," +he tells us, "is that which is called Caesarism, or the choice of some +bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means +that men choose a representative, not because he represents them but +because he does not." And if it be answered that the worst form of +cruelty to a nation or to an individual is that abuse of the principle +of equality which is for ever putting incompetent people into false +positions, he has his reply ready: "The one specially and peculiarly +un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man should +rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is +heathen." + +But this, and much else of its kind, although he works it into his +general scheme of thinking, is not in any sense an essential part of +that scheme. Our subject is his place in the conflict between the +paganism and the idealism of the times, and it is a sufficiently large +one. But before we come to that, we must consider another matter, which +we shall find to be intimately connected with it. + +That other matter is his habit of paradox, which is familiar to all his +readers. It is a habit of style, but before it became that it was +necessarily first a habit of mind, deeply ingrained. He disclaims it so +often that we cannot but feel that he protesteth too much. He +acknowledges it, and explains that "paradox simply means a certain +defiant joy which belongs to belief." Whether the explanation is or is +not perfectly intelligible, it must occur to every one that a writer who +finds it necessary to give so remarkable an explanation can hardly be +justified in his astonishment when people of merely average intelligence +confess themselves puzzled. His aversion to Walter Pater--almost the +only writer whom he appears consistently to treat with disrespect--is +largely due to Pater's laborious simplicity of style. But it was a +greater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed out +that the language which appealed to the understanding of the common man +was also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton's +habit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. He +has a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he will never understand. + +Paradox, when it has become a habit, is always dangerous. Introduced on +rare and fitting occasions, it may be powerful and even convincing, but +when it is repeated constantly and upon all sorts of subjects, we cannot +but dispute its right and question its validity. Its effect is not +conviction but vertigo. It is like trying to live in a house constructed +so as to be continually turning upside down. After a certain time, +during which terror and dizziness alternate, the most indulgent reader +is apt to turn round upon the builder of such a house with some +asperity. And, after all, the general judgment may be right and Mr. +Chesterton wrong. + +Upon analysis, his paradox reveals as its chief and most essential +element a certain habit of mind which always tends to see and appreciate +the reverse of accepted opinions. So much is this the case that it is +possible in many instances to anticipate what he will say upon a +subject. It is on record that one reader, coming to his chapter on Omar +Khayyam, said to himself, "Now he will be saying that Omar is not drunk +enough"; and he went on to read, "It is not poetical drinking, which is +joyous and instinctive; it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic as +an investment, as unsavoury as a dose of camomile." Similarly we are +told that Browning is only felt to be obscure because he is too +pellucid. Such apparent contradictoriness is everywhere in his work, but +along with it goes a curious ingenuity and nimbleness of mind. He cannot +think about anything without remembering something else, apparently out +of all possible connection with it, and instantly discovering some +clever idea, the introduction of which will bring the two together. +Christianity "is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like +a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the +pattern of the cross." + +In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitute +almost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes. One +such mechanical process is the play with the derivatives of words. Thus +he reminds us that the journalist is, in the literal and derivative +sense, a _journalist_, while the missionary is an eternalist. Similarly +"lunatic," "evolution," "progress," "reform," are etymologically +tortured into the utterance of the most forcible and surprising truths. +This curious word-play was a favourite method with Ruskin; and it has +the disadvantage in Mr. Chesterton which it had in the earlier critic. +It appears too clever to be really sound, although it must be confessed +that it frequently has the power of startling us into thoughts that are +valuable and suggestive. + +Another equally simple process is that of simply reversing sentences and +ideas. "A good bush needs no wine." "Shakespeare (in a weak moment, I +think) said that all the world is a stage. But Shakespeare acted on the +much finer principle that a stage is all the world." Perhaps the most +brilliant example that could be quoted is the plea for the combination +of gentleness and ferocity in Christian character. When the lion lies +down with the lamb, it is constantly assumed that the lion becomes +lamblike. "But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of +the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion, instead of the +lion eating the lamb." + +By this process it is possible to attain results which are +extraordinarily brilliant in themselves and fruitful in suggestion. It +is a process not difficult to learn, but the trouble is that you have to +live up to it afterwards, and defend many curious propositions which may +have been arrived at by its so simple means. Take, for instance, the +sentence about the stage being all the world. That is undeniably clever, +and it contains an idea. But it is a haphazard idea, arrived at by a +short-cut, and not by the high road of reasonable thinking. Sometimes a +truth may be reached by such a short-cut, but such paradoxes are +occasionally no better than chartered errors. + +Yet even when they are that, it may be said in their favour that they +startle us into thought. And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as a +quickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers. Moreover, by +adopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkable +thing. He has proved what an astonishing number of paradoxical surprises +there actually are, lying hidden beneath the apparent commonplace of the +world. Every really clever paradox astonishes us not merely with the +sense of the cleverness of him who utters it, but with the sense of how +many strange coincidences exist around us, and how many sentences, when +turned outside in, will yield new and startling truths. However much we +may suspect that the performance we are watching is too clever to be +trustworthy, yet after all the world does appear to lend itself to such +treatment. + +There is, for example, the paradox of the love of the world--"Somehow +one must love the world without being worldly." Again, "Courage is +almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking +the form of a readiness to die." The martyr differs from the suicide in +that he cherishes a disdain of death, while the motive of the suicide is +a disdain of life. Charity, too, is a paradox, for it means "one of two +things--pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people." +Similarly Christian humility has a background of unheard-of arrogance, +and Christian liberty is possible only to the most abject bondsmen in +the world. + +This long consideration of Mr. Chesterton's use of paradox is more +relevant to our present subject than it may seem. For, curiously enough, +the habit of paradox has been his way of entrance into faith. At the age +of sixteen he was a complete agnostic, and it was the reading of Huxley +and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh which brought him back to orthodox +theology. For, as he read, he found that Christianity was attacked on +all sides, and for all manner of contradictory reasons; and this +discovery led him to the conviction that Christianity must be a very +extraordinary thing, abounding in paradox. But he had already discovered +the abundant element of paradox in life; and when he analysed the two +sets of paradoxes he found them to be precisely the same. So he became a +Christian. + +It may seem a curious way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who are +accustomed to regard the strait gate as of Gothic architecture may be +shocked to find a man professing to have entered through this +Alhambra-like portal. But it is a lesson we all have to learn sooner or +later, that there are at least eleven gates besides our own, and that +every man has to enter by that which he finds available. Paradox is the +only gate by which Mr. Chesterton could get into any place, and the +Kingdom of Heaven is no exception to the rule. + +His account of this entrance is characteristic. It is given in the first +chapter of his _Orthodoxy_. There was an English yachtsman who set out +upon a voyage, miscalculated his course, and discovered what he thought +to be a new island in the South Seas. It transpired afterwards that he +had run up his flag on the pavilion of Brighton, and that he had +discovered England. That yachtsman is Mr. Chesterton himself. Sailing +the great sea of moral and spiritual speculation, he discovered a land +of facts and convictions to which his own experience had guided him. On +that strange land he ran up his flag, only to make the further and more +astonishing discovery that it was the Christian faith at which he had +arrived. Nietzsche had preached to him, as to Mr. Bernard Shaw, his +great precept, "Follow your own will." But when Mr. Chesterton obeyed he +arrived, not at Superman, but at the ordinary old-fashioned morality. +That, he found, is what we like best in our deepest hearts, and desire +most. So he too "discovered England." + +He begins, like Margaret Fuller, with the fundamental principle of +accepting the universe. The thing we know best and most directly is +human nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediately +known and knowable. Like R.L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and +comically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre is +this man," says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, +lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, +growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair +like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing +to set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier, known as his +fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes!" In like manner Mr. +Chesterton discovers man--that appalling mass of paradox and +contradiction--and it is the supreme discovery in any spiritual search. + +Having discovered the fundamental fact of human nature, he at once gives +in his allegiance to it. "Our attitude towards life can be better +expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of +criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, +it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world +is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is +miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the +turret, and the more miserable it is, the less we should leave it." + +There is a splendid courage and heartiness in his complete acceptance of +life and the universe. In a time when clever people are so busy +criticising life that they are in danger of forgetting that they have to +live it, so busy selecting such parts of it as suit their taste that +they ignore the fact that the other parts are there, he ignores nothing +and wisely accepts instead of criticising. Mr. Bernard Shaw, as we have +seen, will consent to tolerate the universe _minus_ the three loyalties +to the family, the nation, and God. Mr. Chesterton has no respect +whatever for any such mutilated scheme of human life. His view of the +institution of the family is full of wholesome common sense. He +perceives the immense difficulties that beset all family life, and he +accepts them with immediate and unflinching loyalty, as essential parts +of our human task. His views on patriotism belong to the region of +politics and do not concern us here. In regard to religion, he finds the +modern school amalgamating everything in characterless masses of +generalities. They deny the reality of sin, and in matters of faith +generally they have put every question out of focus until the whole +picture is blurred and vague. He attacks this way of dealing with +religion in one of his most amusing essays, "The Orthodox Barber." The +barber has been sarcastic about the new shaving--presumably in reference +to M. Gillett's excellent invention. "'It seems you can shave yourself +with anything--with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker' (here I +began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) 'or a shovel +or a----' Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothing +about the matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetorical +vein. 'Or a button-hook,' I said, 'or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram +or a piston-rod----' He resumed, refreshed with this assistance, 'Or a +curtain-rod or a candlestick or a----' 'Cow-catcher,' I suggested +eagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. Then I +asked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thing +eloquently and at length. 'The funny part of it is,' he said, 'that the +thing isn't new at all. It's been talked about ever since I was a boy, +and long before.'" Mr. Chesterton rejoins in a long and eloquent and +most amusing sermon, the following extracts from which are not without +far-reaching significance. + +"'What you say reminds me in some dark and dreamy fashion of something +else. I recall it especially when you tell me, with such evident +experience and sincerity, that the new shaving is not really new. My +friend, the human race is always trying this dodge of making everything +entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it +shifts on to another.... It would be nice if we could be shaved without +troubling anybody. It would be nicer still if we could go unshaved +without annoying anybody-- + + "'But, O wise friend, chief Barber of the Strand, + Brother, nor you nor I have made the world. + +Whoever made it, who is wiser, and we hope better than we, made it under +strange limitations, and with painful conditions of pleasure.... But +every now and then men jump up with the new something or other and say +that everything can be had without sacrifice, that bad is good if you +are only enlightened, and that there is no real difference between being +shaved and not being shaved. The difference, they say, is only a +difference of degree; everything is evolutionary and relative. +Shavedness is immanent in man.... I have been profoundly interested in +what you have told me about the New Shaving. Have you ever heard of a +thing called the New Theology?' He smiled and said that he had not." + +In contrast with all this, it is Mr. Chesterton's conviction that the +facts must be unflinchingly and in their entirety accepted. With +characteristic courage he goes straight to the root of the matter and +begins with the fact of sin. "If it be true (as it certainly is) that a +man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious +philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the +existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union +between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to +think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat." It is as if +he said, Here you have direct and unmistakable experience. A man knows +his sin as he knows himself. He may explain it in either one way or +another way. He may interpret the universe accordingly in terms either +of heaven or of hell. But the one unreasonable and impossible thing to +do is to deny the experience itself. + +It is thus that he treats the question of faith all along the line. If +you are going to be a Christian, or even fairly to judge Christianity, +you must accept the whole of Christ's teaching, with all its +contradictions, paradoxes, and the rest. Some men select his charity, +others his social teaching, others his moral relentlessness, and so on, +and reject all else. Each one of these aspects of the Christian faith is +doubtless very interesting, but none of them by itself is an adequate +representation of Christ. "They have torn the soul of Christ into silly +strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by +His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His +garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the +coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout." + +The characteristic word for Mr. Chesterton and his attitude to life is +_vitality_. He has been seeking for human nature, and he has found it at +last in Christian idealism. But having found it, he will allow no +compromise in its acceptance. It is life he wants, in such wholeness as +to embrace every element of human nature. And he finds that Christianity +has quickened and intensified life all along the line. It is the great +source of vitality, come that men might have life and that they might +have it more abundantly. He finds an essential joy and riot in creation, +a "tense and secret festivity." And Christianity corresponds to that +riot. "The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while +it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to +give room for good things to run wild." It has let loose the wandering, +masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or another +of them shall run wild, but all of them together. The ideal of wholeness +which Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass of +theories, but a world of living things. Christ will put a check on none +of the really genuine elements in human nature. In Him there is no +compromise. His love and His wrath are both burning. All the separate +elements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimate +way of peace and safety. The various colours of life must not be mixed +but kept distinct. The red and white of passion and purity must not be +blended into the insipid pink of a compromising and consistent +respectability. They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazing +Cross of St. George on its shield of white. + +Chaucer's "Daisy" is one of the greatest conceptions in all poetry. It +has stood for centuries as the emblem of pure and priceless womanhood, +with its petals of snowy white and its heart of gold. Mr. Chesterton +once made a discovery that sent him wild with joy-- + + "Then waxed I like the wind because of this, + And ran like gospel and apocalypse + From door to door, with wild, anarchic lips, + Crying the very blasphemy of bliss." + +The discovery was that "the Daisy has a ring of red." Purity is not the +enemy of passion; nor must passion and purity be so toned down and blent +with one another, as to give a neutral result. Both must remain, and +both in full brilliance, the virgin white and the passionate blood-red +ring. + +In the present age of reason, the cry is all for tolerance, and for +redefinition which will remove sharp contrasts and prove that everything +means the same as everything else. In such an age a doctrine like this +seems to have a certain barbaric splendour about it, as of a crusader +risen from the dead. But Mr. Chesterton is not afraid of the +consequences of his opinions. If rationalism opposes his presentation of +Christianity, he will ride full tilt against reason. In recent years, +from the time of Newman until now, there has been a recurring habit of +discounting reason in favour of some other way of approach to truth and +life. Certainly Mr. Chesterton's attack on reason is as interesting as +any that have gone before it, and it is even more direct. Even on such a +question as the problem of poverty he frankly prefers imagination to +study. In art he demands instinctiveness, and has a profound suspicion +of anybody who is conscious of possessing the artistic temperament. As a +guide to truth he always would follow poetry in preference to logic. He +is never tired of attacking rationality, and for him anything which is +rationalised is destroyed in the process. + +In one of his most provokingly unanswerable sallies, he insists that the +true home of reason is the madhouse. "The madman is not the man who has +lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except +his reason." When we say that a man is mad, we do not mean that he is +unable to conduct a logical argument. On the contrary, any one who knows +madmen knows that they are usually most acute and ingeniously consistent +in argument. They isolate some one fixed idea, and round that they build +up a world that is fiercely and tremendously complete. Every detail fits +in, and the world in which they live is not, as is commonly supposed, a +world of disconnected and fantastic imaginations, but one of iron-bound +and remorseless logic. No task is more humiliating, nor more likely to +shake one's sense of security in fundamental convictions, than that of +arguing out a thesis with a lunatic. + +Further, beneath this rationality there is in the madman a profound +belief in himself. Most of us regard with respect those who trust their +own judgment more than we find ourselves able to trust ours. But not the +most confident of them all can equal the unswerving confidence of a +madman. Sane people never wholly believe in themselves. They are liable +to be influenced by the opinion of others, and are willing to yield to +the consensus of opinion of past or present thinkers. The lunatic cares +nothing for the views of others. He believes in himself against the +world, with a terrific grip of conviction and a faith that nothing can +shake. + +Mr. Chesterton applies his attack upon rationality to many subjects, +with singular ingenuity. In the question of marriage and divorce, for +instance, the modern school which would break loose from the ancient +bonds can present their case with an apparently unassailable show of +rationality. But his reply to them and to all other rationalists is that +life is not rational and consistent but paradoxical and contradictory. +To make life rational you have to leave out so many elements as to make +it shrink from a big world to a little one, which may be complete, but +can never be much of a world. Its conception of God may be a complete +conception, but its God is not much of a God. But the world of human +nature is a vast world, and the God of Christianity is an Infinite God. +The huge mysteries of life and death, of love and sacrifice, of the wine +of Cana and the Cross of Calvary--these outwit all logic and pass all +understanding. So for sane men there comes in a higher authority. You +may call it common sense, or mysticism, or faith, as you please. It is +the extra element by virtue of which all sane thinking and all religious +life are rendered possible. It is the secret spring of vitality alike in +human nature and in Christian faith. + +At this point it may be permissible to question Mr. Chesterton's use of +words in one important point. He appears to fall into the old error of +confounding reason with reasoning. Reason is one thing and argument +another. It may be impossible to express either human nature or +religious faith in a series of syllogistic arguments, and yet both may +be reasonable in a higher sense. Reason includes those extra elements to +which Mr. Chesterton trusts. It is the synthesis of our whole powers of +finding truth. Many things which cannot be proved by reasoning may yet +be given in reason--involved in any reasonable view of things as a +whole. Thus faith includes reason--it _is_ reason on a larger scale--and +it is the only reasonable course for a man to take in a world of +mysterious experience. If the matter were stated in that way, Mr. +Chesterton would probably assent to it. Put crudely, the fashion of +pitting faith against reason and discarding reason in favour of faith, +is simply sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. The result is +that you must fall to the ground at the feet of the sceptic, who asks, +"How can you believe that which you have confessed there is no reason to +believe?" We have abundant reason for our belief, and that reason +includes those higher intuitions, that practical common sense, and that +view of things as a whole, which the argument of the mere logician +necessarily ignores. + +With this reservation,[6] Mr. Chesterton's position in regard to faith +is absolutely unassailable. He is the most vital of our modern +idealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism +has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines +excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is that +of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not +any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means, +Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its +affairs--swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in the +heart of every man. The fashionable modern gospel of Pragmatism is +telling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about the ultimate +truth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for life here and +now, and the practical needs which they serve. But the most practical of +all man's needs is his need of some contact with a higher world than +that of sense. "To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that +he is a man." In the scale of differences between important and +unimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not the material +that counts. "An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of +science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of +the other world, but from ignorance of this world." "The moment any +matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever +spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably +mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality." + +Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter of +faith. Mr. Chesterton is an optimist, not because he fits into this +world, but because he does not fit into it. Pagan optimism is content +with the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit into +it and find it sufficient. This is that optimism of which Browning +speaks with scorn-- + + "Tame in earth's paddock as her prize," + +and which he repudiates in the famous lines, + + "Then, welcome each rebuff + That turns earth's smoothness rough, + Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! + Be our joys three parts pain! + Strive, and hold cheap the strain; + Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!" + +Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here on +the earth there are other things which claim us from beyond. The higher +instincts which discover these are not tools to be used for making the +most of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded. He is an +idealist who has been out beyond the world. There he has found a whole +universe of mysterious but commanding facts, and has discovered that +these and these alone can satisfy human nature. + +The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritual +claims. How can we be sure that the ideals which claim us from beyond +are realities, and not mere dream shapes? There is no answer but this, +that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the reality +of our most pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, +and arrived prematurely at the end of all things. With the habit of +questioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience. +Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place. We believe in +ourselves and we doubt the truth that is in us. But we ourselves, the +crude reality which we actually are, are altogether unreliable; while +the vision is always trustworthy. We are for ever changing the vision to +suit the world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the world +to bring it into conformity with the unchanging vision. The very essence +of orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of ideals that cannot +be changed--ideals which were the first, and shall be the last. + +If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers' powers of attention by +rapid and surprising movements among very difficult themes, he certainly +has charming ways of relieving the strain. The favourite among all such +methods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales. In "The Dragon's +Grandmother" he introduces us to the arch-sceptic who did not believe in +them--that fresh-coloured and short-sighted young man who had a curious +green tie and a very long neck. It happened that this young man had +called on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of the +usual modern problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentment +on _Grimm's Fairy Tales_. "When he incidentally mentioned that he did +not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. 'Man,' I said, +'who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is much +easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard is +a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is far easier +to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does +not like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and +swear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say +seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that +you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the +void.'" The reason for this unexpected outbreak is a very deep one. +"Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild +and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of +routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the +fairy tale is--what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The +problem of the modern novel is--what will a madman do with a dull world? +In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In +the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers +from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos." + +In other words, the ideals, the ultimate convictions, are the +trustworthy things; the actual experience of life is often matter not +for distrust only but for scorn and contempt. And this philosophy Mr. +Chesterton learned in the nursery, from that "solemn and star-appointed +priestess," his nurse. The fairy tale, and not the problem-novel, is the +true presentment of human nature and of life. For, in the first place it +preserves in man the faculty most essential to human nature--the faculty +of wonder, without which no man can live. To regain that faculty is to +be born again, out of a false world into a true. The constant repetition +of the laws of Nature blunts our spirits to the amazing character of +every detail which she reproduces. To catch again the wonder of common +things-- + + "the hour + Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower" + +--is to pass from darkness into light, from falsehood to truth. "All the +towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately +upon one assumption: a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing +goes on repeating itself it is probably dead: a piece of clockwork." But +that is mere blindness to the mystery and surprise of everything that +goes to make up actual human experience. "The repetition in Nature +seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry +schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed +signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed +bent on being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a +thousand times." + +That is one fact, which fairy tales emphasise--the constant demand for +wonder in the world, and the appropriateness and rightness of the +wondering attitude of mind, as man passes through his lifelong gallery +of celestial visions. The second fact is that all such vision is +conditional, and "hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things +conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling +things that are let loose depend upon one thing which is forbidden." +This is the very note of fairyland. "You may live in a palace of gold +and sapphire, _if_ you do not say the word 'cow'; or you may live +happily with the King's daughter, _if_ you do not show her an onion." +The conditions may seem arbitrary, but that is not the point. The point +is that there always _are_ conditions. The parallel with human life is +obvious. Many people in the modern world are eagerly bent on having the +reward without fulfilling the condition, but life is not made that way. +The whole problem of marriage is a case in point. Its conditions are +rigorous, and people on all sides are trying to relax them or to do away +with them. Similarly, all along the line, modern society is seeking to +live in a freedom which is in the nature of things incompatible with the +enjoyment or the prosperity of the human spirit. There is an _if_ in +everything. Life is like that, and we cannot alter it. Quarrel with the +seemingly arbitrary or unreasonable condition, and the whole fairy +palace vanishes. "Life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as +brittle as the window-pane." + +From all this it is but a step to the consideration of dogma and the +orthodox Christian creed. Mr. Chesterton is at war to the knife with +vague modernism in all its forms. The eternal verities which produce +great convictions are incomparably the most important things for human +nature. No "inner light" will serve man's turn, but some outer light, +and that only and always. "Christianity came into the world, firstly in +order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, +but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a +divine company and a divine captain." This again is human nature. No man +can live his life out fully without being mastered by convictions that +he cannot challenge, and for whose origin he is not responsible. The +most essentially human thing is the sense that these, the supreme +conditions of life, are not of man's own arranging, but have been and +are imposed upon him. + +At almost every point this system may be disputed. Mr. Chesterton, who +never shrinks from pressing his theories to their utmost length, scoffs +at the modern habit of "saying that such-and-such a creed can be held in +one age, but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was +credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. +You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on +Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a +view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not +suitable to half-past four." That is precisely what many of us do say. +Our powers of dogmatising vary to some extent with our moods, and to a +still greater extent with the reception of new light. There are many +days on which the dogmas of early morning are impossible and even absurd +when considered in the light of evening. + +But it is not our task to criticise Mr. Chesterton's faith nor his way +of dealing with it. Were we to do so, most of us would probably strike a +balance. We would find many of his views and statements unconvincing; +and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mind +to see fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The main +point in his orthodoxy is unquestionably a most valuable contribution to +the general faith of his time and country. That point is the adventure +which he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in the +discovery of England. He set out to find the empirical truth of human +nature and the meaning of human life, as these are to be explored in +experience. When he found them, it was infinitely surprising to him to +become aware that the system in which his faith had come at last to rest +was just Christianity--the only system which could offer any adequate +and indeed exact account of human nature. The articles of its creed he +recognised as the points of conviction which are absolutely necessary to +the understanding of human nature and to the living of human life. + +Thus it comes to pass that in the midst of a time resounding with pagan +voices old and new, he stands for an unflinching idealism. It is the +mark of pagans that they are children of Nature, boasting that Nature is +their mother: they are solemnised by that still and unresponsive +maternity, or driven into rebellion by discovering that the so-called +mother is but a harsh stepmother after all. Mr. Chesterton loves Nature, +because Christianity has revealed to him that she is but his sister, +child of the same Father. "We can be proud of her beauty, since we have +the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, +but not to imitate." + +It follows that two worlds are his, as is the case with all true +idealists. The modern reversion to paganism is founded on the +fundamental error that Christianity is alien to Nature, setting up +against her freedom the repellent ideal of asceticism, and frowning upon +her beauty with the scowl of the harsh moralist. For Mr. Chesterton the +bleakness is all on the side of the pagans, and the beauty with the +idealists. They do not look askance at the green earth at all. They gaze +upon it with steady eyes, until they are actually looking through it, +and discovering the radiance of heaven there, and the sublime brightness +of the Eternal Life. The pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, +are painfully reasonable and often sad. The Christian virtues are faith, +hope, and charity--each more unreasonable than the last, from the point +of view of mere mundane common sense; but they are gay as childhood, and +hold the secret of perennial youth and unfading beauty, in a world which +upon any other terms than these is hastening to decay. + + + + +LECTURE X + +THE HOUND OF HEAVEN + + +In bringing to a close these studies of the long battle between paganism +and idealism,--between the life which is lived under the attraction of +this world and which seeks its satisfaction there, and that wistful life +of the spirit which has far thoughts and cannot settle down to the green +and homely earth,--it is natural that we should look for some literary +work which will describe the decisive issue of the whole conflict. Such +a work is Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_, which is certainly one +of the most remarkable poems that have been published in England for +many years. + +To estimate its full significance it is necessary in a few words to +recapitulate the course of thought which has been followed in the +preceding chapters. We began with the ancient Greeks, and distinguished +the high idealism of their religious conceptions from the paganism into +which these declined. The sense of the sacredness of beauty, forced upon +the Greek spirit by the earth itself, was a high idealism, without which +no conception of life or of the universe can be anything but a maimed +and incomplete expression of their meaning. Yet, for lack of some +sufficiently powerful element of restraint and some sufficiently daring +faith in spiritual reality, Hellenism sank back upon the mere earth, and +its dying fires lit up a world too sordid for their sacred flame. In +_Marius the Epicurean_ the one thing lacking was supplied by the faith +of early Christianity. The Greek idealism of beauty was not only +conserved but enriched, and the human spirit was revived, by that heroic +faith which endured as seeing the invisible. The two _Fausts_ revealed +the struggle at later stages of the development of Christianity. +Marlowe's showed it under the light of mediaeval theology and Goethe's +under that of modern humanism, with the curious result that in the +former tragedy the man is the pagan and the devil the idealist, while in +the latter this order is reversed. Omar Khayyam and Fiona Macleod +introduce the Oriental and the Celtic strains. In both there is the cry +of the senses and the strong desire and allurement of the green earth; +but in Fiona Macleod there is the dominant undertone of the eternal and +the spiritual, never silent and finally overwhelming. + +The next two lectures, in a cross-section of the seventeenth century, +showed John Bunyan keenly alive to the literature and the life of the +world of Charles the Second's time, yet burning straight flame of +spiritual idealism with these for fuel. Over against him stood Samuel +Pepys, lusty and most amusing, declaring in every page of his _Diary_ +the lengths to which unblushing paganism can go. + +Representative of modern literature, Carlyle comes first with his +_Sartor Resartus_. At the ominous and uncertain beginning of our modern +thought he stood, blowing loud upon his iron trumpet a great blast of +harsh but grand idealism, before which the walls of the pagan Jericho +fell down in many places. Yet such an inspiring challenge as his was +bound to produce _reactions_, and we have them in many forms. Matthew +Arnold presses upon his time, in clear and unimpassioned voice, the +claim of neglected Hellenism. Rossetti, with heavy, half-closed eyes, +hardly distinguishes the body from the soul. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Titan +of the modern world, whose heart is sore with disillusion and the +bitterness of the earth, and yet blind to the light of heaven that still +shines upon it, has lived into the generation which is reading Mr. Wells +and Mr. Shaw. These appear to be outside of all such distinctions as +pagan and idealist; but their influence is strongly on the pagan side. +Mr. Chesterton appears, with his quest of human nature, and he finds it +not on earth but in heaven. He is the David of Christian faith, come to +fight against the heretic Goliaths of his day; and, so far as his style +and literary manner go, he continues the ancient role, smiting Goliath +with his own sword. + +Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_ is for many reasons a fitting close +and climax to these studies. He is as much akin to Shelley and Swinburne +as Mr. Chesterton is akin to Mr. Bernard Shaw. From them he has gathered +not a little of his style and diction. He is with them, too, in his +passionate love of beauty, without which no idealist can possibly be a +fair judge of paganism. "With many," he tells us in that _Essay on +Shelley_ which Mr. Wyndham pronounces the most important contribution to +English letters during the last twenty years--"with many the religion of +beauty must always be a passion and a power, and it is only evil when +divorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty." In this confession we +are brought back to the point where we began. The gods of Greece were +ideals of earthly beauty, and by them, while their worship remained +spiritual, men were exalted far above paganism. And now, as we are +drawing to a close, it is fitting that we should again remind ourselves +that religious idealism must recover "the Christ beautiful," if it is to +retain its hold upon humanity. In this respect, religion has greatly and +disastrously failed, and he who can redeem that failure for us will +indeed be a benefactor to his race. Religion should lead us not merely +to inquire in God's holy place, but to behold the beauty of the Lord; +and to behold it in all places of the earth until they become holy +places for us. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, has taught the world that +wild joy of which Mr. Chesterton speaks such exciting things. It remains +for Thompson to remind us that he whose visage was more marred than any +man yet holds that secret of surpassing beauty after which the poets' +hearts are seeking so wistfully. + +Besides all this, we shall find here something which has not as yet been +hinted at in our long quest. The sound of the age-long battle dies away. +Here is a man who does not fight for any flag, but simply tells us the +mysterious story of his own soul and ours. It is a quiet and a fitting +close for our long tale of excursions and alarums. But into the quiet +ending there enters a very wonderful and exciting new element. We have +been watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like some +receding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. Here the +ideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. It halts for its +pilgrims--"the star which chose to stoop and stay for us." Nay, more, it +turns upon them and pursues them. The ideal is alive and aware--a real +and living force among the great forces of the universe. It is out after +men, and in this great poem we are to watch it hunting a soul down. The +whole process of idealism is now suddenly reversed, and the would-be +captors of celestial beauty are become its captives. + +As has been already stated, we must be in sympathetic understanding with +the pagan heart in order to be of any account as advocates of idealism. +No reader of Thompson's poetry can doubt for a moment his fitness here. +From the days of Pindar there has been a brilliant succession of singers +and worshippers of the sun, culminating in the matchless song of +Shelley. In Francis Thompson's poems of the sun, the succession is taken +up again in a fashion which is not unworthy of the splendours of +paganism at its very highest. + + "And the sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven, + Before his way + Went forth the trumpet of the March + Before his way, before his way, + Dances the pennon of the May! + O Earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long + Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree + Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, + Behold how all things are made true! + Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you + Exceeding glad and strong!" + +The great song takes us back to the days of Mithra and the _sol +invictus_ of Aurelian. That outburst of sunshine in the evening of the +Roman Empire, rekindling the fires of Apollo's ancient altars for men +who loved the sunshine and felt the wonder of it, is repeated with +almost added glory in Thompson's marvellous poems. + +Yet for Francis Thompson all this glory of the sun is but a symbol. The +world where his spirit dwells is beyond the sun, and in nature it +displays itself to man but brokenly. In the bloody fires of sunset, in +the exquisite white artistry of the snow-flake, this supernatural +world is but showing us a few of its miracles, by which the miracles of +Christian faith are daily and hourly matched for sheer wonder and +beauty. The idealist claims as his inheritance all those things in which +the pagan finds his gods, and views them as the revelations of the +Master Spirit. + +It is difficult to write about Thompson's poetry without writing mainly +about himself. In _The Hound of Heaven_, as in much else that he has +written, there is abundance of his own experience, and indeed his poems +often remind us of the sorrows of Teufelsdroeckh. That, however, is not +the purpose of this lecture; and, beyond a few notes of a general kind, +we shall leave him to reveal himself. Except for Mr. Meynell's +illuminative and all too short introduction to his volume of _Thompson's +Selected Poems_, there are as yet only scattered articles in magazines +to tell his strange and most pathetic story. His writings are few, +comprising three short books of poetry, his prose _Essay on Shelley_, +and a _Life of St. Ignatius_, which is full of interest and almost +overloaded with information, but which may be discounted from the list +of his permanent contributions to literature or to thought. Yet that +small output is enough to establish him among the supreme poets of our +land. + +Apart from its poetic power and spiritual vision, his was an acute and +vivid mind. On things political and social he could express himself in +little casual flashes whose shrewd and trenchant incisiveness challenge +comparison with Mr. Chesterton's own asides. His acquaintance with +science seems to have been extensive, and at times he surprises us with +allusions and metaphors of an unusually technical kind, which he somehow +renders intelligible even to the non-scientific reader. These are doubly +illuminative, casting spiritual light on the material world, and +strengthening with material fact the tenuous thoughts of the spiritual. +The words which he used of Shelley are, in this respect, applicable to +himself. "To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarefied mental or +spiritual music traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of +outward things." + +His style and choice of words are an achievement in themselves, as +distinctive as those of Thomas Carlyle. They, and the attitude of mind +with which they are congruous, have already set a fashion in our poetry, +and some of its results are excellent. In _Rose and Vine_, and in other +poems of Mrs. Rachel Annand Taylor, we have the same blend of power and +beauty, the same wildness in the use of words, and the same languor and +strangeness as if we had entered some foreign and wonderfully coloured +world. In _Ignatius_ the style and diction are quite simple, ordinary, +and straightforward, but that biography is decidedly the least effective +of his works. It would seem that here as elsewhere among really great +writings the style is the natural and necessary expression of the +individual mind and imagination. The _Life of Shelley_, which is +certainly one of the masterpieces of English prose, has found for its +expression a style quite unique and distinctive, in which there are +constant reminders of other stylists, yet no imitation of any. The +poetry is drugged, and as we read his poems through in the order of +their publication, we feel the power of the poppy more and more. At last +the hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though in +flashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild and beautiful as ever. +His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric and +arresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a sense +of things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mystic +rite, in a ritual which demanded language choice and strange. + +Something of this may be due to narcotics, and to the depressing tragedy +of his life. More of it is due to Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne. But +these do not explain the style, nor the thoughts which clothed +themselves in it. Both style and thoughts are native to the man. What he +borrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right to +borrow--a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learned +from Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, it +has become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick a +lotos-flower in our buttonhole--harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does not +matter--is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But this +man's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himself +would willingly have put his own flowers there. + +Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and the +unchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious and +brilliant discussion of the whole subject in his _Essay on Shelley_, +which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in the +Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we +shall be clothed, but seek first--seek _first_, not seek _only_--the +spirit, and all these things will be added unto us." He discusses his +own style with an unexpected frankness. His view of the use of +imagination is expressed in the suggestive and extraordinary words--"To +sport with the tangles of Neaera's hair may be trivial idleness or +caressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neraea is that of +heartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mere +intellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics; +or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a _Sensitive +Plant_." If a man is passionate, and passion is choosing her own +language in his work, he may be forgiven much. If he chooses strange +words deliberately and in cold blood, there is no reason why we should +forgive him anything. + +So much has been necessary as an introduction, but our subject is +neither the man Francis Thompson nor his poetry in general, but the one +poem which is at once the most characteristic expression of his +personality and of his poetic genius. _The Hound of Heaven_ has for its +idea the chase of man by the celestial huntsman. God is out after the +soul, pursuing it up and down the universe. God,--but God incarnate in +Jesus Christ, whose love and death are here the embodiment and +revelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men so +constantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possible +form of earthly experience--at least in every clean and noble form, for +there is nothing suggestive of low covert or the mire. It is simply the +second-best as a refuge from the best that is depicted here--the earth +at its pagan finest, in whose charm or homeliness the soul would fain +hide itself from the spiritual pursuit. And the Great Huntsman is +remorseless in his determination to win the soul for the very best of +all. The soul longs for beauty, for interest, for comfort; and in the +beautiful, various, comfortable life of the earth she finds them. The +inner voice still tells of a nobler heritage; but she understands and +loves these earthly things, and would fain linger among them, shy of the +further flight. + +The whole conception of the poem is the counterpart of Browning's +_Easter Day_, where the soul chooses and is allowed to choose the same +regions of the lesser good and beauty for its home. In that poem the +soul is permitted to devote itself for ever to the finest things that +earth can give--life, literature, scientific knowledge, love. The +permission sends it wild with joy, and having chosen, it settles down +for ever to the earth-bound life. But eternity is too long for the earth +and all that is upon it. It wears time out, and all the desire of our +mortality ages and grows weary. The spirit, made for immortal thoughts +and loves and life, finds itself the ghastly prisoner of that which is +inevitably decaying; but its immortality postpones the decent and +appropriate end to an eternal mockery and doom. At last, in the +tremendous close, it wakens to the unspeakable blessedness of _not_ +being satisfied with anything that earth can give, and so proves itself +adequate for its own inheritance of immortality. In Thompson's poem the +soul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things until +satiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels; +and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn from +it by the imperious Best of All that claims her for its own. + +There is no obvious sequence of the phases of the poem, nor any logical +order connecting them into a unity of experience. They may or may not be +a rescript of Thompson's own inner life, but every detail might be +placed in another order without the slightest loss to the meaning or the +truth. The only guiding and unifying element is a purely artistic +one--that of the Hound in full cry, and the unity of the poem is but +that of a day's hunting. One would like to know what remote origin it is +to which we owe the figure. Thompson was a Greek scholar, and some such +legend as that of Actaeon may well have been in his mind. But the chase +of dogs was a common horror in the Middle Ages, and many of the mediaeval +fiends are dog-faced. In those days, when conscience had as yet received +none of our modern soporifics, and men believed in hell, many a guilty +sinner knew well the baying of the hell-hounds, masterless and +bloody-fanged, that chased the souls of even good men up to the very +gates of heaven. Conscience and remorse ran wild, and the Hound of Hell +was a characteristic part of the machinery that made the tragedy of life +so terrific in those old days. But here, by a _tour de force_ in which +is summed up the entire transformation from ancient to modern thought, +the hell-hounds are transformed into the Hound of Heaven. That something +or some one is out after the souls of men, no man who has understood his +inner life can question for a moment. But here the great doctrine is +proclaimed, that the Huntsman of the soul is Love and not Hate, eternal +Good and not Evil. No matter what cries may freeze the soul with horror +in the night, what echoes of the deep-voiced dogs upon the trail of +memory and of conscience, it is God and not the devil that is pursuing. + +The poem, by a strange device of rhythm, keeps up the chase in the most +vividly dramatic realism. The metre throughout is irregular, and the +verses swing onward for the most part in long, sweeping lines. But five +times, at intervals in the poem, the sweep is interrupted by a stanza of +shorter lines, varied slightly but yet in essence the same-- + + "But with unhurrying chase, + And unperturbed pace, + Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, + They beat--and a Voice beat + More instant than the Feet-- + All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." + +By this device of rhythm the footfall of the Hound is heard in all the +pauses of the poem. In the short and staccato measures you hear the +patter of the little feet padding after the soul from the unseen +distance behind. It is a daring use of the onomatopoeic device in +poetry, and it is effective to a wonder, binding the whole poem into the +unity of a single chase. + +The first nine lines are the story of a soul subjective as yet and +self-absorbed. The first covert in which it seeks to hide is its own +life--the thoughts and tears and laughter, the hopes and fears of a man. +This is in most men's lives the first attempt at escape. The verses here +give the inner landscape, the country of a soul's experience, with +wonderful compression. Then comes the patter of the Hound's feet, and +for the rest we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in +the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated +transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his +_Sordello_, the turning-point between the early introspective and the +later dramatic periods. + +Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, the +inevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit. +The story is shortly told in nine lines. The human and the divine love +are rivals here; pagan _versus_ ideal affection. The hunted heart is not +allowed to find refuge or solace in human love. The man knows that it is +Love that follows him: yet it is the warm, red, earthly passion that he +craves for, and the divine pursuer seems cold, exacting, and austere. + +Finding no refuge in human love from this "tremendous Lover," he seeks +it next in a kind of imaginative materialism, half-scientific, +half-fantastic. He appeals at "the gold gateways of the stars" and at +"the pale ports o' the moon" for shelter. He seeks to hide beneath the +vague and blossom-woven veil of far sky-spaces, or, in lust of swift +motion, "clings to the whistling mane of every wind!" Here is a choice +of paganism at its most modern and most impressive. The cosmic +imagination, revelling in the limitless fields of time and space, will +surely be sufficient for a man's idealism, without any insistence upon +further definition. Here are Carlyle's Eternities and Immensities--are +they not enough? The answer is that these are but the servants of One +mightier than they. Incorruptible and steadfast in their allegiance, +they will neither offer pity nor will they allow peace to him who is not +loyal to their Master. And the hunted soul is stung by a fever of +restlessness that chases him back across "the long savannahs of the +blue" to earth again, with the recurring patter of the little feet +behind him. + +Doubling upon the course, the quarry seeks the surest refuge to be found +on earth. Children are still here, and in their simplicity and innocence +there is surely a hiding-place that will suffice. Here is no danger of +earthly passion, no Titanic stride among the vast things of the +universe. Are they not the true idealists, the children? Are they not +the authentic guardians of fairyland and of heaven? Francis Thompson is +an authority here, and his love of children has expressed itself in much +exquisite prose and poetry. "Know you what it is to be a child? It is to +be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a +spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in +love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so +little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn +pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and +nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its +own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of +infinite space." "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child.... +He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to +watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. +The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. +He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright +mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He +teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of +its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its floor +is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of +ether. He chases the rolling world." He who could write thus, and who +could melt our hearts with _To Monica Thought Dying_ and its refrain, + + "A cup of chocolate, + One farthing is the rate, + You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw" + +--surely he must have had some wonderful right of entrance into the +innocent fellowships of childhood. Still more intimate, daring in its +incredible humility and simpleness, is his _Ex Ore Infantium_:-- + + "Little Jesus, wast Thou shy + Once, and just as small as I? + And what did it feel like to be + Out of Heaven, and just like me?... + Hadst Thou ever any toys, + Like us little girls and boys? + And didst Thou play in Heaven with all + The angels, that were not too tall?... + So, a little Child, come down + And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; + Take me by the hand and walk, + And listen to my baby-talk." + +But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul. + + "I turned me to them very wistfully; + But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair + With dawning answers there, + Their angel plucked them from me by the hair." + +Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, to +Nature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pure +abandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one with +cloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide. + + "I was heavy with the even, + When she lit her glimmering tapers + Round the day's dead sanctities. + I laughed in the morning's eyes, + I triumphed and I saddened with all weather." + +Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr. +Chesterton, he holds the key of fairyland, like him also he can retain +through life his wonder at the grass. His nature-poetry is nearer +Shelley than anything that has been written since Shelley died. In it + + "The leaves dance, the leaves sing, + The leaves dance in the breath of spring," + +or-- + + "The great-vanned Angel March + Hath trumpeted + His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead-- + Beat his strong vans o'er earth and air and sea + And they have heard; + Hark to the _Jubilate_ of the bird." + +These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem _To a +Snowflake_--the delicate silver filigree of verse--rank him among the +most privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing very +close to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flying +soul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair and +sheltering, but it is not for him. It is as when sunset changes the +glory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenly +fallen night. Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead to +him. Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she is not friend but +stranger. Her language is another tongue from his-- + + "In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek," + +--and the padding of the feet is heard again. + +Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vain +attempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God has +been too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vain +endeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last. + + "Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! + My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me, + And smitten me to my knee. + I am defenceless utterly." + +So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, he +remembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when + + "In the rash lustihead of my young powers, + I shook the pillaring hours + And pulled my life upon me," + +and, + + "The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist + I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist." + +All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God. + +There follows a protest against those demands. To him it appears that +they are the call for sheer sacrifice and death. He had sought +self-realisation in every lovely field that lay open to the earth. But +now the trumpeter is sounding, "from the hid battlements of Eternity," +the last word and final meaning of human life. His is a dread figure, +"enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned." His demand is +for death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the green +earth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God. + +It is the Cross that he has seen in nature and beyond it. Long ago it +was set up in England, that same Cross, when Cynewulf sang his _Christ_. +On Judgment Day he saw it set on high, streaming with blood and flame +together, amber and crimson, illuminating the Day of Doom. Thompson has +found it, not on Calvary only, but everywhere in nature, and by _tour de +force_ he blends the sunset with Golgotha and finds that the lips of +Nature proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the garden of the +monastery there stands a cross, and the sun is setting over it. + + "Thy straight + Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me! + What secret would thy radiant finger show? + Of thy bright mastership is this the key? + Is _this_ thy secret then, and is it woe? + + Thou dost image, thou dost follow + That king-maker of Creation + Who ere Hellas hailed Apollo + Gave thee, angel-god, thy station; + + Thou art of Him a type memorial. + Like Him thou hangst in dreadful pomp of blood + Upon thy Western rood; + And His stained brow did veil like thine to night. + + Now, with wan ray that other sun of Song + Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul. + One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long + 'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole. + + Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory, + Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields; + Brightness may emanate in Heaven from Thee: + Here Thy dread symbol only shadow yields." + +This is ever the first appearance of the Highest when men see it. And, +to the far-seeing eyes of the poet, nature must also wear the same +aspect. Apollo, when his last word is said, must speak the same language +as Christ. Paganism is an elaborate device to do without the Cross. Yet +it is ever a futile device, for the Cross is in the very grain and +essence of all life; it is absolutely necessary to all permanent and +satisfying gladness. Francis Thompson is not the first who has shrunk +back from the bitter truth. Many others have found the bitterness of the +Cross a lesson too dreadful for their joyous or broken hearts to learn. +Who are we that we should judge them? Have we not all rebelled at this +bitter aspect of the Highest, and said, in our own language-- + + "Ah! is Thy love indeed + A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed + Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?" + +Finally we have the answer of Christ to the soul He has chased down +after so long a following-- + + "Strange, piteous, futile thing! + Wherefore should any set thee love apart? + Seeing none but I makes much of nought (He said), + And human love needs human meriting: + How hast thou merited-- + Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? + Alack, thou knowest not + How little worthy of any love thou art! + Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, + Save Me, save only Me? + All which I took from thee I did but take, + Not for thy harms, + But just that thou mightst seek it in My arms. + All which thy child's mistake + Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: + Rise, clasp my hand, and come." + +And the poem ends upon the patter of the little feet-- + + "Halts by me that footfall: + Is my gloom, after all, + Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? + Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, + I am He Whom thou seekest! + Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me." + +It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and it +tells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Cross +over the pagan gods. It is through pain and not through indulgence that +the ideals gain for themselves eternal life. Until the soul has been +transformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself and +be at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be in +vain. And in our hearts we all know this quite well. We really desire +the Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day of +the wise surrender. This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxes +and contradictions. + +As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced to +the aspect of the age-long conflict by _The Hound of Heaven_ is that the +parts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest, +the Highest is out in full cry after the soul. In this the whole quest +crosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simply +as a study of human nature. Beyond the human region, out among those +Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that +which loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. The +Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it. He is found of +those that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep may +flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered +hour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things +which we would fain choose instead of Him--He alone. The deep wisdom of +the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, +so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret +of fulfilment. Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find +it. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything: +to have Him is to have all things added unto us. + +So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience, +but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live. +Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all its +idols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which she +repudiates: + + "Worship not me but God, the angels urge." + +The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven--the angels of +nature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, of +little children and of grave science and all learning. The desire of the +soul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorseless +footsteps down every quiet and familiar street. The land of heart's +desire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about our +heads. + + "Not where the whirling systems darken, + And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- + The drift of pinions, would we hearken, + Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. + + The angels keep their ancient places;-- + Turn but a stone, and start a wing! + 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, + That miss the many-splendoured thing. + + But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) + Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss + Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder + Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross. + + Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, + Cry;--clinging Heaven by the hems; + And lo, Christ walking on the water, + Not of Genesareth, but Thames."[7] + + + + +_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _King Lear_, Act III. scene vi. + +[2] Compare the song of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth beginning, + + "Who would true valour see" + + with Shakespeare's + + "Who doth ambition shun." + + _As You Like It_, II. v. + +[3] For these and other points of resemblance, cf. Professor Firth's +Leaflet on Bunyan (_English Association Papers_, No. 19). + +[4] _On Compromise_, published 1874. + +[5] In his latest volume (_Marriage_), Mr. Wells has spoken in a +different tone from that of his other recent works. It is a welcome +change, and it may be the herald of something more positive still, and +of a wholesome and inspiring treatment of the human problems. But behind +it lie _First and Last Things_, _Tono Bungay_, _Ann Veronica_, and _The +New Macchiavelli_. + +[6] Mr. Chesterton perceives this, though he does not always express it +unmistakably. He tells us that he does not mean to attack the authority +of reason, but that his ultimate purpose is rather to defend it. + +[7] These verses, probably unfinished and certainly left rough for +future perfecting, were found among Francis Thompson's papers when he +died. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Among Famous Books, by John Kelman + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS *** + +***** This file should be named 18104.txt or 18104.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/1/0/18104/ + +Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Robert Ledger, Ted Garvin +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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